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So basically, we need to legally mandate that the only way for people to ensure that they have basic things like sunlight and not staring into a brick wall - or
by makomk 6y ago
So basically, we need to legally mandate that the only way for people to ensure that they have basic things like sunlight and not staring into a brick wall - or perhaps worse, having an endless parade of other people staring into their rooms and garden from the new multi-story art gallery across the street - is via sprawl that makes existing suburbia look positively compact?
The problem with this kind of thinking is that the denser housing is, the more its livability relies on things outside of the homeowners' direct ownership and control. So long as YIMBYs keep pushing this idea that keeping access to things like sunlight cannot be a shared act, it doesn't matter how many pretty drawings of wide sunlit boulevards of townhouses or towers in parks they produce to claim that density doesn't have to mean dark, dystopian hellscape - because the moment there's money in it, someone can just slap a big tall building right in one of those crucial empty spaces, and according to the YIMBYs the people affected would have no right to complain because they didn't personally and individually own them.
- xsmasher 6y agoWe just need to set the incentives in the right direction. Rule: you can't build more than one story higher than your neighbors. Under this rule your property will become more valuable when your neighbor builds up, because it just got upzoned for free!
- staybailey 6y agoThe standard solution to this is called an easement, which basically means I own the air rights over your property so that I can ensure my views are unobstructed. Getting rid of the idea of owning the neighbors airspace entails figuring out how to fairly allocate easements that generally don't currently exist because of legacy reasons.
- nickff 6y agoThe issue (from a government perspective) with easements as opposed to zoning is that cities won't profit (as much) off the sale of easements. Governments make a lot of money from development, and they're not about to give it up.
- freebee87 6y agoHave you been to NYC? Or Tokyo? Or Singapore? Have you ever lived in a dense city before? These things just don't happen. Developers a profit motived and are very aware of what sells and what doesn't. There are a million mechanisms by which we can avoid having a single story house surrounded by skyscrapers.
- lmz 6y agoRe: profit motive. The new skyscrapers owned by the developers will have views. The existing single story house won't.
- nmfisher 6y agoCounterpoint - Melbourne CBD. Jampacked full of enormous residential towers that are cheaply/poorly designed, far too close together, offer zero amenities and that block out all sunlight. I used to be in favour of laxer planning regulations until I moved to Melbourne. A lassez faire approach just doesn’t work.
- javagram 6y agoThere’s already a solution, air rights. E.g. these NYC condo owners who paid the $11 million to buy out their neighbors’ building not to build any higher. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/nyregion/manhattan-real-estate-views-air-rights.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/nyregion/manhattan-real-e... In most cases this really isn’t a problem though. The fantasy of “big tall buildings” being slapped everywhere is just that. NIMBYs are fully mobilized just to stop stuff like duplexes, townhomes, or the neighbor putting a pop-up 4th story on their existing row house, not imaginary 100-story skyscrapers going up in the middle of a suburb.