This is the question posed on CityNerd video titled “Walkable Cities But They Keep Getting More Affordable”
If you ditched your car, could you afford to leave the suburbs for a great urban neighborhood?
Ray Delahanty answers the question in the 26 biggest US cities.
The analysis assumes the all-in cost of owning and operating a car is $1,000 per month, including purchase, insurance, fuel, and maintenance.
In the city, transportation costs might total about $250 per month for transit passes, biking, ride-hailing, and other small expenses.
This results in an effective $750 per month increase in the housing budget for city center residents who do not own a car.
The results of the video are quite interesting, as you can get more m² in walkable areas in most cities
Yeah, but this post is about moving into an area with such infrastructure…
The post is claiming you can afford such a neighborhood by saving $1,000 a month by not owning a car.
Well, yeah… That’s the whole point. If you move into such an area, you don’t need a car. I feel your issue, I live relatively rural and we definitely need a car and I sometimes get upset with this mindset here too. But it doesn’t fit into this post.
You missed my point. It’s trying to state you can offset the higher cost of living in one of those areas because your saving $1000 a month by not owning a car. That $1000 a month figure is bullshit. So is the cost difference between living in a walkable city vs outside of one only being $1000 in many places. Like a small home in the walkable area of Kansas City is around $400,000, while a similar home 10 miles away is $200,000. That’s a lot more than a grand a month difference if you’re getting a mortgage. Like twice as much.
Fair enough. Yeah, the 1000$ figure is bullshit. I pay a grand total of maybe 300€ a month on my car. Ok, it’s a plug-in hybrid that I charge at home with photovoltaics and we mostly don’t use it daily, because we do live relatively close to work and take the E-Bike more often than not. But we’re still paying it off, so that’s where most of that sum comes from.
I live 3km outside of a 90k population city (10km from work) and bought a relatively big house from 1996 for 235k€, so I guess it’s nice to not have to live in or near a gigantic metropolis. I also love to take the E-Bike to work, it’s pure freedom.
Edit: we need the car mostly for grocery shopping and driving our daughter to her friends.
Yeah. E bikes and one wheels and stuff are total fun. I’m hoping to live in one of the Goldilocks zones where you can be near a city and travel everywhere by bike without needing to get on a highway. As it stands, * have to pack my bike in a car and drive out somewhere to ride, and that just sucks.