Cities have public transport which are much less expensive per capita than maintaining individually owned automobiles and the associated asphalt road networks. Additionally, electrical, water, and communication infrastructure are orders of magnitude less costly with higher density housing simply due to lower distances between service points; this is why federal grants are often required to pay for infrastructure like rural broadband: suburbs and rural towns are not cost effective to develop to the same degree as cities.
Ultimately, I imagine most people who say cities are expensive say so because they their personal comfort zone is measured in acres, not square feet.
Living in a city requires daily communication and coöperation with your neighbors; you can’t burn your trash, roll coal, park your half dozen clunkers nearby, litter your surroundings with pet droppings, or blast your music out your windows without risking getting lawsuits filed and your checking account emptied in retribution.
My only metric for affordability was land price per m². Cost of utilities depends on size, small house wont be much more than an apartment. Of course this all depends on the location.
Maybe the US is different but all your points about freedom to do anything outside of cities is pretty much the same as in cities. Even though I live in a house, I cant just burn trash in it, I’ll get fined if I don’t pick up my dogs shit off the roads and I cant blast music after 10PM. The same laws apply. Cooperation with neighbors is there about as much as it is in the cities.
I think we probably have vastly different view points on what rural means. In my country, rural is not the middle of nowhere where I can do whatever I want. Such rural environment are uncommon here. “Outside of cities” here means living in close proximity to 100-200 other houses in a village. Rural middle of nowhere isn’t really a thing here.
Cities have public transport which are much less expensive per capita than maintaining individually owned automobiles and the associated asphalt road networks. Additionally, electrical, water, and communication infrastructure are orders of magnitude less costly with higher density housing simply due to lower distances between service points; this is why federal grants are often required to pay for infrastructure like rural broadband: suburbs and rural towns are not cost effective to develop to the same degree as cities.
Ultimately, I imagine most people who say cities are expensive say so because they their personal comfort zone is measured in acres, not square feet.
Living in a city requires daily communication and coöperation with your neighbors; you can’t burn your trash, roll coal, park your half dozen clunkers nearby, litter your surroundings with pet droppings, or blast your music out your windows without risking getting lawsuits filed and your checking account emptied in retribution.
My only metric for affordability was land price per m². Cost of utilities depends on size, small house wont be much more than an apartment. Of course this all depends on the location.
Maybe the US is different but all your points about freedom to do anything outside of cities is pretty much the same as in cities. Even though I live in a house, I cant just burn trash in it, I’ll get fined if I don’t pick up my dogs shit off the roads and I cant blast music after 10PM. The same laws apply. Cooperation with neighbors is there about as much as it is in the cities.
I think we probably have vastly different view points on what rural means. In my country, rural is not the middle of nowhere where I can do whatever I want. Such rural environment are uncommon here. “Outside of cities” here means living in close proximity to 100-200 other houses in a village. Rural middle of nowhere isn’t really a thing here.