The average employee returning to the office spends $561 per month–that's the average two-person household’s grocery bill in the U.S. for the entire month.
American suburbs are extra hellish tbf. I don’t own a car or even have a driver’s license, my suburban area is a small walkable town with tons of restaurants, convenience stores and grocery stores, all on one street thats pedestrianized most of the day. It’s not crowded and easy to avoid people.
I think housing in the US is generally better, but in the UK when I last lived in a city a family of three moved into an attic with a prison style shower I lived in for £1k PCM, except they paid £1300 for the privilege. I now rent my own 1-bed for less and can save money.
If anything honestly living in a city is actually factually unhealthy, people weren’t meant to be around that many people, not to mention the pollution. Being a good amount of space away from any other people is the best feeling tbh.
Each to their own though I respect you for having a well formed take. Most city people like some friends who stayed after uni just deny the problems of cities, rather than simply state they care more about the advantages.
people weren’t meant to be around that many people
There’s a middle ground between a population living on top of one another and sprawling suburbs. I would strongly argue that humans are creatures that thrive on social interaction. Today’s culture has twisted that on end driving us away from one another - THAT is unhealthy.
I do take the point that crowded environments sometimes aren’t good for our physical health. Indoor plumbing and sewage systems solved that issue on one hand, but on the other hand we just lived through a pandemic that may or may not have been exasperated by close living quarters.
Maybe if we were less prone to be dicks to one another (because governments and corporations thrive on our anger, fear, and division) we wouldn’t have been so polarized during the pandemic and had saved a few hundred thousand lives.
I have social interaction all the time, we’re having it here right now on Lemmy, I also talk on VRC and occasionally visit ppl IRL. Social interaction with strangers though, especially forced as it is in cities, isn’t supposed to be a thing, that’s like why prisons are so horrible
American suburbs are extra hellish tbf. I don’t own a car or even have a driver’s license, my suburban area is a small walkable town with tons of restaurants, convenience stores and grocery stores, all on one street thats pedestrianized most of the day. It’s not crowded and easy to avoid people.
I think housing in the US is generally better, but in the UK when I last lived in a city a family of three moved into an attic with a prison style shower I lived in for £1k PCM, except they paid £1300 for the privilege. I now rent my own 1-bed for less and can save money.
If anything honestly living in a city is actually factually unhealthy, people weren’t meant to be around that many people, not to mention the pollution. Being a good amount of space away from any other people is the best feeling tbh.
Each to their own though I respect you for having a well formed take. Most city people like some friends who stayed after uni just deny the problems of cities, rather than simply state they care more about the advantages.
There’s a middle ground between a population living on top of one another and sprawling suburbs. I would strongly argue that humans are creatures that thrive on social interaction. Today’s culture has twisted that on end driving us away from one another - THAT is unhealthy.
I do take the point that crowded environments sometimes aren’t good for our physical health. Indoor plumbing and sewage systems solved that issue on one hand, but on the other hand we just lived through a pandemic that may or may not have been exasperated by close living quarters.
Maybe if we were less prone to be dicks to one another (because governments and corporations thrive on our anger, fear, and division) we wouldn’t have been so polarized during the pandemic and had saved a few hundred thousand lives.
I have social interaction all the time, we’re having it here right now on Lemmy, I also talk on VRC and occasionally visit ppl IRL. Social interaction with strangers though, especially forced as it is in cities, isn’t supposed to be a thing, that’s like why prisons are so horrible