How much of this preference is genuine, versus just taught or forced?
I live in Brussels and every time I welcome new American friends here and show them around, their mind is blown that it’s even possible to live in a city center at an affordable rate within walking distance to groceries, restaurants and activities.
Ditto Dublin. Incredibly walkable, with light rail and light tram services as well as a very mature (albeit expensive) taxi infrastructure and rentable bicycles for last-mile stuff.
Even in the very heart of the city centre you have full sized German discount supermarkets like Aldi/Lidl, or Asian/E.European foodmarekts. A far cry from the food deserts and bodega pricing endemic in American cities.
Even in the midst of a generational defining housing crisis, in what most people in Ireland would deem unfathomable HCOL, you can buy a 2 bed apartment around 70-80m2 in the CBD for less than €500,000.
This is in the middle of the Silicon Docks for example, @ 90m2 with dedicated parking space underground, and a concierge service open 7 days a week. 10 minutes walk to Meta/Google/AirBnB/LinkedIn HQ.
My kids like to play in our yard. I do woodwork as a hobby. My neighbors spend summer by their pool. I like my privacy. I like quiet and space. I like strong community.
I spent 15 years apartment living all over the world, and couldn’t be happier moving to the suburbs.
Suburbs and detached houses are available in Europe as well, often with good public transport access (although there are plenty where you need a bicycle to get to a train station).
It is just apartments are much cheaper and you can often not have a car if you live in an apartment.
Suburbs are cheap where? On what salary? Munich suburbs are equally unaffordable to buy something on a Munich wage, unless you're talking about buying in the boonies where you need to drive everywhere but that's no longer the suburbs but a whole different city/village, or you're a high roller at a FAANG, but that excludes 95% of working class people.
My ex originally is from there and I used to work there and my colleagues from the Texas office had more purchasing power at local real-estate than their counterparts from the Munich office.
It seems like it might be taught. I live in a Chicago neighborhood and have all of these things (a yard with a garden, space for woodworking, neighbors with pools, privacy, quiet space, strong community).
Not everyone who lives in a city is in a highrise downtown, most aren't. Not everyone that lives in a city is in an apartment. You wouldn't know that by reading this thread. The two options seem to be a large house in the suburbs or a highrise downtown.
All of these things have magnitudes. Have you ever built a cedar strip canoe, or are you making wooden spoons?
It would cost double what I pay for me to live with 1/4 of the space in a city.
I made a pretty intentional decision about what I wanted, and actually have far more space than where I grew up. I was actually taught to live on less, but have gone in the far opposite direction.
I live in Chicago. I have 350sqft garage and a partially-finished conditioned 280sqft attic room that functions as a studio space. I have more "workshop" space than most of my friends in the suburbs who mostly just treat their garages as a storage space with a little workbench in the corner. My home is over a century old, although the garage is only 25 years old.
Now, can suburban homes offer you MORE space? Absolutely! And if I had the kind of hobbies that merited that additional space I'd probably want to live there. However, as someone who grew up in the suburbs, has friends in the suburbs, etc - the number of friends I have who actually use that space for enjoyment and not junk storage is literally just 1 guy who has a sweet CNC and metal working space in his garage and basement. Everyone else has a garage used for cars + storage and a basement rumpus room with maybe a tiny 8x8 workshop somewhere near the mechanicals (HVAC and Water heater)
The thing is in the United States there's an abundance of properties and communities available that give you lots of personal living and working space. In fact, it's pretty much the default. The frustration is that there's a shrinking pool of available higher-density living spaces that are all astronomically priced because of high demand and low supply, and any attempt to grow this pool of higher density space is met with stiff opposition.
==Have you ever built a cedar strip canoe, or are you making wooden spoons==
No, I haven't built a cedar strip canoe (nice flex), but I do have the room in my 2.5 car garage if I wanted to. Partly because we only need one car in the city for a 4-person family (which is also part of the "cost" calculation). I could also use my basement, if I was inclined.
==It would cost double what I pay for me to live with 1/4 of the space in a city.==
This is impossible to say without knowing how much you pay and how much space you have.
It’s likely linked to my non-trivial ADHD that I need the space to work on whatever thing I go into a rabbit hole on any given year. Even in the suburbs I’ve had the fire department called; I probably would’ve been arrested had I been in a townhouse.
I moved from Brooklyn NYC to NJ suburbs and my 15 year mortgage on 4 bed 2 bath decent yard was about the same as a 1 bed 1 bath 3rd floor walk up that was pretty snug once you had two people and two cats.
I agree. I wouldn't move to city center no matter how affordable or cheap it was. Living in an apartment block severely limits the way I can spend my free time compared to an actual house with a yard.
> Or just come visit a bit and be another name on the list of Americans who had their mind blown.
I’m not American (but live here), and have lived in Europe and traveled most of it.
This HN hivemind if believing there is one type of person and one type of lifestyle is absolute lazy nonsense. I’m guessing you already know why I don’t need to drive a large pickup truck too?
I was talking about city centers. Good luck finding a house with a yard from city center of a major European city, for a price that you can afford without being a millionaire.
Just like in America, living in a proper house in Europe does usually mean moving further away from city center into suburbs. The main difference is that those suburbs do have better public transportation.
European cities have suburbs as well. In fact most people live in them, not in the city center. They are just VERY different from US ones.
Mostly 4-6 story tall buildings clustered around a major transportation hub like a metro or train station (which also hosts shops, restaurants and groceries), with row-homes or single-home detached houses farther away.
I live at the heart of Brussels, 2BR, 1250 eur a month. It’s not the cheapest of the city but it’s also not the most expensive; in fact the most expensive side of the city is one of its suburbs.
And living in the suburbs here doesn’t mean you have to use your car to buy milk, unlike the US. Stuff is still walking distance there.
Cost of life is average. Belgium is actually pretty great for that. It’s just the weather that’s shit.
I live in Brussels and every time I welcome new American friends here and show them around, their mind is blown that it’s even possible to live in a city center at an affordable rate within walking distance to groceries, restaurants and activities.