6 ms·

If humans are to minimize impact on the rest of the ecosystem I don't see how that is compatible with NO SKYCRAPERS. In long run I think it will make sense both

by 627467 6y ago

If humans are to minimize impact on the rest of the ecosystem I don't see how that is compatible with NO SKYCRAPERS. In long run I think it will make sense both economically and in reducing human footprint on earth[0]. Making high density living bearable and even desirable that's the art we need (and millenia of urbanization has been about) to master. [0] I'm aware that dense cities are not automatically more sustainable. But I suspect is easier to achieve sustainability due to proximity.

farnsworth 6y ago
I think you're right and it's also important to note that high density cities do not necessarily have to be cities full of skyscrapers. Old cities with narrow streets between short buildings can be very dense. American cities tend to put huge 4+ lane roads everywhere, and require setbacks on buildings, and this has a big impact on density and the distance you have to walk to get anywhere, but if you are accustomed to that, you hardly notice it. It's possible to build sustainable density on the "human scale".
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  Having a lot of space between buildings is actually necessary if you're going to have 50 story buildings for reasons of light and fresh air. But not everything has to be Manhattan. We could get appreciable increases in density merely by rezoning a lot of single-family housing to allow for five and ten story buildings, which don't require that level of offsets.
- 627467 6y ago
  I have lived in south China (extreme high rise and skyscrapers), a global city in Europe (mid rise) and south America (a sprawling mid rise city with lots of cars). I'd say the south Asia felt much more human scale due to easy access to parks, untouched hills and nature in general. South American sprawl was the worst in terms of easy access to 'nature'. So I guess it depends what you consider human scale.
  - farnsworth 6y ago
    Personally my ideal living space would be a huge highrise built on top of a grocery store and a transit station and next to a park. But many people are just so opposed to this kind of urbanism that I think it's always worth bringing up alternatives. I lived in a flat European city too and loved it.
joe_the_user 6y ago
I'm aware that dense cities are not automatically more sustainable. Seems like you're under-selling density here. A dense city may not be automatically sustainable but it seems logical that denseness would be necessary to create a much more sustainable city than today. Oppositely, there is degree of sprawl is almost automatically unsustainable, in ecological and economic terms.
- seiferteric 6y ago
  > Oppositely, there is degree of sprawl is almost automatically unsustainable, in ecological and economic terms. Is it? Or only if we want to keep living the way we do? I assume if we all became vegan polycultural subsistence farmers it would be more sustainable but we would be more spread out.
  - everdumb 6y ago
    It is? Or only if we want to ignore where OP said in economic terms? Your virtue signalling is quite insipid.
    - seiferteric 6y ago
      It was not virtue signaling, not even sure how it could be. It is a serious question. I am not convinced society as we know it is sustainable in the long term (environmentally or economically), but hope I am wrong.
  - pas 6y ago
    We can't all do that really. And those who don't need to commute, and then we are back to square one basically.
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago
  High density does not automatically imply skyscrapers. Paris, or Siena, or many other examples achieve very high density, with buildings that are 3-4 floors high.
waste_monk 6y ago
>Making high density living bearable and even desirable that's the art we need I think a lot of this could be solved with a couple of improvements to building codes: 1) require far stronger noise dampening, equivalent to that of detached homes. That is, regular day-to-day life should not register at all - including e.g. watching a movie with the sound system turned up (including bass). There should also be almost no tolerance for vertically travelling noise, you should be able to stomp around or drag furniture without disturbing your downstairs neighbour. 2) Force arrangement of shared interior walls such that your bedroom will never be adjacent to the neighbours living room, so that if noise does leak through it should not be able to disturb anyone's sleep. This should also affect the routing of water pipes and such, so that water flow and pipe knocking does not intrude. 3) The above points should be enforced by random sample testing of some proportion (somewhere in the range of 15-30%) of the buildings apartments before it is certified for occupancy. As in, testers would randomly select two adjacent apartments, set up loud music in one and measure the noise bleed-through in the other to see if it's within tolerances. Basically, there will always be a subset of the population of a high density building who are selfish jackasses. Construction should be changed to reflect the fact that people are unreasonable and compensate for it, instead of turning it into an externality e.g. making everyone install carpets in their apartments to reduce floor noise. I don't want to be aware of my neighbours existence outside of seeing them in shared hallways.
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  I think it would be cheaper to modernize noise control bylaws. Abating noise from modern home theater setups would take concrete walls on the order of a foot thick, which would add to housing costs considerably.
  - jagged-chisel 6y ago
    Surely you want gaps with spongier material between slabs of rock to thwart sound waves, rather than thicker rock.
    - bleepblorp 6y ago
Qwertious 6y ago
The ecological problem with skyscrapers is that they're inherently energy-intensive. If you live in the 5th floor you can either walk the entire thing (which is still reasonable-ish), or take a lift 5 floors down and another 5 back up. If you live on the 50th floor, you have to travel a total of 100 floors every day. You're taking the lift, and taking 10x the energy to do so. Also, IIRC skyscrapers need machine-powered air ventilation which also takes power. Of course, the real killer might be the embodied energy - a 1-story flat can have a lot less embodied energy than an equivalent-sized 100-story skyscraper, simply because you can build the flat out of low-embodied-energy mud brick, whereas the skyscraper is necessarily high-strength steel with reinforced concrete anchoring underground. * But I think we're getting tunnel-vision. This is a social problem, perhaps it has a social solution. The important question here is: why are some plots of land so much more valuable to live on, than others? Perhaps if instead of spending money on building more skyscrapers, we instead spent it on decentralising, more people would be able to live in bumfuck-nowhere and that would reduce demand for existing skyscrapers without a ton of energy-expensive construction. There are plenty of rapidly emptying small towns around, after all. IMO silicon valley is public enemy #1 here - surely the IT industry is more suited to remote working and doesn't need some of the (AFAICT) most expensive housing in the entire US. That really suggests to me that there's a ripe juicy social problem that would dribble out a ton of benefits when bitten into.
- 627467 6y ago
  If you live 45min away from work (by motorized vehicle) wouldnt that be (at most) equivalent of using a lift from 100th floor every day?
  - donw 6y ago
    Work remotely.
- imtringued 6y ago
  You're forgetting that a 200m elevator ride is less energy intensive than commuting e.g. 10km by car.
- 6y ago
imtringued 6y ago
Many places are fine with 3-5 story buildings and row houses for those who insist on single family housing (nothing wrong with that). From what I have heard about SF and the bay area it's mostly detached single family units with very large lot sizes. I understand the benefits of single family units and a private outdoor space but I feel like there are diminishing returns. It's probably possible to retain more than 75% the value of a single family unit while doubling density.

by 627467 6y ago

farnsworth 6y ago

I think you're right and it's also important to note that high density cities do not necessarily have to be cities full of skyscrapers. Old cities with narrow streets between short buildings can be very dense. American cities tend to put huge 4+ lane roads everywhere, and require setbacks on buildings, and this has a big impact on density and the distance you have to walk to get anywhere, but if you are accustomed to that, you hardly notice it. It's possible to build sustainable density on the "human scale".

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
Having a lot of space between buildings is actually necessary if you're going to have 50 story buildings for reasons of light and fresh air. But not everything has to be Manhattan. We could get appreciable increases in density merely by rezoning a lot of single-family housing to allow for five and ten story buildings, which don't require that level of offsets.
627467 6y ago
I have lived in south China (extreme high rise and skyscrapers), a global city in Europe (mid rise) and south America (a sprawling mid rise city with lots of cars). I'd say the south Asia felt much more human scale due to easy access to parks, untouched hills and nature in general. South American sprawl was the worst in terms of easy access to 'nature'. So I guess it depends what you consider human scale.
- farnsworth 6y ago
  Personally my ideal living space would be a huge highrise built on top of a grocery store and a transit station and next to a park. But many people are just so opposed to this kind of urbanism that I think it's always worth bringing up alternatives. I lived in a flat European city too and loved it.

joe_the_user 6y ago

I'm aware that dense cities are not automatically more sustainable. Seems like you're under-selling density here. A dense city may not be automatically sustainable but it seems logical that denseness would be necessary to create a much more sustainable city than today. Oppositely, there is degree of sprawl is almost automatically unsustainable, in ecological and economic terms.

seiferteric 6y ago
> Oppositely, there is degree of sprawl is almost automatically unsustainable, in ecological and economic terms. Is it? Or only if we want to keep living the way we do? I assume if we all became vegan polycultural subsistence farmers it would be more sustainable but we would be more spread out.
- everdumb 6y ago
  It is? Or only if we want to ignore where OP said in economic terms? Your virtue signalling is quite insipid.
  - seiferteric 6y ago
    It was not virtue signaling, not even sure how it could be. It is a serious question. I am not convinced society as we know it is sustainable in the long term (environmentally or economically), but hope I am wrong.
- pas 6y ago
  We can't all do that really. And those who don't need to commute, and then we are back to square one basically.
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
High density does not automatically imply skyscrapers. Paris, or Siena, or many other examples achieve very high density, with buildings that are 3-4 floors high.

waste_monk 6y ago

>Making high density living bearable and even desirable that's the art we need I think a lot of this could be solved with a couple of improvements to building codes: 1) require far stronger noise dampening, equivalent to that of detached homes. That is, regular day-to-day life should not register at all - including e.g. watching a movie with the sound system turned up (including bass). There should also be almost no tolerance for vertically travelling noise, you should be able to stomp around or drag furniture without disturbing your downstairs neighbour. 2) Force arrangement of shared interior walls such that your bedroom will never be adjacent to the neighbours living room, so that if noise does leak through it should not be able to disturb anyone's sleep. This should also affect the routing of water pipes and such, so that water flow and pipe knocking does not intrude. 3) The above points should be enforced by random sample testing of some proportion (somewhere in the range of 15-30%) of the buildings apartments before it is certified for occupancy. As in, testers would randomly select two adjacent apartments, set up loud music in one and measure the noise bleed-through in the other to see if it's within tolerances. Basically, there will always be a subset of the population of a high density building who are selfish jackasses. Construction should be changed to reflect the fact that people are unreasonable and compensate for it, instead of turning it into an externality e.g. making everyone install carpets in their apartments to reduce floor noise. I don't want to be aware of my neighbours existence outside of seeing them in shared hallways.

bleepblorp 6y ago
I think it would be cheaper to modernize noise control bylaws. Abating noise from modern home theater setups would take concrete walls on the order of a foot thick, which would add to housing costs considerably.
- jagged-chisel 6y ago
  Surely you want gaps with spongier material between slabs of rock to thwart sound waves, rather than thicker rock.
  - bleepblorp 6y ago

Qwertious 6y ago

The ecological problem with skyscrapers is that they're inherently energy-intensive. If you live in the 5th floor you can either walk the entire thing (which is still reasonable-ish), or take a lift 5 floors down and another 5 back up. If you live on the 50th floor, you have to travel a total of 100 floors every day. You're taking the lift, and taking 10x the energy to do so. Also, IIRC skyscrapers need machine-powered air ventilation which also takes power. Of course, the real killer might be the embodied energy - a 1-story flat can have a lot less embodied energy than an equivalent-sized 100-story skyscraper, simply because you can build the flat out of low-embodied-energy mud brick, whereas the skyscraper is necessarily high-strength steel with reinforced concrete anchoring underground. * But I think we're getting tunnel-vision. This is a social problem, perhaps it has a social solution. The important question here is: why are some plots of land so much more valuable to live on, than others? Perhaps if instead of spending money on building more skyscrapers, we instead spent it on decentralising, more people would be able to live in bumfuck-nowhere and that would reduce demand for existing skyscrapers without a ton of energy-expensive construction. There are plenty of rapidly emptying small towns around, after all. IMO silicon valley is public enemy #1 here - surely the IT industry is more suited to remote working and doesn't need some of the (AFAICT) most expensive housing in the entire US. That really suggests to me that there's a ripe juicy social problem that would dribble out a ton of benefits when bitten into.

627467 6y ago
If you live 45min away from work (by motorized vehicle) wouldnt that be (at most) equivalent of using a lift from 100th floor every day?
- donw 6y ago
  Work remotely.
imtringued 6y ago
You're forgetting that a 200m elevator ride is less energy intensive than commuting e.g. 10km by car.
6y ago

imtringued 6y ago

Many places are fine with 3-5 story buildings and row houses for those who insist on single family housing (nothing wrong with that). From what I have heard about SF and the bay area it's mostly detached single family units with very large lot sizes. I understand the benefits of single family units and a private outdoor space but I feel like there are diminishing returns. It's probably possible to retain more than 75% the value of a single family unit while doubling density.