General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours

[dtkvictim]

I think you kind of make the point, you don't want to live downtown, some but people do. I think it's very presumtive to assume people who live in different housing from one's self must be miserable. I certainly don't think that people living in the suburbs are miserable because they live in a suburb and that would make me miserable.

I must not have come across the way I meant to. For the record, I have lived in rural, suburban, and now urban housing. There have been pros and cons to each of these arrangements, and I'm not trying to come across as "rural good, urban bad". My point was about averages. I think on average people prefer to not live in urban centers (at least in the current North American state of urban centers), and I think more remote work will make the choice to live further out an easier one to make.

I'm not saying no one likes living downtown, or that there will be a mass exodus. Simply that it does have the potential to hurt urban growth because there are a lot of people here that would prefer to be elsewhere.

Now as for happiness, that's an interesting point, but there are other factors, urban centres are not one group, for one, and the features of a particular urban centre may have an impact. Measuring happiness is also not totally cut and dry. Also, conservatives (who live outside of cities more often) tend to measure higher on some happiness measures, in some places. That alone could explain the difference between urban and suburban areas.

Yes, it's frustrating trying to find out good information about this topic. Happiness being subjective, and often conflated with other feelings, makes it even more difficult. Nonetheless, I think it's very important. And while density and happiness are generally negatively correlated, it's not clear that one causes the other. Do unhappy people move to cities because they think cities will have more opportunities for happiness? To your point on conservatives, perhaps they are conservative because they are happy with the way things are and see change as an unneeded risk, and perhaps their happiness comes from being in a rural area? I don't know.

I haven't seen many attempts to figure out cause and effect on this topic, but one suggestion that pops up most often is that lower density is more conducive to forming communities, and that community is almost something like a prerequisite for happiness.