alt Hacker NewsThat's just how the human psychology works. If you can't avoid something, you'll justify that it's fine and you actually are enjoying it.
White flight and urban decay already happened though. Why are people moving back?
I believe the reason for the unrest is that technology and the attendant wealth consolidation have greatly outpaced our social systems and constructs. Life should be easier for people. We have the resources. We just don't have the collective will to make them work for the greater good. But yeah it's easier to point the finger at the bogeyman of the week.
You're referring to ideas I would consider to be in the tradition of the Garden City Movement. Certainly many people will always prefer the pace and the space of suburban life. But spend some time in the Eixample area of Barcelona if you get a chance. It doesn't have to be as crazy and inhumane as Manhattan or Tokyo. Some people figured out healthy city living 150 years ago and for some reason (cough, capitalism) the world largely ignored that information.
A reboot of those ideas with pre-planned modern infrastructure would crush. Move most high speed traffic underground. Make the ground level for people. Imagine an underground Waymo-Metro network that went in before the city above it.
> White flight and urban decay already happened though. Why are people moving back?
Jobs.
"White flight" is also a US phenomenon, yet over-urbanization is happening everywhere. Look at Japan for an example. And it's a mono-national country without any significant internal racism or segregation.
Tokyo is also a nice counter-example for many proposals. It's building new housing as fast as possible (whole neighborhoods are construction zones!), it has a land value tax, it allows microapartments, it's building transit all the time. Yet nothing helps. Housing prices keep rising.
> I believe the reason for the unrest is that technology and the attendant wealth consolidation have greatly outpaced our social systems and constructs.
And over-urbanization is one of the reasons this became possible (not the only one, but definitely a contributor). An average company in a small town can't afford to treat people there like shit. They simply won't have any workforce or customers after a while. A company in a large city always has access to a pool of candidates.
> But spend some time in the Eixample area of Barcelona if you get a chance.
I grew up in Russia and Ukraine, and I also lived in Europe (Germany and the Netherlands). I got my driving license at 27 years and my first car at around 30 years of age.
And Spain has all the same problems as other countries: large cities are unaffordable, and small cities are dying. It's more relaxed in general, but the trend is unmistakable.
> Life should be easier for people.
Yes, and the only way to do that is to look at the root causes.