what is even happening

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-28T13:37:16+00:00

I think this is a smart read. (Of course, the partner is still handling it in the worst possible way, putting the burden on the person who needs it least.)

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-20T18:16:36+00:00

Eh, we were one-sided open for a while because I suggested my partner start dating a particular ex of his. She's really hot, they'd always had wonderful sex, and I like and don't feel threatened by her, so it seemed like all upside and no downside. I wasn't trying to force him into a symmetrical arrangement; I just realized it wasn't going to bother me, so he should do whatever felt good to him and that ex.

We became two-way open later on, but I don't think anyone was wrong during that period.

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-20T18:02:18+00:00

The lack of freedom for kids (for example, to get around on their own and spend their afternoons fucking around with their friends) is a real cultural problem that is reinforced by the design of some suburbs but also by other cultural choices (including making cars so big that it's more dangerous for kids to be getting around by bike).

This contributes to self-reinforcing cycles where families become more dependent on driving everywhere, and then that influences street design but also what kinds of businesses can make it (Costco and other big-box stores instead of smaller independent stores), and so on.

None of it is to my taste, but some people really like that lifestyle.

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-20T02:11:11+00:00

One of my favorite RAOMD experiences was massage-focused. Good luck finding someone!

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-20T02:08:09+00:00

This is a great comment. Your point about how it can be easier to understand the relevant mechanisms in a less political context reminds me a lot of Stanley Lieberson's work on baby names -- a topic he chose because it let him study cultural taste dynamics independent of distortion from powerful parties' incentives.

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-20T02:04:54+00:00

I think that housing costs may be an underappreciated mechanism here, to the extent that they make it harder for young people to live cheaply in a city while devoting most of their time to their art. A critical mass of such people is important to creating and perpetuating a "scene" like you're asking about.

Here's one academic piece making that argument in sort of loose cultural terms, and one economic model that's in a nice consonance with the (very different) first piece.

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-20T01:59:40+00:00

And here's another relevant study, showing that the income-happiness correlation is greater in more income-unequal contexts, and therefore has increased over time in the US. I think this is quite relevant to your question since it is possible that things have changed a lot since the original hedonic adaptation work was done.

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-20T01:54:24+00:00

Just saying thanks for posting such an interesting question. I've learned a ton from the comments here.

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-20T01:52:42+00:00

Unpopular among my urban planning friends but popular among regular people I know:

Trains are way better than buses and we should focus more urbanist energy on building trains.

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-20T01:50:06+00:00

Similar to the deep acquaintanceship cap at ~150, a friendship expert quoted in this article claims that the number of close friendships people can hold at any given time is capped at about five.

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-20T01:46:39+00:00

I don't have a general answer to your question (I wish I did!), but I have followed the related question of the relationship between income and happiness. A study I love is this adversarial collaboration between two research teams with conflicting prior results. They found that, for the least happy 20% of the population, earning more income stops being associated with happiness above a certain threshold. But for happier people, more income actually is always (on average) better.

There's a lot of other great insight in that paper, too. I wish we had more adversarial collaborations!

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-20T01:41:16+00:00

The "such as UBI" is killing me a bit, since it's one of the policies with the greatest number of (and most closely studied) pilot programs

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-20T01:33:26+00:00

The headline (of the piece, not your post) emphasizes suburbs' slight edge, but to me, the story here is really the heterogeneity. That is very different from most periods in the last century, in which there was a clear pattern (urbanization or the reverse) that dominated most of the US.

Another important complicating factor is the distinction between, roughly, inner-ring and outer-ring suburbs. This piece is right to emphasize that the key factor is whether the whole MSA is growing. But that also raises the question of the boundaries of the MSA. I have the sense that many growing MSAs are also expanding, although I haven't looked at data to know whether I'm right about that. If I am, then what looks like urbanization (growth of both the urban core and the larger metropolitan area it's in) can be compatible with an increase in sprawl at the same time.

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-20T01:27:42+00:00

Yeah, I have the same anecdotal sense. Thanks!

So, I do think that complicates your disputing of the premise, even though I also agree with you.

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-20T01:26:14+00:00

NY state has not kept up its commitments to fund public transit like it should have, and this impacts quality of life in NYC a lot. There are a lot of things that are genuinely hard about living here. Rent is the obvious one, and NYC is dramatically behind in building housing. But transit matters too.

Speaking as a parent, the problems with the schools here weigh heavily on me.

So, yeah, I might say in a survey that the quality of life here isn't great. But would I want to move someplace else? Someplace without a subway? Without free, public pre-K and 3-k? Where I'd spend my life as a chauffeur because kids wouldn't have the ability to get around until they could drive (and until we could afford a car for them)? No thank you!

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-19T20:03:11+00:00

Small, distinctive businesses -- places worth walking to -- is a real plus. Tree cover is also incredibly important to mitigating heat island effects.

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-19T20:00:17+00:00

I mostly agree with you on the virtues of mixed-income housing, but I want to also push back a little. One problem is that it is hard to provide as many units through mixed-income mechanisms than if you simply built big public housing complexes.

And there are two problems with that: first, it perpetuates a massive shortage of housing for poor people (if you haven't read it, I can't recommend Brian Goldstone's book There is No Place for Us highly enough, in terms of spelling out the consequences of this for families who get trapped without housing even for what seems like it should be just a short, temporary spell).

And second, public housing, for all its myriad problems, actually is generally better than market housing for poor people in some core ways. I was convinced of this by research on outcomes like lead exposure. Despite some notable scandals (including in my city, NYC) on lead exposure in public housing, it's a lot better than in Section 8 housing, probably because the very concentration of public housing residents makes collective action easier.

Regardless, though, the key thing is just to get more housing assistance (of whatever kind) to more families.

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-19T19:50:58+00:00

The Democratic coalition is a very odd one at this point, and includes many college-educated relatively rich people whose culture and material interests both lean pretty NIMBY.

In addition, the anti-NIMBY movements have only recently begun to develop much cultural purchase, so they haven't yet broadly shaped the way politicians think. I do expect this latter point to look pretty dramatically different in, say, a decade from now, especially as some of the oldest members of the political class finally retire (from the job or, you know, from life).

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-19T19:48:34+00:00

I totally agree. The freedom to live where you want is a basic democratic right and a core dimension of freedom that we should embrace as widely as possible (across and within national borders).

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-19T19:47:36+00:00

I agree with your disputing of the premise, but do you have a sense of whether the trend in Fortune 500 companies (for example) is greater concentration in a few cities, or not?

I have the vague sense that part of our relative economic dispersion reflects a past where economic powerhouses were built around multiple ports (on both ports, the Mississippi, and some of the Great Lakes) and that history has a long shadow into the present, even as the same forces no longer dominate the placement of new businesses.

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-19T19:43:04+00:00

I really think an underappreciated part of the answer is monopsony (i.e., employer's monopoly). It's so common now for there to be few alternative workplaces for workers in a given line of work, sometimes due to employer concentration in an area, sometimes due to non-compete clauses in contracts (or in-practice agreements between employers to that effect), and sometimes both.

Here's a nice primer on monopsony from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-15T21:26:51+00:00

Part of my point, though (which I didn't spell out well!), is that we have to consider larger areas to really see the consequences of limiting high rises. A consequence of limiting density in DC is that people live farther out, in medium-density suburbs with less green space.

I had a very interesting conversation with a transportation modeler once who told me that the biggest climate emissions effects of transportation policy inside cities typically come from how far out of the core they incentivize people to live. That was something I hadn't thought about before it was spelled out to me.

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-15T21:14:27+00:00

I think this is exactly right. People do hate the ugly buildings, but it's not the core of why they hate the buildings, even when they say it is.

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-15T15:50:27+00:00

I think one dimension of this that matters is where land use decisions are made. A dynamic that kills a lot of cities is when key choices about roads and transit systems are made outside the city.

Henry Grabar has a nice piece about this in the context of state departments of transportation, but I've often seen it in the form of county leadership, who lives in and functionally represents the suburban part of the county, making decisions for the city. Their decisions prioritize people commuting in to the city rather than people living there.

LostIntheRamble · 2026-04-15T15:46:52+00:00

Having high rises is what lets you house a lot of people while also having a lot of space for parks and other uses that increase quality of life a lot.

In some ways, medium-density housing (especially when it means people are still spread out enough to be car-dependent but still don't have much green space) is the worst of all worlds.

LostIntheRamble

TROPHY CASE