• vividspecter@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    Those huge rents exist because demand exceeds supply (amongst other reasons). People want to live in walkable neighborhoods and not suburbs where you have to drive everywhere to survive.

    • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      You can have walkable neighbourhoods without living downtown in a big city. Small villages are the original way to have walkable lifestyles. It’s how everyone lived centuries ago. There’s still plenty of those around, they just get overlooked.

      Suburbs exist mainly for the purpose of commuting into the city for work. If people stopped doing that then they could leave the suburbs.

      • Serinus@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        It’s more like it’s often not a consideration, because the option doesn’t really exist. And when it does, you pay an obscene markup.

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          Bingo, it’s not that there’s a lack of people that want to live downtown, it’s that there’s not enough space to accommodate everyone so it’s not financially realistic to most people who want to.

          The suburbs thing usually becomes something people want while they have kids at home.

          • vividspecter@lemm.ee
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            3 months ago

            it’s that there’s not enough space to accommodate everyone so it’s not financially realistic to most people who want to.

            There’s plenty of space, it’s used incredibly poorly due to free parking, zoning regulations, and running highways through cities. The financial component is simply there aren’t enough of these spaces and they aren’t dense enough (and they could stand to include a lot more public and social housing, but people oppose it because they don’t want “those” people in their neighborhoods).

            That’s not to say that reforming suburbs to make them more livable wouldn’t be a part of the solution too.

            • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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              3 months ago

              Yeah so exactly what I’m saying, there’s not enough space (in which people can live was implied) available to meet the demand at the moment. There could be, there isn’t.