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Can you, though? Any given neighborhood has limited space to build things. At some point, you have to start building high-rises all over to pack more people in.
by saosebastiao 10y ago
Can you, though? Any given neighborhood has limited space to build things. At some point, you have to start building high-rises all over to pack more people in. This also has a limit, so beyond that you'd have to start building over parks etc.
This argument is overblown to the point of absurdity. Hong Kong, a city known for its high rises, has 1/2 the density of Brooklyn, a place which is hardly known at all for its high rises, and 1/3 as dense as Paris, which has limited height city-wide by statute. Neither has a lack of parks or public spaces.
You don't need high rises to build more homes. Seattle, at Brooklyn's level of density characterized by mid rises and townhomes, could house 4x as many people as it does today. And it doesn't mean infrastructure and public services would suffer any more than it does for New York, London, Berlin, Paris, Tokyo, or any other dense first world city. In fact, it might even get better.
- hiou 10y agoHas density solved Hong Kong's housing affordability problem? How about Paris or Tokyo? Why is a significantly less dense city such as Jacksonville, FL so much less expensive?
- sotojuan 10y agoThe simple answer is that no one wants to live there.
- saosebastiao 10y agoTokyo is one of the most affordable cities in the first world. They also allow pretty much any development that passes through their very liberal zoning code. Hong Kong and Paris have significant restrictions on development (Hong Kong on where you can build, Paris on how high), and would likely be much more affordable if they were lifted.
- int_19h 10y agoI'm not opposed to high rises in principle. But understand that for a lot of people, it's not an environment where they want to live. So if you start building up (and in - increasing density by other means), you _will_ see some amount of flight, and it'll likely be by rich people. Given that OP's goal was to promote more mixed neighborhoods, this seems like an undesirable outcome.
- saosebastiao 10y agoMidtown Manhattan is a pretty solid refutation of the idea that rich people will flee from density.
- int_19h 10y agoOP doesn't just want density. He wants dense _mixed-income_ neighborhoods. That's what the rich people would be fleeing from.