An interesting thing about the point the Harper's article made about tenants not wanting to move. Chesterton made the same observation, in his case being critical of the progressives at the time, pointing out that peasant peoples (a term he used positively) often also resisted moving into social housing because it generally broke apart their social bonds. Jane Jacobs made much the same case of Project housing decades later.
So many people suffer from a lack of imagination that forces them to assume that others share most of their own preferences. I find that understandable in a child, but I have seen it in people of all ages and all levels of education. I have known city dwellers who cannot imagine why truly rural life with it's lack of convenience would appeal to anyone. I have known suburbanites or even urban single family homeowners who find the idea of living in an apartment distasteful.
The best approach to housing is the old notion of different strokes for different folks. When I was young and single, I lived in rented apartments and flats. Even during my brief first marriage that continued. Sometimes neighbors could be annoying, but more often they were a pleasure. As a single person, high density living just works better, imho. A little over two decades ago, at the age of forty, I bought a single family home with my wife-to-be. It is in an urban neighborhood of century-plus aged homes on deep narrow lots. If a neighbor plays his music too loud too late, it is still annoying. But mostly having neighbors is wonderful. Our next phase of life will be to live in a small home in a rural area or a tiny tiny village. My hope is to have about five acres and be free from neighbors. We love privacy and have done the urban thing enough, but this place has been perfect for raising a child from birth to adulthood. After we get enfeebled by the inevitable aging process, like my mother is now, we will return to an urban setting and live in an apartment complex designed for senior life.
I have a tendency to get sad when I think of old people living alone in 2000 square foot homes on quarter acre lots. I think in some cases that is just fear of change, but I need to remember that they are not me. Sometimes it is a genuinely considered preference. Options are good. Choices ought to be respected. We cannot make good choices though if we are given few options.
Having grown up as a child on a 3 acre lot, I do want to chime in a bit. On the one hand, it did have a lot of advantages, such as beautiful scenery, lots of opportunities to casually observe nature, and exploration of surrounding woods and creeks (which I probably shouldn't have done, since that was actually other people's property).
That being said, it also had a lot of significant downsides. Namely, the lack of other kids to easily play with. We didn't have any neighbors until after I started school, which meant I was a bit socially stunted going in (made worse by other aspects of my personality, but still). And outside of wandering the countryside, it offered very little in terms of other forms of autonomy. As a result, I was mostly raised by television and video games.
Not necessarily a criticism, just outlining my experiences. You mention trying to tie it more to a village lifestyle, which hopefully works out a bit better. I often wish rural living was more like that, a cluster of homes with open space around, rather than just a series of 5 acre lots spread well apart. But I don't think the land use laws have quite caught up.
To be clear, in 16 or 17 months, our son goes off to college and we would not have wanted to raise him in a rural area, or even an outer ring suburb for that matter. In a few years, my wife hits retirement age (I am already there) and we will go live in a rural setting, or maybe a large lot on the outskirts of a village. We had settled on one particular island where the vacant lots are almost all 5-6 acres, but then it got written up in the Chicago Tribune and then the NYT and some travel magazine and the property values doubled or tripled in a year. So then we went to explore another island and found the village where the ferry leaves from to be just as charming as the island. I would not want to live in the actual village though. I want quiet. Real quiet. I want to walk outside naked and not be seen (j/k).
I lived in mostly in residential neighborhoods in small cities growing up and believe that is the best place to be a kid for the most part. From age six to nine though, we lived on a 1.5 acre rural lot that was bunched with other 0.5 to 1.5 acre lots surrounded by a marsh and cornfields and with a small dense woods along the Niagara Escarpment across the road and a golf course behind that. I trespassed a lot too. I am pro-trespassing! But man oh man, it would have sucked to be a preteen or a teen without a drivers license there. I am glad we moved to a city before I hit puberty.
An interesting thing about the point the Harper's article made about tenants not wanting to move. Chesterton made the same observation, in his case being critical of the progressives at the time, pointing out that peasant peoples (a term he used positively) often also resisted moving into social housing because it generally broke apart their social bonds. Jane Jacobs made much the same case of Project housing decades later.
So many people suffer from a lack of imagination that forces them to assume that others share most of their own preferences. I find that understandable in a child, but I have seen it in people of all ages and all levels of education. I have known city dwellers who cannot imagine why truly rural life with it's lack of convenience would appeal to anyone. I have known suburbanites or even urban single family homeowners who find the idea of living in an apartment distasteful.
The best approach to housing is the old notion of different strokes for different folks. When I was young and single, I lived in rented apartments and flats. Even during my brief first marriage that continued. Sometimes neighbors could be annoying, but more often they were a pleasure. As a single person, high density living just works better, imho. A little over two decades ago, at the age of forty, I bought a single family home with my wife-to-be. It is in an urban neighborhood of century-plus aged homes on deep narrow lots. If a neighbor plays his music too loud too late, it is still annoying. But mostly having neighbors is wonderful. Our next phase of life will be to live in a small home in a rural area or a tiny tiny village. My hope is to have about five acres and be free from neighbors. We love privacy and have done the urban thing enough, but this place has been perfect for raising a child from birth to adulthood. After we get enfeebled by the inevitable aging process, like my mother is now, we will return to an urban setting and live in an apartment complex designed for senior life.
I have a tendency to get sad when I think of old people living alone in 2000 square foot homes on quarter acre lots. I think in some cases that is just fear of change, but I need to remember that they are not me. Sometimes it is a genuinely considered preference. Options are good. Choices ought to be respected. We cannot make good choices though if we are given few options.
Having grown up as a child on a 3 acre lot, I do want to chime in a bit. On the one hand, it did have a lot of advantages, such as beautiful scenery, lots of opportunities to casually observe nature, and exploration of surrounding woods and creeks (which I probably shouldn't have done, since that was actually other people's property).
That being said, it also had a lot of significant downsides. Namely, the lack of other kids to easily play with. We didn't have any neighbors until after I started school, which meant I was a bit socially stunted going in (made worse by other aspects of my personality, but still). And outside of wandering the countryside, it offered very little in terms of other forms of autonomy. As a result, I was mostly raised by television and video games.
Not necessarily a criticism, just outlining my experiences. You mention trying to tie it more to a village lifestyle, which hopefully works out a bit better. I often wish rural living was more like that, a cluster of homes with open space around, rather than just a series of 5 acre lots spread well apart. But I don't think the land use laws have quite caught up.
To be clear, in 16 or 17 months, our son goes off to college and we would not have wanted to raise him in a rural area, or even an outer ring suburb for that matter. In a few years, my wife hits retirement age (I am already there) and we will go live in a rural setting, or maybe a large lot on the outskirts of a village. We had settled on one particular island where the vacant lots are almost all 5-6 acres, but then it got written up in the Chicago Tribune and then the NYT and some travel magazine and the property values doubled or tripled in a year. So then we went to explore another island and found the village where the ferry leaves from to be just as charming as the island. I would not want to live in the actual village though. I want quiet. Real quiet. I want to walk outside naked and not be seen (j/k).
I lived in mostly in residential neighborhoods in small cities growing up and believe that is the best place to be a kid for the most part. From age six to nine though, we lived on a 1.5 acre rural lot that was bunched with other 0.5 to 1.5 acre lots surrounded by a marsh and cornfields and with a small dense woods along the Niagara Escarpment across the road and a golf course behind that. I trespassed a lot too. I am pro-trespassing! But man oh man, it would have sucked to be a preteen or a teen without a drivers license there. I am glad we moved to a city before I hit puberty.