Why ASIANS Like CITY LIFE vs SUBURBAN LIFE

Why do Asians like living in the city more than everyone else? Yeah, we got to talk about it because a brand new Pew research study just came out, Andrew, that said Asian Americans, more than white Americans, more than black Americans, more than Latino Americans, like living in dense, walkable cities where their amenities are an arm's reach away versus rural life or of course dispersed suburban life. Yeah, it's a little odd because a lot of the best cars come from Asia, but then Asians don't like to drive. Either way, we did a whole bunch of research and we're about to give you the reasons why that is right here in this video. Guys, if you're excited about this, please hit that like button right now. Check out other episodes of the Hot Pop Boys because you know frivolous to serious, we talking about it all. Yeah, let's just get into some history real quick, Andrew. We got to talk about the Yuxi Circle. The what? So, Yuxi is a city in Yunnan province in China. If you draw a 4,000 kilometer perimeter radius from Yuxi, Andrew, that is 54% of the world's population. That's 4.27 billion people. You do the same thing with Paris and Mexico, Andrew. It's like 1.19 billion and 0.73 billion. Long story short, Andrew, Asia is incredibly populated. It is actually the most populated place on Earth. Yuxi got a lot of people, man. That's crazy. But anyways, guys, let's get into the reactions and a lot of the explanations. Yeah, so it's going to take us through a whole arc of like how these like ethnic enclaves started in the city. Did they move out of the enclave? Are they in ethno burbs now? But anyway, real quick, Andrew. Somebody said, having lived in both America and Vietnam, I prefer just being able to walk outside and go to the market. I really do not miss having to drive a few miles to the store, having to pay for my car, my car insurance, car washes, car maintenance, all that stuff. Plus, not only that, I feel like walkable communities have equal, better lives and just a better sense of community and just a better quality of life. Yeah, this guy's saying like, you know, you save money. And it is true. However, can it get kind of hard when the weather's bad? Like when it snows in New York, it is hard to walk. But ultimately, you have no choice. And sometimes walking, it is even easier than driving in the snow. Yeah, that's a good point. Andrew, moving on, somebody said, you know, I think Americans really, really love that like castle frontier mentality. It sort of comes from Manifest Destiny. It comes from this and that in the new world. The country's very new, obviously, once it got like taken over by Europeans from the Native Americans. So basically, people said they just have a castle frontier mentality that maybe was over in Europe like a thousand years ago. No, and what they're referring to is because on this graph that the white Americans, they actually have the numbers flipped than the Asians. So really, the Asians and the whites are on the opposite ends of this survey where basically white people love their frontier. I love building my own castle, having my own yard. And boy, if you don't mind, you don't my little house on the prairie. But boy, I'm telling you, man, if you step on my big five acre yard. Yeah. And by the way, guys, before people think we're being too critical, I think there's pros and cons to like both lifestyles. Oh, by the way, I know Asian families who like big yards and like to live in the woods and stuff like that. However, I will say what I know about those families, they also come from the rural areas of Asia. So that's what they're used to. Right. For example, our family typically comes from like very, very big dense cities. Maybe that's what has contributed to us being comfortable in very big dense packed cities. Another thing was someone said, you know, just in China, after you eat dinner and just in Asia in general, in India after eating dinner, a lot of people just like to walk around. They don't have a car. So they're going to take public transportation or literally just walk on the street. That's true. American car culture is very, very developed. You have to understand this and the whole like roads and infrastructures and highways like this type of thing was like, I want to say invented in America because they had cars first and trucks first, like big trucks first. And so, you know, even in Asia, when they do have cars, oftentimes in China, the cars are pretty much the same size. But in places like Japan, the cars are smaller. Korea, the cars are possibly a little bit smaller, you know. Yeah, you know, some people said that it's very different because in Asia, sometimes the cities are safer than the countryside. Whereas in America, there is an overarching narrative that the cities are much more dangerous than the countryside. So it's almost like that the inner city or the cities in general are like filled with ghettos. That's a very American way of thinking. Right. And it is true, Andrew, that when ethnic enclaves first were created in America, they were in cities because at one point, like only cities existed, whether you're talking about like San Francisco or places like New York. Yeah. I mean, if you look at society, they're built from the city, usually the coastline first, they build up the city. Then there's like the suburban sprawls, you know, then you get houses and farms and then things kind of fill up in the middle. So at a time, the inner city was the cheapest place for immigrants to move to. Actually, it wasn't like expensive downtown prices. It was like the ghettos. That's where all the immigrants moved to. That's why Chinatowns, which are hubs of all types of Asians, but mostly Chinese, they started in the city. K-Towns started often in the cities, even a little Saigon's, they either started in adjacency to Chinatowns or in other like urban areas. Yeah. So a lot of people were just talking about a general developmental curve, right? For example, even of a lot of Italians, Andrew, they still live in places like New Jersey or things that are like close to originally where a lot of Italians landed in America. Of course, huge Sicilian influx in a New York City. I mean, do you think, Andrew, that is what is contributing, obviously, to the gigantic ethnoburbs that are Asian, that are both on the West Coast and East Coast, even places like Arizona and Houston that are close to the downtown of a city, but they're almost like Asian neighborhoods, maybe just like 20, 30, 40 minutes away. Yeah. No, I mean, I think that there are tons, guys, even around cities that you wouldn't usually expect. I know that there's big Asian supermarkets being built in Boston, the Boston area. So obviously, anytime there's a big Asian supermarket, you know that there's like a certain amount of Asians there. Oh, Andrew, we used to live in an ethnoburb, the 626, specifically Alhambra, which really actually, I want to say for sure it's a suburb, but it does not feel like the suburb we grew up in. It is actually very, very, very dense. Yeah, I mean, LA, the whole LA County is not really urban. It's like suburban-urban. It's kind of like a suburban sprawl. That's what they call it, but it's a very lot of busy suburbs. But once you get out to Diamond Bar, I feel like it starts to feel like this. Andrew, somebody also said, you know, my guess is a lot of the AAPI community is just relatively new and they just don't have the system set up to even make sense of going to the countryside. So they would rather just like stay around each other and dense communities sort of just to like have some sense of like self and just like humanity. Yeah, and this person actually compared it to, it's similar to orientation week when you're a freshman in college. The other races have longer histories in the US and that might already feel home like to them like the upperclassmen. But since you're new, you just stay around your dorm. Yeah, I think that this is not like a hundred out of a hundred true, but like Andrew, there's a lot to be said for growth developmental curves, right? What stage are people in? Are they still a partying like a freshman? Are they still in their sophomore junior year or are they like that jaded senior that just can't be bothered to show up for anything? And just because it's said that Asians prefer to not drive as much doesn't mean that they don't drive. I know a lot of Asian parents that like to drive but just not very far. So if you live in the suburbs, you want to live within like a couple miles of an Asian market. That's basically ideal. And yes, I do think that you know, a lot of time. It's just like I think a lot of Asians will look at the rural societies in America and be like maybe they're not going to be friendly to me or maybe there's not really that much out there for me. So why would I move to rural Oklahoma? I would say that I agree for the vast majority of Asians when they see rural Oklahoma, they don't really see anything that they feel attracted to. However, a few families may see an opportunity to open up the only Asian fusion donut, sushi, all everything all at one store. And that's where the movie Minari comes into play. So shout out to Steven Yeun and his performance in Minari was beautiful. So anyway guys, we did not get to cover every single comment, but we're going to get into our takeaways. Andrew, I will say this. It really depends on where your parents are from. If your parents are from rural Asia, if your parents are from semi-rural Asia or your parents are from like the big main mega city and whatever country they come from. Yeah, and I think a lot of Asians that first came over here, not all but a lot of them probably did come from the bigger cities. Japanese probably a lot of them came from like Tokyo, not all. A lot of Chinese did come from Shanghai or Guangzhou or Hong Kong, right? Or even Beijing, right? So if you're from those bigger cities, you might just prefer the bigger cities. It's very common. Dude, most Koreans are like from Seoul or Busan, like three or four cities, right? So it's like these are cities. I think yeah, South Koreans are very much adapted to city life. However, some people do when they come to America and they find all the space, they end up liking it. Moving on to number two, Andrew. If you really enjoy shooting guns, driving trucks, outdoorsy things, 90% of the time you have to be close to the countryside to indulge in those things or at least be in the type of suburb that's like 40 minutes to an hour out. Yeah, I mean if you drive a big truck, you can't really do that in the city or there's no point, you know, unless you are hauling stuff and you work in construction or something like that. Also, those are just not typical Asian interests. Obviously, we all know Asians that are into that kind of stuff. I might be like 5% into this stuff, but like it's not enough for me to change my life and want to go out to the wide open area so I can fire my guns and go shoot cans like bing, bing, bing in my backyard. Point number three, Andrew. What do you think is the significance of the Yushi Circle being just like the most populated place on Earth by far? Is it just that Asians are all so compact and we're not too aggressive and you know, we're not like the biggest tallest people and we don't have the biggest muscles and that's why we're able to pack into that tiny little zone together? Bro, you know what's crazy? Is I think if you put a dot into La Abra, California and you made that a circle of like 40 miles, you probably encompass all of the Asians in LA. So I just think maybe Los Angeles County, LA and OC is just remaking the Yushi Circle. That's how many Asians there are in that 50-mile range. Yeah, no, that's a good point. I don't know. I might put the dot. Yeah, no. Yeah, Fullerton, something like that. Yeah, Fullerton. Why not? Moving on to number four, Andrew. This sort of like packed, dense culture, does it require a certain level of peace or docility to run this type of system? Because like we saw, obviously during Asian hate or during things like that, like some of the Asian elders that were from Asia, whether they were on the West Coast or East Coast, they were kind of just walking around and then they, it's not blaming them at all, but they got subject to a lot of violence while they were just literally going for a walk after lunch or dinner. Yeah, I mean, I've even heard some terrible stories of non-elders, you know, just like Asians our age that also got into some trouble by just walking around. But I think the truth is, Asian society in Asia is just not as violent. It's not as- It's really not, man. It's not as, it's not as random of an attack. It does have its bad stories too, but I just think on a percentage basis, it's not even close. Yeah, yeah. I'm talking about violent crimes. It's just not as violent and America is a much more violent country for a number of factors. So I think that, yes, living densely in those areas together, it's even more appealing because ultimately, you know, when people, like, imagine these utopian, futuristic, dense societies when people are stacked on top of each other or like that one walled city that they're, like, trying to build in Saudi Arabia- Dubai, right, right, the line. Yeah, like that can't have any crime or else instead of that city, that beautiful utopia, it turns into- Gotham City, right? The walled city of Hong Kong, of Kowloon. Oh, right, right. Right, where it's kind of like lawless and basically that's not, that's not going to be comfortable for people. So I guess there is kind of this assumption like, yes, you can live in massively huge, huge 30 million people cities around each other, but people kind of have to buy into treating each other with some level of respect or at least not wanting to hurt each other. So I guess now that we've seen the stats, Andrew, Asia is the most packed and people take that sort of compact mentality over here. Europe is more dense than North America, but still not that dense. And of course, North America is very not dense. Where do we see the trends? Do we see Asians adopting to sort of like the castle frontier mentality or is America going to need to move more towards the mega city Asia approach? You want to know my answer? The truth is I think most Asians and this counts even for Asians who are from the city or the rural areas originally in Asia. They're just going to value opportunities over everything. So if there's opportunities in suburbs, Asians will go there. If there's opportunities in the countryside, some Asians go there, right? They open up the one Chinese restaurant, that one random Japanese buffet that serves everything. But I would guess in modern society and moving forward, the city is going to have more opportunities than the rural zone, even more than the past. And I think that's why Asians move to the city at the first, right? They stop in the city, get to know everybody, make all the connections. Hey, where do I go? Where do I go? Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, set your life up. Okay, now I'm going to start a restaurant in Long Island, right? So I guess basically cities are a good place to start and I do think this survey was done of all the Asians spoke English. So that leads people to believe it's Asian Americans. Possibly skewed, right? Possibly less immigrant-y and more like Asian professionals. So of course, Asian professionals, we all like, young Asians like love living in the city. Like they, I don't know, they just love it for some reason. I think it's the food, the lifestyle, everything that we listed here as well. The yummy things! Yeah, but I do think elderly Asians like walking communities too. But it doesn't have to be a city. I think they just like walking communities. So anyway, guys, let us know what you think in the comment section below. I guess anecdotally, before this study came out, I would have said that this was true, but obviously the scientific Pew research is right there. I'm a little surprised at how much the numbers are with the Asians. Like how much more the Asians like it than everybody else. Look at this graph. Anyways, guys, let us know in the comments down below what you think. Are you Asian? Do you like living in more of a walking style community? It doesn't have to be this big city, but a walking community or do you like to hop in your Ford F? You know, just with the window down and just ride down the highway with no speed limit. Let us know in the comment section below. Silly to serious. Hop out, boys. Until next time. We out. Peace.