this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
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So here's the thing:
The housing that people want is the housing they can afford. Sure, I'd love to live in a 20,000 sqft mansion up in the Pacific Northwest rainforest with a built in pool and free-range dino nuggies dispensers, but I can't afford that, so I live in what I can afford. Problem is, our zoning doesn't permit really anything except unaffordable, bland tracts of McMansions that force you to drive to everything. If you can't afford that, then, oh well, get bulldozered, idiot.
I want to make living in my city affordable; if all my kids can afford is a $400 studio with no car, then that should be an option.
That's absolutely fine, and obviously a worthy objective.
My comment is really just pointing out that the "bafflement and hilarity" from the screen capped post isn't really baffling nor hilarious.
A surburban lifestyle is nice and that's why people want to live there and that's why it's expensive. You can make fun of people who want that, and you can make a case that alternatives are better in a multitude of ways, but it's a bit silly to suggest to people happily living in the burbs that a row house would be more comfortable.
To your last sentence, I can address it directly:
We live in one of those soulless, godless cookie cutters suburbs. We had a Russian exchange student from St. Petersburg for a year. He grew up in and still lives in a commie block. In complete fairness, he said it was close, but that he preferred the commie block to the suburbs (largely because it was just so damn convenient to do grocery shopping on the ground floor and catch the light rail just outside if he wanted to go anywhere else).
I don't really follow I'm sorry.
Are you suggesting, on the basis of the opinion of one Russian kid who expressed a preference for living where he grew up, that I'm mistaken regarding my own preferences?
Sorry mate that's a little bit nutty.
Well, it's more like this: have you ever lived in a suburb and a commie block? I haven't, but he did, and he explained why he felt that way. I'm not claiming it's scientific or anything
I've lived in all sorts of places in a bunch of different countries, both apartment style living and suburban.
You don't have to take my word for it though. 70% of Australians live in suburbia. Do you honestly think they're mistaken regarding their own lifestyle preferences ?
Billions of flies love shit. Just saying. 😁
But more seriously: if people have been conditioned from early years to desire suburban living, this is what they will desire. I am not judging if it is right or wrong.
This illustrates my point really. Shit matches the nutritional requirements of flies and provides a perfect incubator and food source for their larvae. It's fine that you personally do not love shit, but it's arrogance to suggest that flies must have been conditioned to love shit just because you personally do not.
I disagree that conditioning influences peoples choice of lifestyle. There's no evidence of that, it's just supposition. I'll stand by my original point which is simply that people like living in suburbia because it's a balance of space, convenience, and cost. When you hear the sound of hooves, think horses, not zebras.
That's simply a fact. You have been brainwashed from the youngest years to desire suburban living, the same as for example USians were brainwashed to belive that cities should be built in a way for cars to become a necessity.
This is so tedious. Feel free to continue believing that everyone who has different lifestyle preferences than yours has been brainwashed.
I don't think anyone is mistaken in living where they choose, the mistake is in zoning codes forcing the market to only build one choice, one solution to housing.