Strongtowns.org Antifragile series

[flyingpylon]

Maine and Vermont are actually on my relocation state short list. They seem like the last bastions of non-congestion, non-density and non-multiculturalism.

Have you actually spent any time in Vermont? I grew up there and return almost every year to visit family. Nice place to visit, glad I grew up there, but I wouldn't want to live there again.

[Pointedstick]

Yeah, forget the pictures of American "New Urbanism." It's trash. Don't those Japanese pictures just look… civilized? I'd sure like to live in one of those neighborhoods.

I really do get the disadvantages of American urban living, believe me. My sister who lives in New York City was just mugged at gunpoint by a huge scary black man last night (she's okay). It's a sewer.

But again, we shouldn't confuse correlation with causation. New York City isn't a crime-infested pit because it's high-density; it's because a persistent criminal underclass lives there, along with a police force that's kneecapped by stupid liberal PC policies, and a population that accepts crime as a consequence of their lifestyle instead of something that is totally unacceptable.

[MachineGhost]

Have you actually spent any time in Vermont? I grew up there and return almost every year to visit family. Nice place to visit, glad I grew up there, but I wouldn't want to live there again.

No. What's wrong with it?

[MachineGhost]

But again, we shouldn't confuse correlation with causation. New York City isn't a crime-infested pit because it's high-density; it's because a persistent criminal underclass lives there, along with a police force that's kneecapped by stupid liberal PC policies, and a population that accepts crime as a consequence of their lifestyle instead of something that is totally unacceptable.

Elaborate on this more. What lifestyle produces crime as a consequence?

[Pointedstick]

Wrong word. How about "drawback."

[Mountaineer]

Have you actually spent any time in Vermont? I grew up there and return almost every year to visit family. Nice place to visit, glad I grew up there, but I wouldn't want to live there again.

No. What's wrong with it?

My son and his wife lived in Brattleboro for several years. There are three seasons: short summer, long winter, and mud.

And, a lot of nice people if you prefer flaming liberals.

And, if you prefer a lot of car seat time to find a nice restaurant, sports events, etc.

And, there is yet more mud, and gloom, and dirty snow. And mud. And more mud, and dirty snow - unless you live at a ski resort, then there is just snow.

... Mountaineer

[dualstow]

I really appreciate PS's thoughts on this. I used to visit your town, PS, in the 70s and 80s. Needless to say, it was a lot smaller back then.

You sure been around! So where do you live now? You don't have to be specific. I don't believe in stalking.

Northeast US. I've never lived where PS lives, but my father's family is from there so we used to visit every few years.

ADDED:

When you live that close to the neighbors, its really not that much different than living in attached homes, apartments or condos. You can't be who you really are because of the public etiquette pressure

I grew up in a house with a very large yard, and now I have zero privacy outside in my postage stamp back garden. But, even where I grew up, neighbors and passersby could see me mowing the lawn, playing in the railroad tie fort or using the basketball hoop. I don't think it's that different except that we had a fenced-in backyard. Also, we could yell without being heard. I'm far less likely to yell in my current home, and I think of that as a good thing.

The plus is that I actually feel safer having so many eyes on my house. I have a burglar alarm, too, but these watchful neighbors (who are not busybodies, btw) are a bonus.

[flyingpylon]

Have you actually spent any time in Vermont? I grew up there and return almost every year to visit family. Nice place to visit, glad I grew up there, but I wouldn't want to live there again.

No. What's wrong with it?

Briefly...

- Way (way) too far left.
- You mentioned multiculturism... VT may not have it, but it doesn't mean they don't desire/welcome it.
- Some areas are getting inundated with welfare/service seekers.
- Congestion... plenty of that in some areas because roads don't get built or sized appropriately.
- Relatively expensive housing and cost of living (not NYC or CA expensive, but still).
- Simply not enough general economic activity to go around.
- Huge heroin problems.
- Cold. Snowy. Rainy. Muddy.

As a young person trying to get a career started in the very early 90's, I knew I needed to get out. The people that seem to do well there are middle-aged professionals that have established themselves elsewhere, made (or inherited) some money, and can afford the lifestyle pictured in Vermont Life magazine.

If you are a person who desires and is financially able to live well out in the boonies while ignoring the mainstream/rat race, you might enjoy it. Vermont can be stunningly beautiful and summer in particular can be absolutely glorious. There is no shortage of cute artisanal products to enjoy. People are friendly and they do quaint things like get together for Town Meeting Day each year. Some people really do love it.

But the other stuff would drive me crazy. For example, they passed single-payer healthcare but then later realized there was no way they could afford it. They recently passed GMO labeling laws and are now surprised to see food distributors cutting thousands of items from their inventory. Stuff like that all the time.

There are three seasons: short summer, long winter, and mud.

We always used to say there were two seasons... Winter and two months of poor sledding!

[Kriegsspiel]

If your goals really are low population, low density, white... you can get that throughout Appalachia, too. Especially if your feeble Californian constitution can't handle winter.

[dualstow]

Especially if your feeble Californian constitution can't handle winter.

hahahaha!

[MachineGhost]

If your goals really are low population, low density, white... you can get that throughout Appalachia, too. Especially if your feeble Californian constitution can't handle winter.

That's an idea! Exactly what areas does Appalachia include?

My constitution loathes California hot weather, so anything cooler is a plus in my book. And four real seasons would be nice also instead of a 9-month long insufferable oven (it's going to hit 105F tomorrow).

The Pacific Northwest was my first choice but forget it now (see The Really Big One topic). The entire Deep South/Southeast is out of the question due to the humidity (and bugs and reptiles). I have a few "alternative" lifestyle possibilities to research instead of another boring vanilla, cookie cutter, master planned, suburban subdivision "community" (hah!), but I doubt they will hold up upon closer inspection.



Maybe I'll move to NYC and kick Reub's ass.

[Kriegsspiel]

If you look at these maps, you can get an idea of the places I meant:

Their climate is similar to Maine/Vermont, but slightly warmer (more southernly mountains):


Mean July dew point


You can see that once you get to the east side of the mountains you are in a pocket of nicer weather. For example, Boone, NC (3,333 ft elevation), and Montpelier, VT (600 ft) both have July avg highs of 78, but Boone has warmer winters (avg January high of 41 vs 26, and low of 20 vs 7). Blacksburg, VA (2,080 ft). Areas of eastern WV have a marine west coast climate.

Population densities:




This is where black people live (I assumed by multicultural you meant black people?)


It's harder to figure out congestion, but a quick look at the statistics for Boone vs Vermont shows that people around Boone drive 21% less than those in Vermont. This would have been a cool map to look at, but it's not up.

[Pointedstick]

MG, you're an optimizer, so it might be hard to accept that there is no perfect place that will meet all your needs. Most of the objectively really nice places are so crowded that they're very expensive. The mountain states and the northeast get freezing cold; the south is unbearable outside in the summer; the midwest has both; Colorado and the pacific northwest are culturally turning into a little Californias; anywhere with a lot of black people and/or latinos is going to have racial tensions; the intermountain west states are largely economically depressed and dependent on the federal government, etc.

It's an efficient market. Not a lot of abritrage opportunities left. You just gotta decide which things you can live with. It's gonna require stretching on your budget, being more open-minded about who you live around, accepting more limited employment opportunities, or dealing with weather that isn't as much to your liking.

[Xan]

There's also the potential for "summering" in one place and "wintering" in another. Surely more expensive than just picking one, of course. But you could do things like spend 183 days in a non-income-tax state and avoid state income tax altogether. If this is for retirement that may not matter of course.

Or you could exploit hyper-localized weather. For example near Tuscon there's a lovely little village up on Mount Lemmon. Nice and cool in the summer.

[MachineGhost]

Fascinating maps. But yeah, micro-climate anomalies are always interesting if I could find a list of them. It does look to me like Appalachia is an exception to the rule in the South. I looked up Asheville, NC because its a cool weather mountain anomaly and yep, its in Appalanchia. But artsy fartsy towns like that are now expensive and overcongested. I think the trick is to be in a place that isn't going to grow into that over time.

If cheapness was all that mattered, I'd move to Oklahoma! But the weather sucks (hot & dry with tornadoes), the flat boring geography sucks, the spread out suburban lifestyle sucks and the extreme conservatism sucks.

And by multi-culturalism, I'm essentially meaning all the immigrants that don't fucking assimilate. I'm tired of flag-waving Mexicans and Cinco de Mayo celebrations, etc. It's insulting.

[Xan]

I think the trick is to be in a place that isn't going to grow into that over time.

Or let it grow into that, sell high, repeat.

[MachineGhost]

Or let it grow into that, sell high, repeat.

Do you know how stressful moving is? I want this to be my last move. I'm beyond tired of doing it.

[flyingpylon]

If cheapness was all that mattered, I'd move to Oklahoma! But the weather sucks (hot & dry with tornadoes), the flat boring geography sucks, the spread out suburban lifestyle sucks and the extreme conservatism sucks.

As we used to say at Ft Sill (Lawton, OK): Why is Texas so windy? Because Oklahoma sucks!

And by multi-culturalism, I'm essentially meaning all the immigrants that don't fucking assimilate. I'm tired of flag-waving Mexicans and Cinco de Mayo celebrations, etc. It's insulting.

That's what I thought you meant when I made my comments about Vermont.

[Pointedstick]

Do you know how stressful moving is? I want this to be my last move.

LOL, I told my ex-wife 25 years ago when we moved into the house I still live in, "I'm not doing that again. The next move will be to either a warm climate or a cemetery." So far, so good. The weather and the politics suck here in Chicagoland, but otherwise, it's a pretty great place to live.

There's a lot to like about a lot of the midwest IMHO. There are lot of just really pleasant places to live. Social trust also tends to be high if you stay out of the decaying rust belt cities. Those hardy Germanic and Scandanavian midwesterners make strong communities. Indiana, Wisconsin, and Minnesota are nice.

On the other hand, they're hot and muggy as hell in the summer, and freezing cold with feet of snow in the winter. And Illinois is a political basket case.

[Kriegsspiel]

Like I always say, if you aren't incredibly uncomfortable 6 months a year, you don't really have 4 seasons.

[Kriegsspiel]

RE: the Retrotopia series and MG's Vermont retirement plans,

Cash-Strapped Towns Are Un-Paving Roads They Can’t Afford to Fix

The Un-Paving Of American Roads

Repaving roads is expensive, so Montpelier instead used its diminishing public works budget to take a step back in time and un-pave the road. Workers hauled out a machine called a “reclaimer” and pulverized the damaged asphalt and smoothed out the road’s exterior. They filled the space between Vermont’s cruddy soil and hardier dirt and gravel up top with a “geotextile”, a hardy fabric that helps with erosion, stability and drainage.

In an era of dismal infrastructure spending, where the American Society of Civil Engineers gives the country’s roads a D grade, rural areas all over the country are embracing this kind of strategic retreat. Transportation agencies in at least 27 states have unpaved roads, according to a new report from the National Highway Cooperative Highway Research program. They’ve done the bulk of that work in the past five years.

[Xan]

I was in Biloxi not too long ago (the real part, not the part right by the casinos), and it really did seem like they'd given up on paving the roads. Apparently that's a thing!

[Pointedstick]

I'm loving the discussion we're having around here about urban vs rural, density vs nature, etc. Maddy's recent post was very human and eye-opening.

A lot of Americans have this horror of "density" which leads us to flee to the nice tame suburbs. I live there myself and totally understand the appeal (it appeals to me too). But maybe the problem isn't the concept of urban density but rather the execution.

So I decided to do a totally non-scientific experiment and look at parts of cities on Google street view. I tried to chose randomly from among places that from above looked to have high low-rise density and be near the city center, avoiding large main roads. Basically I wanted to find places where you could experience low-rise density as a person walking around a not-very-busy street.

This is Google Maps street view of such a random place in Philadelphia (population density 11,600 people /sq mi):



Looking at this made me slightly nauseous and want to escape. The whole street looks dingy, dirty, and polluted. There's trash all over and no vegetation save for a distant tree at the end of the enormously long block--not even window flower boxes or potted plants. The buildings are nearly identical featureless slabs with no space between them; a distinctly "trapped" feeling arose. The street is not well-maintained, a typical American patchwork of stained asphalt and concrete. A line of shitty-looking cars are parked in the middle of the street. It looks like the kind of place populated by poor and desperate people where you would become the victim of crime. Looking at this makes me happy I'm sitting in a nice suburban house right now.

Next I did the same thing with a random-looking "dense" part of Tokyo (population density 16,000 people / sq mi). The whole thing looked pretty dense so this was basically completely random:



Wow, it's amazing how much nicer than looks than the random place in Philly! There's space between the buildings, so your lizard brain doesn't stress you out by feeling like there would be no escape if you needed to run away from something. The buildings are nicely-maintained with some architectural diversity. It's neat and clean. There are trees and plants! The street surface looks new or well-maintained. There isn't a distinct sidewalk but it doesn't look like you would feel uneasy walking down the middle of the street. This picture attracts me to the neighborhood rather than repelling me.

Maybe I got lucky. So I tried another random street in Tokyo:



A bit dingier but still pretty nice. There are people there! Shops at ground level. Someone appears to be driving a delivery tricycle or something. There's evidence of building maintenance (the big tarp). Architectural diversity. Potted plants. Pride of ownership. No parked vehicles. Maybe a bit crowded for my tastes but I don't feel the urge to flee in the opposite direction.

Another:



People! Schoolchildren! Plants! Architectural interest! You've even got a patchwork street surface and a parked motorcycle, but somehow it doesn't feel awful.



Hey, single-family homes. Now that looks nice, doesn't it? I'd live there. Nothing at all like the dingy sewer in Philly. Maybe I just got unlucky there, so here's another totally random part of Philly.



Shabby road surface. Parked vehicles everywhere. A heavy truck. A warehouse. No vegetation. Buildings are flat slabs dominating the street with nowhere to hide, so to speak. What is it with this intimidating architecture? It just feels so cold and unwelcoming. The lack of difference in building depths and location gives the block an inhuman shape and scale. But I'll stop picking on Philly. Here's a random part of Chicago (population density 12,000 people/sq mi):



Ew. Trash everywhere. Shabby road. Ugly metal fences and walls full of garage doors. At least we don't have those imposing flat building façades, but this place just doesn't look very healthy-looking. More Chicago:



Now that isn't so terrible. We've got some trees and interesting architecture. But no people, just more endless lines of parked cars. The street is huge--obviously way too big because there are no other cars driving on it as far as the eye can see. It's an intimidating concrete canyon. And the ground-level shops are all empty or boarded up if you look closely. No people, of course. These human-less places seem eerie, almost like they've been abandoned.

Onto the obvious one: New York City. I want low-rise density, so here's a random part of Brooklyn (population density 36,000 people/sq mi):



Hey, that's not too bad at first glance. Look at all those trees! I bet they're really nice in spring and summer. But there's still all that trash everywhere. What is it with American cities and garbage? It makes them seem like polluted sewers. And man, look at all the cars. Cars outnumber the lone walker 50 to 1 with two endless lines of parked cars and a whole bunch of traffic on the road. There's no way I'd want to live in such close proximity to traffic like this. It would be loud, dirty, and dangerous for my kids. As nice as brick construction is the architecture is still flat and intimidating with no space between buildings or any variety in building heights, depths, footprints, or locations on the lot. It looks like a machine built the whole block.

How about Queens (population density 21,400 people/sq mi):



Egad. Looks like a great place to get murdered. Let's try again:



Ah, single-family homes. Well, on the right side of the street, at least. On the left we have some humongous featureless inhuman block-wide warehouse of some sort. The house isn't bad, but it must be somewhat depressing to have it face something like that. No people, all cars. Only one vehicle actually driving; the rest of the street is basically a parking lot. Typical patchwork street and sidewalk repair jobs.


Now let look at some more completely random parts of cities outside the USA:

Soeul, South Korea (17,000 people /sq mi):



Brasov, Romania (2,200 people/sq mi):



Haifa, Israel (11,000 people/sq mi):



Coimbra, Portugal (1,200 people/sq mi):



São Paulo, Brazil (6,300 people/sq mi):



Moscow, Russia (11,900 people/sq mi):





I could keep going, but you probably get the idea. I swear these locations were totally random. Don't those places just look nice? The density almost doesn't matter. Maybe it's not cities and density that are horrible, but rather American cities and density. American cities are just sewers. I think whether a city is a nice place to live really has much more to do with other factors than simple density. Like the quality of the trash collection system; WTF America? Why are American cities so uniquely shitty?

[Kriegsspiel]

You can get a long way towards finding the answers at this site. I've been reading it for the past few days, tons of material. The author was interviewed by the Strong Towns guy, which covered a lot of ground also.

In sort of one word? Codes/regulations. We do it to ourselves.

[Kriegsspiel]

https://granolashotgun.com/2016/04/03/t ... imbyville/
https://granolashotgun.com/2016/04/15/t ... etropolis/
https://granolashotgun.com/2016/04/10/t ... etty-good/
https://granolashotgun.com/2016/03/25/e ... cr-repair/
https://granolashotgun.com/2016/03/25/s ... structure/
https://granolashotgun.com/2016/03/25/h ... structure/
https://granolashotgun.com/2016/03/03/w ... e-you-buy/
https://granolashotgun.com/2016/02/03/t ... ly-places/
https://granolashotgun.com/2016/01/26/s ... n-is-hard/
https://granolashotgun.com/2016/01/17/e ... velopment/
https://granolashotgun.com/2015/12/08/c ... but-smart/

Here are a few to get you off and running. All of his articles are worth reading, plus the comments are generally intelligent too.


I think you'd just like these two posts:
https://granolashotgun.com/2016/06/07/h ... g-detroit/
https://granolashotgun.com/2016/05/22/mind-the-gap/