Whenever I've heard people make that argument, what they actually mean is "The huge house I want to live in I can afford if I spend an hour a day in the car, oh and people that live in the cities should not make it harder for me to pursue such a path by restricting car usage. Externalities be damned, won't someone think of my being unable to afford a 5 bedroom house with a big garden in the city".
>> Perhaps because real estate/rent is simply too expensive anywhere closer.
> Whenever I've heard people make that argument, what they actually mean is "The huge house I want to live in I can afford if I spend an hour a day in the car...."
Or it's because it would require 3x-6x their income to afford to live anyplace closer. A major factor of employee shortages is exactly that. There are no homes within 50 mi (often much further) of that job that can be afforded with those wages.
We live 45mi out from a (until recently, inexpensive) US metro area and we require 4 incomes to cover basic expenses.
It is both the desire to not live in an apartment, but rather have a detached single family house with a garage and backyard, and also a desire to live away from people below your socioeconomic level and near people at or above your socioeconomic level (referred to as “good schools”).
If Americans were okay with living in Tokyo sized abodes, then there would be sufficient density for sufficient housing and job opportunities to exist in a region that could support sufficient public transit.
There’s plenty of detached houses in Tokyo (even in the 23 wards) and they cost 1/4 of what they cost in a major American city. Tokyo is denser than any American city but less dense than Paris, and greater Tokyo, which is even cheaper for housing, still has great transit/no need for a car for most people and has a density of only 1000/km^2. Also available in Tokyo is small apartments for single people. A minimum wage worker there will live in a small apartment, yes, but can survive without 5 roommates in a moldy basement suite.
Americans would be okay living in “Tokyo sized abodes” if they knew what that actually meant and didn’t assume all of Tokyo looks like Shibuya. One thing I’ll grant is that garages are rare, because they count as finished space for property tax purposes.
Tokyo is actually a great example of what a city without car-centric planning and free parking everywhere can be like and a perfect example of a “15 minute city”. It’s not only about transit, but what transit and walkability encourages. I lived there for 6 years in a very residential neighborhood, but I was still within 10 minutes walking of virtually any daily necessity, 5 or so grocery stores, dozens if not hundreds of restaurants, 3 public baths, one of which was a legit onsen, a few furniture stores, and even 2 aquarium shops. I’m trying to think of a counter example and I can only think of one thing that wasn’t a ten minute walk away: a movie theatre, although there were multiple within a 15 minute train ride.
Tokyo style abodes are illegal in a huge part of many urban areas.
Given the choice between a some of the shitty living situations I dealt with while living in the US, and an affordable, compact efficient apartment. I'll take the latter
Humans have always been that way. Adam Smith observed in his "wealth of the nations" that once someone has enough to eat and other basics, increases in income are mostly used to make their house better (mostly meaning larger). If your plan for bettering the world doesn't account for this, then you have lost.
That might have been the case a decade ago, but with the uptick in real estate prices it's not even that any more.
I have friends who bought an apartment in a small town next to the city where the jobs are because they didn't have the credit score for anything closer to work.
This is the reality (and realty) people in the market for living space are currently facing.
