5 ms·
They forget the human cost. Increasing density decreases quality of life. The people are the product of the cities in the commercial sense. The well being of
by edoo 7y ago
They forget the human cost. Increasing density decreases quality of life. The people are the product of the cities in the commercial sense. The well being of the people is lost in the drive for infinite growth.
- arcticbull 7y agoNot being able to afford a house decreases quality of life infinitely more than some increased density.
- edoo 7y agoIf you can't afford a house there maybe you should consider moving somewhere more affordable.
- Excel_Wizard 7y agoDifferent strokes for different folks. Some people like living in dense cities. No reason not to build for them if they apparently enjoy it.
- fimdomeio 7y agoWhich also has a human cost if you have social connections with the other humans around you.
- ch4s3 7y agoThis may not have occurred to you, but a lot of people simply can't afford to move and leave the safety net of friends and family. They may also lack skills that would help them secure employment elsewhere. There people are especially vulnerable. With respect to quality of life, there are far denser cities with much higher quality of life. Building more homes for the middle income families and individuals absolutely helps everyone, except landlords.
- arcticbull 7y agoRight but there's no reason for that if you just allow developers to build up. You can live a few blocks from work, next to some nice allocated park land, and if you want to visit nature, take a train. That's far more humane than demanding your fellow citizens commute hours from the outskirts every day so your real estate investment performs better. If you want to live somewhere greener perhaps consider the commute for yourself?
- EliRivers 7y agoHaving to move away from your family, friends, job and the life you know also decreases quality of life. A lot.
- Lazare 7y agoIf you don't like the density, maybe consider moving somewhere with lower density?
- edoo 7y agoAlready did. I never realized how bad I had it.
- throwawaysea 7y agoOften times the density hawks are the newcomers, asking to be accommodated. This is true in the bay are and Seattle, for example. So I don’t think it’s fair to ask the incumbents who make up a community to leave.
- marcinzm 7y agoIf you don't like the increasing density then maybe you should consider moving somewhere less dense.
- manigandham 7y agoNeither of you are incorrect as it's about preferences, but the real problem is one of balance. A city needs all kinds of people. Affordability and density needs to be moderated so that there's enough diversity in families and employment to function well. Also some of the most affordable areas in the USA are also the most sparse.
- arcticbull 7y ago> A city needs all kinds of people to function and affordability and density needs to be moderated so that there's enough diversity in families and employment to function well. I don't necessarily see how one follows the other. So long as there's diversity in, for instance, bedroom count on units, what difference does it make if the units are stacked horizontally as they are today or vertically? To be clear, I'd love your thoughts, I'm not sure myself. > Also some of the most affordable areas in the USA are also the most sparse. Indeed because building up is expensive, so it requires demand. There's no demand in the middle of Idaho even comparable to what SF has. Further, I'm proposing scrapping constraints on new development, not taking peoples 2 story Sunset units via eminent domain and throwing up SoMa style 50 story skyscrapers. I think it's not an unreasonable place to start by doubling all height restrictions across all of SF. No more of this prime real estate on 17th and Brannan (the SFMTA bus lot redevelopment) getting wanged by a 4 story cap. That should be 20+ no question.
- watwut 7y ago> What difference does it make if the units are stacked horizontally as they are today or vertically? One difference is how far things end up to be after. If they are spaced vertically, everything ends up far from everything. Not enough people living in the geographic area means that stores wont be there, playgrounds will be empty, school will be far away. Visiting friends means longer drives, commute to work means longer drive.
- joking 7y ago4 - 5 floor is the sweet spot for balancing cost and price, if you go up from there the cost per sq meter increases. The places where economically is worth to go higher than that, is where the land is very expensive and you have to recover that cost having more units.
- mamon 7y agoYou actually can have both: dedicate some parts of the city for single-family homes for upper-middle class,other parts for high rise buildings. That's how many cities in Europe look like: high density central districts, then some suburbs. The choice is then: do you prefer short commute and living in apartment, or a bit longer commute, but your own big house.
- dominotw 7y agoWouldn't the world simply increase population where this is still the case even if we build more housing though?
- arcticbull 7y agoTends to go the other way. Fertility is strongly negatively correlated with development, of which housing is a component. America's birth rate is already well below replacement (1.8 births per woman), and relies heavily on immigration to maintain a steady population. There's a stark graph of page "4074" (page 4, figure 1-E in the PDF) of fertility rate vs HDI. [1] I bet if you build more housing you'd have fewer kids still. It's in a way counterintuitive, but very pronounced and well-studied. [1] http://ijp.mums.ac.ir/article_7680_7828694c3909aa70d156fb9c8a2cb9ed.pdf http://ijp.mums.ac.ir/article_7680_7828694c3909aa70d156fb9c8...
- dominotw 7y ago> Fertility is strongly negatively correlated with development, of which housing is a component. America's birth rate is already well below replacement Wouldn't this imply america already has affordable housing ? Why are there endless articles in news that this isn't the case.
- arcticbull 7y agoHDI is a composite score of which housing is an element. It includes all sorts of things like access to water, access to health care, etc, etc. I'm suggesting that continuing to develop the US through the addition of housing units would likely not lead to an increase in population but rather a decrease as tends to happen with development more broadly. I'm unaware of any studies which correlate specifically housing with fertility in isolation. Maybe I confused you with two definitions of "development" in the same context -- developing houses, and human development / HDI of which housing is diffuse factor. See [1] for more info if you're curious. [1] http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi
- GhettoMaestro 7y agoYou’re tone deaf. CA is in the midst of their worst homeless crisis ever. Density is a long ways behind my concerns for the middle-class homeless whom have been priced out of any meaningful housing options.
- sokoloff 7y agoIs “middle-class homeless[ness]” a significant/common occurrence, absent mental illness or drug addiction as complicating factors (excluding those as changing housing supply/demand point is likely not the solution there)? That would indeed be depressing but also fairly surprising to me. What would “middle class” mean if it didn’t include secure housing as a significant part of the definition?
- bluGill 7y agoIn San Francisco what the rest of the US considers middle class incomes are not enough to afford a place to live.
- nugget 7y agoDon’t many people love cities specifically because of density and the diversity of opportunities that usually follows?
- Nursie 7y agoThere's a trade-off though, if it comes at the cost of smaller and worse living accomodation for themselves. And you have to be careful that the transport and other infrastructure can keep up. Transport in particular always seems to get ignored.
- arcticbull 7y agoRight but lets focus on one problem at a time. With more people in the city, you have a bigger tax base, meaning more tax revenue, meaning you can spend more to improve infrastructure like public transit. The population of SF has only increased by 111K (14%) in the last 20 years. Imagine what we could do with twice as many people contributing tax revenue?
- bluGill 7y agoIt isn't just tax base. If you have a lot of people taking transit you can recover the costs of the system just from riders paying their fare, and the riders are saving money over the cost for insuring a car for a year. Less dense areas cannot do this, both because people need to go farther (less dense means you have to go farther to get there), and because there are less riders. Dense areas need less taxes in general: the cost difference of a big pipe vs a small one isn't nearly as much as the amount the big pipe can carry. However this is more than made up by the fact that the more people to spread it out with means many services that were not affordable are now cheap and those cheap things add up (you don't need a library, and at farm density you can't afford one - but at city density it is cheap per person so you pay a little more), you need to ask if those extras you can have are worth it.
- throwawaysea 7y agoI am not so sure that dense areas need fewer taxes. Some of the most heavily taxes areas are dense cities.
- marcinzm 7y agoYou opinion on density is just that, your opinion, not everyone agrees. Density means a larger selection of jobs, increased variety in entertainment (ie: more likely to find something you personally love), increased selection of medical professionals, increased variety in food, ability to avoid driving commutes, kids who can self-manage without being driven everywhere, etc. To some people that's worth more cramped living, to others it's not. Quality of life is taken as a whole and not based on part of the whole.
- dominotw 7y ago> You opinion on density is just that, your opinion, not everyone agrees. Sure but curious why that comment is downvoted and yours is not? Disagreeement != downvote.
- epistasis 7y agoIt's not stated as opinion, and has some ridiculous statements like this in it: > The well being of the people is lost in the drive for infinite growth. There is no drive for infinite growth, that I have found. People are just trying to have enough housing for everyone, yet this "infinite growth might happen therefore we are going to impose housing austerity" is the attitude that has been prevalent in older suburban homeowners, and that's exactly how we got into this mess of a housing crisis. Categorically dismissing the large number of people that choose to live in cities because they prefer them is ridiculous. If it really were worse, prices would be lower in the cities than outside them. More people want what cities have to offer than are allowed to access them.
- zozbot234 7y agoYou can always get to "decreased density" simply by moving away from the urban core. The jobs might not be as good, but that just goes to show that increased density does not necessarily involve a human cost.
- rb808 7y agoSimilarly the people who complain of unaffordable housing can simply move to places where they are affordable. Same logic
- achenatx 7y agothere is no drive for "infinite growth". However so far the population keeps increasing at about .7% per year. Housing has to keep up to keep prices stable. If not, where do you suggest the people live?
- edoo 7y ago.7% growth is an exponential rate. Cities are corporations and the ones that push density are looking for money.
- sujNansnam 7y agoHigher density construction makes more room for low density everywhere else.