This one isn’t directly about cars, but it does go some way to explaining the mentality of people that buy giant trucks that have never been used for any sort of work. That is, people who live in cities but identify as “rural” people.

Academic sources linked in the video:

  • @grue
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    1510 hours ago

    I haven’t watched the video yet, but my thought has always been that that mentality is simply privilege and entitlement. They think they deserve to eat their cake and have it too (to get both the easy access to amenities of the city and the private space of rural living) while forcing society to subsidize it for them via policies like single-family zoning, mandatory parking minimums, and “free” parking.

    (And yes, BTW, single-family zoning is a subsidy! It artificially inflates the supply, driving the price down compared to what it should be, while driving the price of multifamily housing up. Even if you think single-family houses are unaffordable, that doesn’t disprove it – they’re still cheaper than if homeowners were made to compete fairly with multifamily developers who would build those properties out to their highest and best use. Nobody should expect to be able to live in a single-family house in a city, just as a simple matter of geometry, and it’s an outrage that that lifestyle is forced by policy at everybody else’s expense.)

    • @FireRetardant
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      1010 hours ago

      No neighbourhood should cost more to maintain than it generates in taxes (unless it is specifically low income housing). Nearly every suburb is financially unsustainable.

      • @Num10ck
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        25 hours ago

        Rural states are financially unsustainable.

        Texas doesn’t having zoning, but still an ocean of single family homes. thats what sells, and multifamily homes need to be near services and foot traffic to be in demand.

        i’m surprised the giant companies buying up many thousands of houses don’t rent them out by room.

        • @FireRetardant
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          15 hours ago

          Sounds like texas should fix their zoning code. These problems have been decades in the making, but it seems every politician and city wants to keep that status quo and keep the suburban scam going, even as north america is in a housing crisis with an ever increasing bubble. Nobody is brave enough to pop or even deflate the bubble