Dan, not to disagree with your sentiment about this whiny exurbanite, do you know how expensive a condo in NYC is? How much more expensive it is than buying a house far, far away from the city? Living way the hell far from the city could be as much a matter of cost prohibition as it is petty personal tastes.

One of the consequences of building a dense urban paradise is that it drives housing costs through the damn roof due to demand and location. It's a factor conveniently ignored in the urban/suburban debate.

And while you're busy kicking people while they're down, it's worth noting that three and four bedroom dwellings in Seattle proper rent in the 1500-2000/mo range. I have a decent job in the city and after taxes bring home about 2400/mo. Add to that the fact that many urban landlords are real dicks about renting to tenants with children, and sorry, the wife and I had no realistic choice but moving to Federal fucking Way. Do we want to have to get in the car to drive to the "corner store" when one of us needs some rolaids or a bag of chips? No. Do we have a choice? We haven't been presented with one yet, but we're still looking.

Ideally, the communities around the city would be designed in such a way that the miles and miles of strip malls and sparsely used, oversize backyards would be formed into walkable, town-like communities centered around transit. It would make living there less depressing and isolating and make getting a baby sitter down the street so that we could hop on a train into the city that much easier.

Your alternative, dumping all of King County into the Seattle city limits, would not improve this however since, even now, it takes upwards of half an hour to take the bus from Pioneer Square to Queen Anne (a distance of about three miles) at rush hour. And that's AFTER waiting for the bus, which is completely unpredictable.

But then at least I could walk to the corner store I guess.

As a contractor living in Bremerton and working most days in Seattle, I agree completely: all those other people should get out of my way.

I, on the other hand, have valid reasons for my 2 hour commute each way. I wanted a decent spread of land (3/4 acre). The price of my place is 1/3 of what it would cost anywhere in King County and I only have the travel expense on the days that I have work to go to, making it a variable expense rather than the fixed expense of higher housing costs. (Of course the price of gas is itself a variable in the travel expense, leading me to refinance my house to cover my losses this year.)

As to finding work out here, well, everyone out here is on a budget similar to mine.

Landscape contractors can't afford to live in the neighborhoods they serve, and neither can nannies. The day-laborers I've hired in the past either take the bus into the city or live 6 to a room in the city.

Try running a city without the people who work in the trades, see how long that lasts.

I've heard that Portland has limited growth beyond it's boundaries, and I'm guessing that the market forces there drive wages at the bottom end up.

QUIMBY WROTE:
"...it takes upwards of half an hour to take the bus from Pioneer Square to Queen Anne (a distance of about three miles) at rush hour. And that's AFTER waiting for the bus, which is completely unpredictable."

Unsolicited Tip:
To save bus waiting and travel time, board any northbound bus on 1st Ave in Pioneer Square, get off near Pike, and walk over to 3rd Ave. The QA express routes on 3rd run every five minutes, as opposed to every 20-30 minutes like the Ballard via QA routes on 1st Ave.

And a family of four can live comfortably in an apartment in the city.

The family referenced lives in Dallas. There really isn't a city core you can live in that fits what you describe. Want an apartment a family of four can live in - it's going to be a long commute from your job, count on it. Texas cities aren't built with a discrete city core. Or they are but there are many many of them. Too, traffic everywhere in DFW is excessive; it's the one thing I don't miss about living there.

There is also the equity thing; owning a house is a great way to invest.

Brian:

That Texas sprawl you describe sounds like a living hell to me. Just imagine driving with the AC in your truck on the fritz, commuting from your suburban McMansion in the desert to your job in a shit-hole city in Texas.

And that sprawl is based on housing costs that are heavily subsidized with tax dollars to build roads, sewers and schools (not to mention the FEMA subsity to rebuild houses built with crappy materials in a hurricane/tornado zone). The new taxes for these fall on real estate in the new developments, yes, but the new taxes also apply to the poor farmers they moved next to who just want to keep their land and cannot afford to. Their land values go up but they can't use that equity until they sell to a developer.

Why do republicans always demand market solutions except for the market forces that should apply to them?

If gas prices included the cost of US foriegn policy in the middle east for the last century cities would be built a little closer in already. And the farm policies would also not have trended to petroleum based corporate agriculture, leaving the land around the cities peopled with farm families.

That Texas sprawl you describe sounds like a living hell to me. Just imagine driving with the AC in your truck on the fritz, commuting from your suburban McMansion in the desert to your job in a shit-hole city in Texas.

Dallas isn't in a desert, although it's not at all well watered by Seattle standards. It's on the edge of the post-oak belt and the black prarie. But I can imagine the situation you described, sans McMansion - my car's A/C was iffy and one summer I choose to drive without it, rather than subject the aged thing to more stress.

Since it's obvious you've never been to Texas, I submit your appelation of shit-hole is unwarranted. It's a rather nice place, all things considered. Note that sprawl is the name for the trend but Texas cities don't sprawl in the same fashion, or for the same reasons, that cities in other regions do. When they say things are different in Texas they aren't kidding.

but the new taxes also apply to the poor farmers they moved next to who just want to keep their land and cannot afford to.

I only knew one farmer well enough to ask. my house, built pre-McMansion in 1970, was adjacent to his property, which he had for sale the entire time I was there (four years). He was glad enough to sell the place (and he did get his price), buy a farm further out - the surplus he reaped more than set him up for retirement, he then being in his fifties.

Why do republicans always demand market solutions except for the market forces that should apply to them?

Dunno - you'll have to ask one. Was that general compliant or in response to something I wrote?

I am not at all ideological. I like and prefer what works, or has been proven to work. This is probably an odd stance for a guy working for a startup in Aerospace .. or perhaps not.

If gas prices included the cost of US foriegn policy in the middle east for the last century cities would be built a little closer in already.

Agreed, but it's a moot point. Exactly how would you do that?

And the farm policies would also not have trended to petroleum based corporate agriculture, leaving the land around the cities peopled with farm families.

We are where we are, and we can't go back. However Wisconsin (where I currently live) is a farm friendly state; you've never seen so many dairy farms or cows. Yet even here kids by and large don't want to live and work on a farm. I know perhaps twenty - thirty people (spanning three generations and a handfull of families) who are directly off the farm, raised there, and they have no urge to spend their life farming.

Going back for the holidays, sure, or keeping the old farmstead in a timber bank or hunting preserve.

Which might be the future of the old family farms, as those operations become more productive; we could do worse than keeping that land in a state of perservation.