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
Depends where my work is
Nope I would have to triple or quadruple my costs for housing to move to an urban environment. Also then I would be surrounded by other people in close proximity a lot of the time. Currently I pay less than 1k/mo for mortgage, and there’s only about 3 or less people per acre of land surrounding me. Costs for 1 car amount to roughly $800/mo including payment, insurance, and fuel.
You may not need a car in the urban environment. Of course it would depend on the city. If it was Tokyo, a big yes for me. You’ll get less space but being able to walk to get everything I need is going to be good for my health in the long term.
I would be surrounded by other people in close proximity a lot of the time
If this is a con for you instead of a pro, you may be lost.
Everyone has their preferences. I can understand the desire for a more isolated lifestyle and I think there should be a place for that in our society.
Exactly. It’s just that that lifestyle shouldn’t be subsidized is all.
Most everybody has something subsidized. Lets not play the “why should i have to pay for it” game. Leads to dark places.
Fair enough.
Let’s just subsidize urban areas at the same rate as suburbs for the past century then.
I’m sorry, but have you met people?
I live in the suburbs, in a neighborhood and even then my neighbors are too close. Kids across the street out playing basketball at 11:30 at night. Neighbor behind my house burns their yard trash on any day that’s halfway decent to be outside, meaning my wife can’t be out there due to her asthma. A family on the next street over have parties several times a year where music is blasting so loud I can hear it in my bedroom until 2am. Even with these annoyances it is still a much more peaceful place to live than when I was living in apartments in the city.
In my experience living in a small urban center has way less annoying neighbour interactions than in suburbia where people have the illusion of isolation. Kids play basketball at the designated basketball courts by the community center, a neighbour burning trash woukd have the fire department 5min away come over asap (although wood based fires are allowed and fine). Most people party at the bars. No hoas, no tiny tyrants, way less street racing at 3am, less car traffic in general.
Yeah you can’t choose your neighbors. I need an acre to live comfortably, apartments are for kids (imo). My own garage, garden, apple tree, chickens. I’m sure a lot of people from cities would be hugely envious of that. I just dont get the sardine life of cities. Unless you like going to bars every night, no thanks. Not to mention all the homeless drug addicts (which is super sad, but also scary to be near with a family).
I had a hard time understanding why this was even included until I got to the end and realized it’s on the con list
More dense urban areas certainly should be more affordable than suburban or rural areas, but they’re often not. Or at least not as much as they could be.
One reason is I think many suburban and rural areas are being subsidized by urban areas, by using urban tax revenue to pay for suburban infrastructure.
But I think the biggest reason is that urban areas are often in much higher demand, because that’s where most of the jobs and housing are located, but the supply of housing is simply insufficient to meet the demand, thus driving up housing prices. And other prices, too. There’s a supply demand imbalance for a lot of things in many higher density urban areas. And part of that is by design. The “suppliers” of homes, that is landlords, don’t want to oversupply the market with housing, relative to demand, because that will push down rents, and they want rents to be as high as possible, because rents are their source of revenue.
Until urban areas find ways to significantly increase the supply of housing relative to the demand, housing prices in those urban areas will remain higher than they could, or should be. Non-car transportation infrastructure also needs to be significantly improved in many urban areas, but that takes money. Money that many urban residents either don’t want to pay, or can’t pay because so much of their income is going to housing, and other costs of living. Edit: Plus, these infrastructure projects are often poorly managed by politicians, causing cost over runs and long delays.
Finally, there’s a social/cultural element to this that almost no one talks about because it’s seen as problematic or taboo. People don’t necessarily want to be surrounded on all sides by people they don’t consider to be a part of their cultural or ethnic group. I’m sorry, I know, reading that makes a lot of people’s butt holes clinch, but it’s true. I think people would be much more willing to live in more densely populated urban areas if the people in these areas were more like them (culturally, ethnically). You can choose not to believe that because it makes you uncomfortable, but, uncomfortable though it may be, I think it is nonetheless true.
Edit: I want to add that I think there is also a class element to this, in addition to the cultural/ethnic element. Many people move out to the suburbs because they don’t want to be around people they see as being of a “lower class” than them. Edit, again: also, where there are higher rates of poverty in urban areas, there are often higher crime rates. Many urban areas are often very unequal, with wealthier areas that are better maintained with better schools, very near much poorer areas that are more poorly maintained with worse schools.
Final edit: so, for better urban areas we need: to stop using urban tax revenue to subsidize suburban infrastructure. We need to significantly increase the supply of housing relative to demand, even perhaps oversupplying housing to drive housing costs down as much as possible. We need better non-car infrastructure and better leadership to better manage the building and maintenance of that infrastructure. We need to reduce poverty and inequality in urban areas as much as possible. If we do those things across all urban areas, I think the ethnic and cultural issues will work themselves out.
Obligatory Not Just Bikes videos.
The first on gives an introduction to how suburbia is subsidized by urban cores. The second is a case study of two cities look at the data that backs this up.
1000 a month for owning and operating a car seems like a lot. Maybe i am out of touch because we own our car outright, but its not nearly that expensive for us. Even with a parking spot rental.
I live in an awesome urban neighborhood, and still wouldnt want to be without the car. I dont use it when it doesnt make sense, but ive lived both with and without, and with is worlds better. Grocery shopping (especially at places like Costco) is much easier. Errands that would be an all day affair without the car become a few hours affair. Friends and family across the city are much easier to see. Things like that.
Dont get me wrong, i love a walkable neighborhood with a walkable downtown. Its why i dont live in a suburb abomination. When it makes more sense to use PT I use it. But life is better with the car overall. Its not a zero sun game. We can have both. And bike lanes. And pedestiran plazas. Etc.
Maybe i am out of touch because we own our car outright, but its not nearly that expensive for us. Even with a parking spot rental.
Try adding in the cost of depreciation and it makes a lot more sense. I owned a used car for 10 years and didn’t commute using it for most of that time, so it didn’t even rack up that many miles. It still cost me over $500/month on average over that time period including depreciation, maintenance, gas, registration, and insurance. I’m sure it would be a lot more if I drove as much as the average american. Though I think the average is probably somewhat skewed towards the most expensive cars.
Needless to say I am now happily car free. $500/month can buy me a very nice ebike, as well as more taxis or hourly car rentals than I need.
Between parking, gas, insurance, and maintenance 500 is more within the realm of reason.
Yeha if you were hardly using it then why have the extra expense? In my family its used daily (mostly for work commute to a poorly connected by PT workplace). More than worth it for the conveniance and lifestyle it enables
Yes I think I probably should have sold it as soon as I stopped using it to commute. I was mostly just ignorant of all the alternatives to car ownership. Car ownership is not worth it in my opinion unless you truly need to use it several days out of the week every week. And people should be doing pretty much everything they can to avoid being in that situation.
I mean it’s not crazy IMO, running cost is probably 500 but depreciation is a major factor. A rule of thumb is around 10-15% of the value of the car each year so if you can sell yours now for 35000 depreciation is in the range of 300-400 a month. Older cars have a lower depreciation but higher maintenance. Then also not applicable in your case is financing cost which varies a lot.
In your case I’d look at how much just paying for a taxi for Costco and full day rental for day trips would cost compared to owning a car.
The car isnused formximmuting to work daily, so absolutely less expensive than cabs
I see, I was under the impression that you didn’t use it for work as in walking/biking/public transport instead.
But did you factor in all the other things like insurance, oil changes, car washes, property tax for owning a driveway and public street maintenance?
1000 seems like a lot, but you need to factor in insurance, cost of parking, repurchasing fule, windshield washer fluids, oils, cabin air filters, car washes, heated seat subscriptions. It all adds up quickly.
And I know I must be missing stuff in this list as well like maintenance and depreciation of the vehicle as well.
Also parking costs are generally subsidized with city taxes for on street parking, but owning a condo or home with a driveway you could be looking at property tax attached to your home, and in a condo you may need to purchase the parking spot as a separate property.
Groceries take 5 min for me with the bicycle.
$1k/month for a car isn’t normal. That has to be substantially rounded up from the average. I just got a new EV. $450 payment, $110 insurance. Electricity costs me about $35 more. Even accounting for maintenance I couldn’t fudge the number to $675mo. To reach $1k you’d need a rather expensive vehicle.
But I do agree with the principle here. It would be nice to live in a walkable area where I don’t need a car.
Average cost of a new car is $50k. A 5-year loan at a very modest 3% interest is $898/month
Plug in the numbers yourself: https://www.bankrate.com/loans/loan-calculator/
How common is it to acyually buy a new car though? Like surely most people get something used right?
That’s part of my thinking. New cars aren’t average.
Edit:
With some research I found that car sales total market is about 70/30 used vs new. Taking that into account the new average is just over $32k, rather than $49k.
Averages can mess this with this kind of statistics, where small group of people can bring up the average cost significantly.
Gas is also expensive, my wife spends about $130 a month a gas alone. They are also likely factoring in all costs too, including personal property taxes (which where I live gets much more costly if the vehicle is worth over 20k), and all maintenance. So things like tire changes, replacement batteries, oil changes, and everything else, averaged over the lifetime of the car.
You won’t see most of these with an electric car at nearly the same cost. Electric cars see much lower operating costs, but only if you can afford it, and can charge it cheaply. Many people I know can’t as they live in apartments and would have no way to charge an electric car.
For us personally, looking at buying a new electric over my wife’s paid off car, increases in personal property taxes and insurance negate much if the financial savings of having a lower operating expenses. Combined with a high initial cost of the vehicles it doesn’t save anything financially.
Well we do live in a city neighborhood and don’t have to drive much.
Car insurance on two cars not used daily $400/month here, gas immaterial. But the cost of the cars (paid off) was so much money, if spread over a 15 year life (mine will go longer maybe, but that’s unusual) would add another $125 each, so $650 plus gas and maintenance (less maintenance cost because cars were bought pretty new).
My daily commuter is a good electric bike, $2,000 plus electricity (I could charge it at work tho) and maintenance. I don’t know how long they last, so can’t estimate a per month but insurance for a year costs less than one car costs for a month.
Transit pass here about $50 a month. But buses are terribly infrequent.
My monthly cost of living, all-in, is $2000/month. It was a little more when I was raising my kid. And now, it’s more than it would have been had we not had skyrocketing inflation for the past five years.
If that sounds low, it is. But, I’m old (60) and my mortgage, which is almost paid off, is, and has been for nearly 30 years, $800/mo.
I paid $6000 cash for my current car, nine years ago. Since then, it’s been insurance, gas, oil changes, and one shop visit. Nothing like $1000/mo.
If you think I’m an outlier, I’m not. By definition, half of people pay less than the average.
If people didn’t drive gas-fueled trucks and cars through the middle of cities, then the air would be cleaner, and the city would be quieter. But, people DO drive trucks and cars through cities, and the air is dirty, and the city is noisy.
No, I could not afford to live in a city with decent public transportation, and it has nothing to do with transportation. Nor, do I want to live in a big city, the way they are now, and are likely to be for the rest of my life.
You can hate me for being old and for any other reason you want to, but I sincerely hope you get to live as long as I have, and much longer than that.
And, yes, I agree, fuck cars.
by definition, half of people pay less than the average.
I hate to be nitpicky, but that’s not what the average is. In averages a small population of people who spend way more can bring averages above the median (which is the split between halves of the population).
For cars in particular I prefer using medians as they are much more likely to be aligned to what most people experience.
I did a search. The source article has little bit more of a breakdown, but they still didn’t do the median calculation, only the average. https://mediaroom.kbb.com/2025-10-13-Kelley-Blue-Book-Report-New-Vehicle-Average-Transaction-Price-Hits-Record-High-in-September,-Surges-Past-50,000-for-the-First-Time-Ever
Nope. Rent is 4 times my mortgage.
Plus I prefer having complete ownership of my home. Not relying on neighbours to co-own the building with me or being reliant on a landlord to perform repairs and approve simple things like a window air conditioner. Sounds like hell to me.
Weird that you’re down voted. While I did enjoy the hassle free lifestyle of renting, in my own house I can take down a wall if I want to and no one gives a shit. It’s really nice. Try installing some sort of blinds that require a screwed connection to the frame of the window. The landlord will bill you for that.
Ive watched this and many times its actually a collar burb that has the end of the transit system or far from the center to get the affordability. Im not complaining its basically what I have done but oh man it annoys me that the dense city center is not the most affordable area. Feel like we should be able to keep on building high rises till its the most affordable type of housing and do it mix with shops on at street level while we are at it with a few floors of office.
Feel like we should be able to keep on building high rises till its the most affordable type of housing and do it mix with shops on at street level while we are at it with a few floors of office.
“Mega City One. 800 million people living in the ruin of the old world and the mega structures of the new one.”
“You know what Mega City One is, Dredd? It’s a fucking meat grinder. People go in one end. And meat comes out the other…”
I think the big thing is affordable enough for anyone who wants to live there does rather than have to live there. People can still own a small farm or have their own little land conservation area as long as they take care of it in a sustainable way. I honestly hate the burbs and in between lands. Just a waste. Aslo mega city one needs more rules on public greenspace. Its that distopia vs utopia thing. Make those mega complexes all green solar punk and oh man that is my type of place.
Depends on the building: I’ve lived in places where I could have quiet conversations with the neighbors through the walls.
If you ditched your car, could you afford to leave the suburbs for a great urban neighborhood?
Could I afford it? Yes. Would I do it? No.
I live on a suburban cul-de-sac where my kids can go outside and ride bikes with the neighbors. Also my wife is handicapped, so a car is kind of essential for her. When we lived in an apartment the long walk from the garage to our door was difficult for her.
Other than those things, I’d much prefer to live in a walkable city. Maybe when I retire, if we can find the right place.
There’s places in the world where your suburban cul-de-sac can actually be located in a walkable city and the grocery store is very close despite living in a suburb where most people have cars.
Even suburbs can be a lot better than they are in the US.
You could argue this is where I am now, in the us, in an inner suburb of a major city
- I can walk to shops, restaurants, trains, and do most weekends
- I could walk to a grocery but I usually drive so I can carry, especially when my kids are home from college
- I’m part time work from home
- I’m on the edge where single family zoning starts.
- but no one I know lives in the city anymore
- but my job is no longer downtown nor walkable
I would really miss all the suburban niceties like a deck, grill, basement, garage and driveway, my own spot of land, a house.
I don’t drive very much anymore but it’s an EV. However a lot of that is between online shopping and part time work from home I’ve really cut back on routine drives, so my percentage of longer trips to car usage is higher
EDIT: on the other hand a lot of it is attitude. Especially with discussions over why some people never clear snow from their sidewalks, it’s very clear that even here many people don’t see walking as an option for anything. There’s no reason to clear the sidewalks in winter because the idea that people may want to walk is just so alien
Technically I’m in a city. It’s just suburban and car-centric. If they wanted to make it more walkable and add public transport, I’d love that, as long as my kids still have their space to ride bikes, and my wife still has her car.
Even then it’s fairly walkable. I walk my daughter to school when the weather and time allow for it. I could walk to a grocery store; I just couldn’t transport my groceries home.
But that wasn’t the question.
I would gladly ditch my car or my bike (if I had one) for a walkable-city. It’s not even a debate.
Short version: yes, 100% and I kind of already have…
I am (somewhat unhappily) living in a suburb, but I have transit stops for multiple lines within a 5 minute walk, and a bunch more options if I’m willing to walk 10-15 minutes. I was paying something like $500/month (lease, gas, insurance) for my car before being hit by a semi and not replacing it. That was 2-ish years ago and I haven’t really looked back.
Now I pay about $100/month for basically unlimited transit use. My commute time tripled, but in theory got slightly more consistent because car traffic could get bad on the route to work. The transit system here is far from perfect, so sometimes I’m still late, but I’m lucky enough to have a fairly flexible start time. I’ve got 3 roommates with 2.5 cars between the 4 of us (one borrows a car from family periodically). I’d love to be a 1 car household, but two of the roommates “can’t give up their independence”, which I kind of shake my head at. One works further out of the city fully in a rural area, so I suppose it is kind of necessary for them to have a car, and then still having one car at home available for the rest of us works out fairly well.
I actually quite like the longer commute. It gives me time to read, or just listen to music, browse the internet, nap, whatever. Plus I’ve discovered a ton of small, local businesses I now love!
Do you live with your roommates because you want to, or are you all working adults who cant find affordable homes on their own?
Bit of both. They’re my best friends, and the way the rent works out it was a cost improvement for all of us. I won’t get into the whole story. We are all mid to late 20s (I’m about to turn 30 😅) and all very far from being able to afford homes of our own. Though even if we did I think it would still be together. None of us want to have kids, so we operate as a family unit with two cats making up for the chaos of not having kids running about.
If you are all friends that at least sounds nice, much better than random roommates just for the rent.
I can of course sympathize with being far away from being a homeowner myself lol (mid 30s here)
Question I have for city dwellers. What do grocery trips look like? I’ve only ever lived in the suburbs and I’ve always been interested. Do you bring it all on the subway? Go more then once a week? Walk it home in a cart? Eat out more instead?
I’ve never lived in a huge city, but where I live (Estonia), city planning is much better than much of North America so usually you wouldn’t live too far from a grocery store, walking is usually an option, otherwise there’s public transit. There’s literally nothing weird about bringing your grocery bags on a bus or train or whatever.
If you don’t have a car, you just shop for one or two days at a time usually. This way you can actually get fresher ingredients sometimes and you don’t have to plan an entire week ahead at once. In fact, I’m lazy and just shop for one or two days at a time despite having a car and sometimes using it to go to the grocery store. I just don’t know what I’ll want to eat 2 days from now!
My nearest supermarket is is a 3 minute walk away. I walk to the supermarket. We probably shop 3-4 times a week.
Buy food to cover 2 dinners and breakfast. Lunch is leftovers from previous dinner. I have a small fridge, so I can’t fit a week’s worth of food in there anyway.
Oh, and we transport everything in a backpack and / or shopping bags (with handles, only seen those paper bags without handles in American films).
I stop by the grocery store on the way home and grab ingredients for dinner. I can fit a weeks worth of groceries on my bike but I tend to just go like 3 times per week on average.
I can’t imagine needing to plan for a whole week of food at a time tbh. Being close to the store means I can just grab whatever I am in the mood for on a given day. Do you just force yourself to eat what you have at home even if you aren’t feeling it that day?
All the time. Often just to get it out of the fridge. A lot goes to waste though as fresh fruit and veggies just don’t last.
Lots more frozen meats. But at the same time I’ll make something new just cause those are the ingredients I have.
I have several supermarkets within walking distance. I can carry groceries from there in a cart or bag, usually approximately once or twice a week.
Occasionally I also transport groceries on public transport, mainly because I went to a supermarket elsewhere in the city on the way home, but this isn’t the norm.
If you dont have a car, you just go more often getting smaller amounts of stuff. Or you bring a cart. Grocery stores are more freqent, but smaller.
All of the above, depending on exact conditions
- when I was entirely without a car, I just walked. I was single so carrying groceries usually worked ok. As a first Thanksgiving when I got married I Walked to the grocery like 5 times for all the stiff we needed and didn’t think of ahead of time
- I saw plenty of people with carts and tried that a few times
- I briefly tried delivery
- I saw people using taxis - I didn’t realize at the time but many of them compromised by walking to and taxiing back
- I have usually had a car though, even if groceries was my only weekly trip (plus occasional needs)
Actually now that I live in an urban suburb, I could do a lot without a car but carrying groceries is not worth the fight to find an alternate way
I can fit 2 paper bags of groceries in my bike basket. There is not a grocery on my short commute route or I would go on the way home. But really I can haul a few days stuff in the bike if I want to.
The car was essential when the kids were little, but as a couple the e-bike does more of the heavy lifting.
Reality in America: sleeping in the car
