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> Any given neighborhood has limited space to build things. That's fine. A neighborhood full of high rises that no one wants to pay to knock down to build tall

by natrius 10y ago

> Any given neighborhood has limited space to build things. That's fine. A neighborhood full of high rises that no one wants to pay to knock down to build taller is naturally full. The government hasn't declared it to be full the way we do today. > Of course, without government-imposed zoning laws, you will also have residential units competing with commercial and industrial ones, too... Zoning isn't terrible. Density restrictions are terrible. They are explicit exclusion. They are the direct cause of our increasing economic segregation. > Oh, and who will take care of the extra infrastructure that is required for more people? Urban infrastructure is cheaper than suburban infrastructure. We're spending more money on infrastructure today than we would if we stopped excluding people. > It would also be pretty effective at inducing more rich flight from urban areas into the suburbs This just isn't true. Tons of wealthy people want to live in dense urban neighborhoods. That's why they're so expensive. What we should change is allowing people with different amounts of wealth to live in the same neighborhood. Density restrictions make mixed-income neighborhoods illegal: only the highest bidders get scarce homes, so families are forcibly sorted by income into separate neighborhoods. If rich people truly don't want to live in mixed-income neighborhoods, they are the ones who should leave. We shouldn't force others out for their benefit. We used to do that. Now we're doing it to even more families. We aren't repeating the mistakes of our forefathers, we're outdoing them.

deleted 10y ago
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lintiness 10y ago
everybody needs YOU to tell them where they can live and what they can live in!
- natrius 10y ago
  I am saying the exact opposite. Our governments are segregating people by law. We should stop doing that.
int_19h 10y ago
>> Tons of wealthy people want to live in dense urban neighborhoods. Yes, but usually they prefer those neighborhoods to be exclusive. So, when you >> change is allowing people with different amounts of wealth to live in the same neighborhood what will happen is that a lot of those rich people will find that their love for dense urban neighborhoods wasn't as strong as they thought it would have been, and so >> If rich people truly don't want to live in mixed-income neighborhoods, they are the ones who should leave. is exactly what they will do. In fact, we've seen it before - that's a significant part of what drove suburban sprawl. And as those people leave, the tax base shrinks. Now, do you expect those super-dense working class neighborhoods of yours to be self-sustaining, infrastructure-wise? I don't think it will realistically work out that way; I mean, look at Detroit. My point is that your solution amounts to changing one relatively small thing in a very large framework, that will place that entire framework off-balance. As described, your solution would 1) not actually result in less segregated neighborhoods, and 2) will cause more economic suffering to people in poor neighborhoods. Before you can realistically make that change and make it work, you need to make a lot of other changes elsewhere, such as e.g. funding schools from the general state fund, rather than from property taxes in the area.
justanotherbody 10y ago
>> Urban infrastructure is cheaper than suburban infrastructure. We're spending more money on infrastructure today than we would if we stopped excluding people Replacing suburban infrastructure with something that can handle urban density is absurdly expensive. The usual solution is to force the developer to pay for improvements but subterranean improvements like wastewater must be upgraded all the way downstream to the treatment area Depending on the area this can create quite a pickle because the areas people want to live are prohibitively expensive to put large buildings on. Meanwhile demand for those areas with cheaply upgraded infrastructure fails to draw mixed income demographics It's really a cluster to upgrade developed areas in a way they were never planned for. The traditional approaches in the US for paying the big costs need to change or the developers behaviour will not

by natrius 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

lintiness 10y ago

everybody needs YOU to tell them where they can live and what they can live in!

natrius 10y ago
I am saying the exact opposite. Our governments are segregating people by law. We should stop doing that.

int_19h 10y ago

>> Tons of wealthy people want to live in dense urban neighborhoods. Yes, but usually they prefer those neighborhoods to be exclusive. So, when you >> change is allowing people with different amounts of wealth to live in the same neighborhood what will happen is that a lot of those rich people will find that their love for dense urban neighborhoods wasn't as strong as they thought it would have been, and so >> If rich people truly don't want to live in mixed-income neighborhoods, they are the ones who should leave. is exactly what they will do. In fact, we've seen it before - that's a significant part of what drove suburban sprawl. And as those people leave, the tax base shrinks. Now, do you expect those super-dense working class neighborhoods of yours to be self-sustaining, infrastructure-wise? I don't think it will realistically work out that way; I mean, look at Detroit. My point is that your solution amounts to changing one relatively small thing in a very large framework, that will place that entire framework off-balance. As described, your solution would 1) not actually result in less segregated neighborhoods, and 2) will cause more economic suffering to people in poor neighborhoods. Before you can realistically make that change and make it work, you need to make a lot of other changes elsewhere, such as e.g. funding schools from the general state fund, rather than from property taxes in the area.

justanotherbody 10y ago

>> Urban infrastructure is cheaper than suburban infrastructure. We're spending more money on infrastructure today than we would if we stopped excluding people Replacing suburban infrastructure with something that can handle urban density is absurdly expensive. The usual solution is to force the developer to pay for improvements but subterranean improvements like wastewater must be upgraded all the way downstream to the treatment area Depending on the area this can create quite a pickle because the areas people want to live are prohibitively expensive to put large buildings on. Meanwhile demand for those areas with cheaply upgraded infrastructure fails to draw mixed income demographics It's really a cluster to upgrade developed areas in a way they were never planned for. The traditional approaches in the US for paying the big costs need to change or the developers behaviour will not