Why do people like big houses in the countryside /suburbs?
Empirically people move out to the suburbs/countryside when they get children and/or gain wealth. Having a big house with a large yard is the quintessential American dream.
but why? Dense cities are economoically more productive, commuting is measurably one of the worst factors for happiness and productivity. Raising kids in small houses is totally possible and people have done so at far higher densities in the past.
Yet people will spend vast amounts of money on living in a large house with lots of space—even if they rarely use most rooms. Having a big house is almost synonymous with wealth and status.
Part of the reason may be an evolved disease response. In the past, the most common way to die was as a child dieing to a crowd-disease. There was no medicine that actually worked yet wealthier people had much longer lifespans and out reproduced the poor (see Gregory Clark). The best way to buy health was to move out of the city (which were population sinks until late modernity) and live in a large aired house.
It seems like an appealing model. On the other hand, there are some obvious predicted regularities that aren’t observed to my knowledge.
I can report my own feelings with regards to this. I find cities (at least the American cities I have experience with) to be spiritually fatiguing. The constant sounds, the lack of anything natural, the smells—they all contribute to a lack of mental openness and quiet inside of myself.
The older I get the more I feel this.
Jefferson had a quote that might be related, though to be honest I’m not exactly sure what he was getting at:
I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe. Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.
One interpretation of this is that Jefferson thought there was something spiritually corrupting of cities. This supported by another quote:
I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. true, they nourish some of the elegant arts; but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere, and less perfection in the others with more health virtue & freedom would be my choice.
although like you mention, there does seem to be some plausible connection to disease.
Note that it could easily be culturally evolved, not genetically. I think there’s a lot of explanatory power in the land=status cultural belief as well. But really, I think there’s a typical mind fallacy that blinds you to the fact that many people legitimately and truly prefer those tradeoffs over denser city living. Personally, my tastes (and the character of many cities’ cores) have noticeably changed over my lifetime—in my youth, I loved the vibrance and variety, and the relatively short commute of being in a city. Now, I value the privacy and quiet that suburban living (still technically in-city, but in a quiet area) gets me.
More importantly, for many coastal American cities, it’s simply not true that people pay a lot to live in the suburbs. Even in the inflationary eras of the 1980s, a standalone single-family house in an area where most neighbors are rich and value education is more investment than expense (or was when they bought the house. Who knows whether it will be in the future).
I don’t have good answers for the commuting sucks and density correlates with productivity arguments, except that revealed preference seems to contradict those as being the most important things. Also, the measurements I’ve seen seem to include a range of circumstances that make it hard to separate the actual motivations. Living by choice in “the nice” suburbs is likely a very different experience with different desirability than living in a cheap apartment with a long commute because you can’t afford to live in the city. I’d be interested to see same-age, same-family-situation, similar wealth comparisons of city and suburb dwellers.
Why do people like big houses in the countryside /suburbs?
Empirically people move out to the suburbs/countryside when they get children and/or gain wealth. Having a big house with a large yard is the quintessential American dream.
but why? Dense cities are economoically more productive, commuting is measurably one of the worst factors for happiness and productivity. Raising kids in small houses is totally possible and people have done so at far higher densities in the past.
Yet people will spend vast amounts of money on living in a large house with lots of space—even if they rarely use most rooms. Having a big house is almost synonymous with wealth and status.
Part of the reason may be an evolved disease response. In the past, the most common way to die was as a child dieing to a crowd-disease. There was no medicine that actually worked yet wealthier people had much longer lifespans and out reproduced the poor (see Gregory Clark). The best way to buy health was to move out of the city (which were population sinks until late modernity) and live in a large aired house.
It seems like an appealing model. On the other hand, there are some obvious predicted regularities that aren’t observed to my knowledge.
I can report my own feelings with regards to this. I find cities (at least the American cities I have experience with) to be spiritually fatiguing. The constant sounds, the lack of anything natural, the smells—they all contribute to a lack of mental openness and quiet inside of myself.
The older I get the more I feel this.
Jefferson had a quote that might be related, though to be honest I’m not exactly sure what he was getting at:
One interpretation of this is that Jefferson thought there was something spiritually corrupting of cities. This supported by another quote:
although like you mention, there does seem to be some plausible connection to disease.
Note that it could easily be culturally evolved, not genetically. I think there’s a lot of explanatory power in the land=status cultural belief as well. But really, I think there’s a typical mind fallacy that blinds you to the fact that many people legitimately and truly prefer those tradeoffs over denser city living. Personally, my tastes (and the character of many cities’ cores) have noticeably changed over my lifetime—in my youth, I loved the vibrance and variety, and the relatively short commute of being in a city. Now, I value the privacy and quiet that suburban living (still technically in-city, but in a quiet area) gets me.
More importantly, for many coastal American cities, it’s simply not true that people pay a lot to live in the suburbs. Even in the inflationary eras of the 1980s, a standalone single-family house in an area where most neighbors are rich and value education is more investment than expense (or was when they bought the house. Who knows whether it will be in the future).
I don’t have good answers for the commuting sucks and density correlates with productivity arguments, except that revealed preference seems to contradict those as being the most important things. Also, the measurements I’ve seen seem to include a range of circumstances that make it hard to separate the actual motivations. Living by choice in “the nice” suburbs is likely a very different experience with different desirability than living in a cheap apartment with a long commute because you can’t afford to live in the city. I’d be interested to see same-age, same-family-situation, similar wealth comparisons of city and suburb dwellers.