General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours

[dtkvictim]

People have been moving to cities for thousands of years, but you'd have a really hard time convincing me that it's for any reason other than being desperate for work. Cities have been disgusting places up until very recently.

I hope you recognize that you're using your lived experience as a barometer for your position on civic policy.

There's many reasons to move to dense urban centres. Certainly one of the most important is work, but growing up here in KW the allure of Toronto wasn't jobs, it was people. Late night activities. For some it's the potential to leave the family they are born into for one they choose. In my 30s (2007-2017) many friends from high school moved back and all the single ones left again within a couple of years because the lifestyle they wanted was unavailable. There's many and varied positive aspects of living in urban centres and while I certainly don't find all of them appealing, there are many people who do.

Work is a huge factor, absolutely, but if you think everyone who lives in major urban centres is doing so resentfully, I think you're being too broad applying your experiences and motivators onto other people.

In addition, there's moderate evidence that suggests urban life is better for many of us: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017...tudy-finds

No, I don't think I'm doing that, I'm just using poor language choices to express myself. I didn't mean to speak in absolute terms, saying that literally the only reason to be in a city is for work. I suspect for the vast majority of people there isn't one single factor that decides where they choose to live, but a combination of many factors. But as you mentioned, work is usually the biggest or one of the biggest factors. And just to be clear, my comment you quoted was specifically about cities in a historical context, not about modern cities.

I'm personally actually fairly reluctant to leave downtown. I don't drive, and I don't really want to have to drive. Living in an urban environment is generally better for the environment. I've formed my opinion by interacting with other people who, in my experience, really don't care about these things and don't weigh them as very heavy pros when deciding where to live.

As for your link, I'm well aware that density encourages active transportation and lower obesity (again, this is a big part of why I am downtown). But the article's claim that urban people are happier is 1) contrary to every study I've seen so far, and 2) not at all supported by the study linked in the article. In fact, the word "happy" (or its derivatives) isn't mentioned a single time in the study.