5 ms·

You’re also living in a prime wildfire area in Truckee. There’s too much fuel in the Sierras as it is, it’ll burn sooner or later.

epistasis 6y ago
The picture of a house they show nestled in the trees is incredibly dangerous, incredibly resource intrnsive, and just ecologically unsound. We need to be building massive amounts of housing in city centers to let as many people live in them that would like to. Instead we lock down any new construction in cities, which requires the least amount of infrastructure and environmental damage, and instead let pretty much anybody build in ecologically disastrous ways. California is ruled at the local level, where decisions like this are made, by an older generation of conservatives that have convinced themselves that their personal pastoral aesthetic preferences of cars and suburbs and low density sprawl that consumes vast amounts of wilderness is somehow conservationist. It’s a massive problem!
- ajmurmann 6y ago
  We really need to better price the negative externalities that come with these different choices into the market. Massive price increases for fossil fuels are an obvious step.
  - epistasis 6y ago
    I agree, but if we have no alternatives to current development styles, then taxes can not correct the bad practices. We literally outlaw the alternatives to building in the WUI.
    - ajmurmann 6y ago
      Agreed. I think those regulations cause so many societal problems, many of which are quite indirect and I am sure many of us don't realize. For example the decline of rural areas would be less of a problem if it would be a real alternative for people to find a better fortune elsewhere, but prices make this impossible unless you are already well off.
- alextheparrot 6y ago
  Come on now, Truckee is half second homes - the resource intensiveness is based on gluttony not existence of housing.
  - epistasis 6y ago
    A 2000 sq ft home in Truckee, be it a second home or a primary home, is going to require far more roads, more vehicle miles travelled, require cutting down far more trees, more heating and cooling, more water and waste water infrastructure than a 2000 sq ft apartment in a city. That not to say that we should ban all Truckee homes on long roads like we ban apartments in cities, but we should definitely legalize apartments cities. And rural Truckee tree consuming development should be highly controlled and taxed in proportion to the amount of public money that needs to be spent trying to protect these fire traps.
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      Yeah, there's no way the public should spend anything trying to save the house pictured in TFA. The owner who can afford that house can certainly afford to cut some trees. The trees weren't cut, so the house must not be very valuable to anyone. https://www.readyforwildfire.org/prepare-for-wildfire/get-ready/defensible-space/ https://www.readyforwildfire.org/prepare-for-wildfire/get-re...
- ipnon 6y ago
  Housing density is not generally a problem outside of the United States. Developing economies seem to have no bias against dense housing. I think this is because there is no politically powerful land owning class outside of the United States. So it is in the interest of the majority to have an abundance of affordable housing. This protects against global warming too.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Housing density is definitely a problem outside of the United States. Many countries handle it in much the same way, while others handle it by shoving their working class into what's basically a human rights violation. I've seen discussions of Singapore's good housing policy, for example, that fail to mention the worker dormitories with 10 or 20 people per room. I certainly wouldn't claim the US has good housing policy, but there's no perfect solution to the conflict that arises when the market-clearing housing price in an area creeps above what most people can pay.
    - asdff 6y ago
      Have you seen how the working class lives in the U.S.? It's honestly not much different than a developing country. Multiple families in a tiny apartment is common in places like LA. People hold full time jobs while going back home to a tent on the sidewalk. Tenement conditions are very real in the U.S., and invisible for the most part by anyone fortunate enough not to live in them.
      - reducesuffering 6y ago
        LA doesn’t represent the entire U.S. Most of the US, especially outside of the west coast and NYC, has plenty of housing. US median income is 64k and median home price is 310k. Most of those are 1500+ sqft SFH easily afforded by the working class.
- silveroriole 6y ago
  > We need to be building massive amounts of housing in city centers to let as many people live in them that would like to. How many people would ‘like’ to live in a city centre if they didn’t have to for work?
  - epistasis 6y ago
    I would! And I’m constantly surprised at the number of people that don’t like cities that assume that everybody else just must be like them somehow. Cities are expensive because they attract lots of people to them because lots of people prefer them. So when you say “how many” the answer is clearly far more people Han are currently allowed to live there. We should build in cities until it’s cheaper to live in them than it is to live in less environmentally friendly ways.
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    > How many people would ‘like’ to live in a city centre if they didn’t have to for work? I think this is a very personal thing. I wouldn't consider living far from a city centre, work or no work, personally. Some people love outer suburbs or the country, and that's fine; just wouldn't be for me.
- jasonv 6y ago
  > We need to be building massive amounts of housing in city centers to let as many people live in them that would like to A model/example where this has been done well? I hear this all the time, but if you build more dense versions of the cities/towns we have now, it'll be miserable. Thin-walled apartment homes built along narrow-sidewalks without proper public spaces and reasonable bike/pedestrian zones, etc. I think the resistance comes from not showing the grand plan around these kinds of in-fill demands. I can't imagine living in the American version of them, and I've lived (happily) in the dense(r) city centers of Amsterdam, Berlin and Brooklyn. I've also lived in SF -- never again. It's a terrible version of urban development.
  - techsupporter 6y ago
    > I hear this all the time, but if you build more dense versions of the cities/towns we have now, it'll be miserable. Thin-walled apartment homes built along narrow-sidewalks without proper public spaces and reasonable bike/pedestrian zones, etc. So we...don't do that. Bluntly speaking, it's trivial: all of these issues are of our own making in America. We have hundreds of examples just in Europe of how to make car-lite, walkable, nice cities and towns and that's just on a single continent. And that's artificially restricting ourselves to a single continent with societies that look the most like ours. A quick pivot to most of eastern Asia will show much more variety in how to build those areas. (I will pause here and throw right out the idea that "Europe is much smaller than the United States so we couldn't possibly..." There is no reason we cannot duplicate those same cityscapes all across the United States; we have sub-national states and counties for a reason.) We are car-centric and spread out because we choose to be. So we either change those choices and make the commensurate political and financial changes to go along with it, or we don't and we accept the consequences of things like "large swaths of the West Coast burn to the ground" and "we are stuck in our metal boxes powered by carbon fuels or batteries backed by precious rare earth minerals." We already spent a couple trillion dollars propping up the stock market for nothing more than paper gains; the argument that we "can't afford it" is laughable.
  - epistasis 6y ago
    The resistance comes from a tiny number of people, and is not representative of the majority. Blocking the wants of the people requires subversion of democracy and subversion of the housing market by a few very wealthy and connected and powerful people. California and many other states’ governance has enabled a small number of people to veto what the majority wants. For example, all of SF’s safe streets program during the pandemic have been held up by the actions of only two people [1]. Two people subverting changes that are wildly popular just because is is change rather than maintaining the status quo. Similarly, Minneapolis’ legalization of triplexes city wide is popular with a majority of the city, [2] but during the government process the representation was quite different, and unrepresentative of the city. Yet that unrepresentative process is somehow considered “democratic”. My question to you is that, if you don’t like living in SF, why are you interested unmaking sure others can’t live there? Do you assume they don’t like it? Do you assume that you know what’s in their best interests? Sooooo may people love living in SF, in fact almost everybody who lives there loves it. It works well for them. Let the people that love it enjoy it. It will leave suburbia emptier for those who prefer suburbia. [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/San-Francisco-lets-just-one-person-stop-15561164.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Sa... [2] https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/crosstabs-MN-NH-NV-WI.pdf/80f8e4634fe6f880/full.pdf https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/crosstabs-MN-NH-NV-WI...
- cactus2093 6y ago
  > A generation of conservatives Very true, even though they convinced themselves and everyone else that they were progressives and environmentalists, just because they don't hate minorities and they like the vibe of trees. (Not to downplay the importance of socially progressive measures, but it's one dimension and they are very conservative on most other dimensions).
  - epistasis 6y ago
    I don't disagree at all, but would like to point out a dark streak of nastiness in some of the older crowd. The funny thing is that there's not much of a good history for racial justice from this style of "environmentalist," quite the opposite in fact. Lots of eugenics and white supremacy in the past [1] which has changed into "population control" (of whom?) these days. A lot of it seems, to me, to center on allowing wealthy white individuals to live in isolation without having to be around other people, and the "environment" becomes about preserving their privilege. [1] https://www.sierraclub.org/articles/2020/06/it-s-past-time-dismantle-racism-outdoors https://www.sierraclub.org/articles/2020/06/it-s-past-time-d...
- pbourke 6y ago
  > We need to be building massive amounts of housing in city centers to let as many people live in them that would like to. All else being equal, Americans will choose to live in a detached house on a 1/2 acre lot with an SUV or pickup in the driveway.
  - CamperBob2 6y ago
    The people advocating dense inner-city housing for everyone don't plan to make it a choice. They know better than the rest of us, you see.
  - epistasis 6y ago
    This is simply untrue. Some people will, but this sort of “everybody who doesn’t want what I want is lying to themselves” is elitism that destroys people’s chances to live th way they prefer. The higher cost of living in cities is pretty strong evidence that city living is under supplied compared to suburban living.
    - Gibbon1 6y ago
      You can argue back and forth whether people in flyover country hate the idea of living in dense housing or not. But if you peruse city and county planning documents you find that most places it's completely illegal to build greenfield projects with urban density. Instead of being able to build 25-35 units an acre you're allowed 3-4. And no mixed use allowed. Seems to me the answer is people don't get a choice a most places. Would people outside of old dense cities want to live in a walkable mixed use development? We have no idea because those have been banned since before WWII.
    - pbourke 6y ago
      How is it untrue? The proportion of Americans living in urban counties (31%) has not changed in 20 years. The proportion living in suburban counties has increased slightly (53% to 55%) [1] The proportion of new vehicle sales that are SUVs or pickups has been steadily climbing for over 30 years [2] > The higher cost of living in cities is pretty strong evidence that city living is under supplied compared to suburban living. Is that true for all cities or just a few large ones? I don’t see how you can conclude that. The narrower conclusion is that demand for city housing exceeds supply in a few key markets. > this sort of “everybody who doesn’t want what I want is lying to themselves” is elitism that destroys people’s chances to live th way they prefer. You have apparently without irony proved my point. My broader point is that rather than force people to do things that they apparently don’t want to do (move to dense housing, ditch or downsize their vehicles) we should seek ways to invest in the efficiency of our existing housing stock, and provide incentives to improve the efficiency of new vehicles. A carbon tax also looks like a promising approach. [1] https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/05/22/demographic-and-economic-trends-in-urban-suburban-and-rural-communities/ https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/05/22/demographic-and-e... [2] https://www.epa.gov/automotive-trends/highlights-automotive-trends-report#Highlight3 https://www.epa.gov/automotive-trends/highlights-automotive-...

epistasis 6y ago

The picture of a house they show nestled in the trees is incredibly dangerous, incredibly resource intrnsive, and just ecologically unsound. We need to be building massive amounts of housing in city centers to let as many people live in them that would like to. Instead we lock down any new construction in cities, which requires the least amount of infrastructure and environmental damage, and instead let pretty much anybody build in ecologically disastrous ways. California is ruled at the local level, where decisions like this are made, by an older generation of conservatives that have convinced themselves that their personal pastoral aesthetic preferences of cars and suburbs and low density sprawl that consumes vast amounts of wilderness is somehow conservationist. It’s a massive problem!

ajmurmann 6y ago
We really need to better price the negative externalities that come with these different choices into the market. Massive price increases for fossil fuels are an obvious step.
- epistasis 6y ago
  I agree, but if we have no alternatives to current development styles, then taxes can not correct the bad practices. We literally outlaw the alternatives to building in the WUI.
  - ajmurmann 6y ago
    Agreed. I think those regulations cause so many societal problems, many of which are quite indirect and I am sure many of us don't realize. For example the decline of rural areas would be less of a problem if it would be a real alternative for people to find a better fortune elsewhere, but prices make this impossible unless you are already well off.
alextheparrot 6y ago
Come on now, Truckee is half second homes - the resource intensiveness is based on gluttony not existence of housing.
- epistasis 6y ago
  A 2000 sq ft home in Truckee, be it a second home or a primary home, is going to require far more roads, more vehicle miles travelled, require cutting down far more trees, more heating and cooling, more water and waste water infrastructure than a 2000 sq ft apartment in a city. That not to say that we should ban all Truckee homes on long roads like we ban apartments in cities, but we should definitely legalize apartments cities. And rural Truckee tree consuming development should be highly controlled and taxed in proportion to the amount of public money that needs to be spent trying to protect these fire traps.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    Yeah, there's no way the public should spend anything trying to save the house pictured in TFA. The owner who can afford that house can certainly afford to cut some trees. The trees weren't cut, so the house must not be very valuable to anyone. https://www.readyforwildfire.org/prepare-for-wildfire/get-ready/defensible-space/ https://www.readyforwildfire.org/prepare-for-wildfire/get-re...
ipnon 6y ago
Housing density is not generally a problem outside of the United States. Developing economies seem to have no bias against dense housing. I think this is because there is no politically powerful land owning class outside of the United States. So it is in the interest of the majority to have an abundance of affordable housing. This protects against global warming too.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Housing density is definitely a problem outside of the United States. Many countries handle it in much the same way, while others handle it by shoving their working class into what's basically a human rights violation. I've seen discussions of Singapore's good housing policy, for example, that fail to mention the worker dormitories with 10 or 20 people per room. I certainly wouldn't claim the US has good housing policy, but there's no perfect solution to the conflict that arises when the market-clearing housing price in an area creeps above what most people can pay.
  - asdff 6y ago
    Have you seen how the working class lives in the U.S.? It's honestly not much different than a developing country. Multiple families in a tiny apartment is common in places like LA. People hold full time jobs while going back home to a tent on the sidewalk. Tenement conditions are very real in the U.S., and invisible for the most part by anyone fortunate enough not to live in them.
    - reducesuffering 6y ago
      LA doesn’t represent the entire U.S. Most of the US, especially outside of the west coast and NYC, has plenty of housing. US median income is 64k and median home price is 310k. Most of those are 1500+ sqft SFH easily afforded by the working class.
silveroriole 6y ago
> We need to be building massive amounts of housing in city centers to let as many people live in them that would like to. How many people would ‘like’ to live in a city centre if they didn’t have to for work?
- epistasis 6y ago
  I would! And I’m constantly surprised at the number of people that don’t like cities that assume that everybody else just must be like them somehow. Cities are expensive because they attract lots of people to them because lots of people prefer them. So when you say “how many” the answer is clearly far more people Han are currently allowed to live there. We should build in cities until it’s cheaper to live in them than it is to live in less environmentally friendly ways.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  > How many people would ‘like’ to live in a city centre if they didn’t have to for work? I think this is a very personal thing. I wouldn't consider living far from a city centre, work or no work, personally. Some people love outer suburbs or the country, and that's fine; just wouldn't be for me.
jasonv 6y ago
> We need to be building massive amounts of housing in city centers to let as many people live in them that would like to A model/example where this has been done well? I hear this all the time, but if you build more dense versions of the cities/towns we have now, it'll be miserable. Thin-walled apartment homes built along narrow-sidewalks without proper public spaces and reasonable bike/pedestrian zones, etc. I think the resistance comes from not showing the grand plan around these kinds of in-fill demands. I can't imagine living in the American version of them, and I've lived (happily) in the dense(r) city centers of Amsterdam, Berlin and Brooklyn. I've also lived in SF -- never again. It's a terrible version of urban development.
- techsupporter 6y ago
  > I hear this all the time, but if you build more dense versions of the cities/towns we have now, it'll be miserable. Thin-walled apartment homes built along narrow-sidewalks without proper public spaces and reasonable bike/pedestrian zones, etc. So we...don't do that. Bluntly speaking, it's trivial: all of these issues are of our own making in America. We have hundreds of examples just in Europe of how to make car-lite, walkable, nice cities and towns and that's just on a single continent. And that's artificially restricting ourselves to a single continent with societies that look the most like ours. A quick pivot to most of eastern Asia will show much more variety in how to build those areas. (I will pause here and throw right out the idea that "Europe is much smaller than the United States so we couldn't possibly..." There is no reason we cannot duplicate those same cityscapes all across the United States; we have sub-national states and counties for a reason.) We are car-centric and spread out because we choose to be. So we either change those choices and make the commensurate political and financial changes to go along with it, or we don't and we accept the consequences of things like "large swaths of the West Coast burn to the ground" and "we are stuck in our metal boxes powered by carbon fuels or batteries backed by precious rare earth minerals." We already spent a couple trillion dollars propping up the stock market for nothing more than paper gains; the argument that we "can't afford it" is laughable.
- epistasis 6y ago
  The resistance comes from a tiny number of people, and is not representative of the majority. Blocking the wants of the people requires subversion of democracy and subversion of the housing market by a few very wealthy and connected and powerful people. California and many other states’ governance has enabled a small number of people to veto what the majority wants. For example, all of SF’s safe streets program during the pandemic have been held up by the actions of only two people [1]. Two people subverting changes that are wildly popular just because is is change rather than maintaining the status quo. Similarly, Minneapolis’ legalization of triplexes city wide is popular with a majority of the city, [2] but during the government process the representation was quite different, and unrepresentative of the city. Yet that unrepresentative process is somehow considered “democratic”. My question to you is that, if you don’t like living in SF, why are you interested unmaking sure others can’t live there? Do you assume they don’t like it? Do you assume that you know what’s in their best interests? Sooooo may people love living in SF, in fact almost everybody who lives there loves it. It works well for them. Let the people that love it enjoy it. It will leave suburbia emptier for those who prefer suburbia. [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/San-Francisco-lets-just-one-person-stop-15561164.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Sa... [2] https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/crosstabs-MN-NH-NV-WI.pdf/80f8e4634fe6f880/full.pdf https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/crosstabs-MN-NH-NV-WI...
cactus2093 6y ago
> A generation of conservatives Very true, even though they convinced themselves and everyone else that they were progressives and environmentalists, just because they don't hate minorities and they like the vibe of trees. (Not to downplay the importance of socially progressive measures, but it's one dimension and they are very conservative on most other dimensions).
- epistasis 6y ago
  I don't disagree at all, but would like to point out a dark streak of nastiness in some of the older crowd. The funny thing is that there's not much of a good history for racial justice from this style of "environmentalist," quite the opposite in fact. Lots of eugenics and white supremacy in the past [1] which has changed into "population control" (of whom?) these days. A lot of it seems, to me, to center on allowing wealthy white individuals to live in isolation without having to be around other people, and the "environment" becomes about preserving their privilege. [1] https://www.sierraclub.org/articles/2020/06/it-s-past-time-dismantle-racism-outdoors https://www.sierraclub.org/articles/2020/06/it-s-past-time-d...
pbourke 6y ago
> We need to be building massive amounts of housing in city centers to let as many people live in them that would like to. All else being equal, Americans will choose to live in a detached house on a 1/2 acre lot with an SUV or pickup in the driveway.
- CamperBob2 6y ago
  The people advocating dense inner-city housing for everyone don't plan to make it a choice. They know better than the rest of us, you see.
- epistasis 6y ago
  This is simply untrue. Some people will, but this sort of “everybody who doesn’t want what I want is lying to themselves” is elitism that destroys people’s chances to live th way they prefer. The higher cost of living in cities is pretty strong evidence that city living is under supplied compared to suburban living.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    You can argue back and forth whether people in flyover country hate the idea of living in dense housing or not. But if you peruse city and county planning documents you find that most places it's completely illegal to build greenfield projects with urban density. Instead of being able to build 25-35 units an acre you're allowed 3-4. And no mixed use allowed. Seems to me the answer is people don't get a choice a most places. Would people outside of old dense cities want to live in a walkable mixed use development? We have no idea because those have been banned since before WWII.
  - pbourke 6y ago
    How is it untrue? The proportion of Americans living in urban counties (31%) has not changed in 20 years. The proportion living in suburban counties has increased slightly (53% to 55%) [1] The proportion of new vehicle sales that are SUVs or pickups has been steadily climbing for over 30 years [2] > The higher cost of living in cities is pretty strong evidence that city living is under supplied compared to suburban living. Is that true for all cities or just a few large ones? I don’t see how you can conclude that. The narrower conclusion is that demand for city housing exceeds supply in a few key markets. > this sort of “everybody who doesn’t want what I want is lying to themselves” is elitism that destroys people’s chances to live th way they prefer. You have apparently without irony proved my point. My broader point is that rather than force people to do things that they apparently don’t want to do (move to dense housing, ditch or downsize their vehicles) we should seek ways to invest in the efficiency of our existing housing stock, and provide incentives to improve the efficiency of new vehicles. A carbon tax also looks like a promising approach. [1] https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/05/22/demographic-and-economic-trends-in-urban-suburban-and-rural-communities/ https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/05/22/demographic-and-e... [2] https://www.epa.gov/automotive-trends/highlights-automotive-trends-report#Highlight3 https://www.epa.gov/automotive-trends/highlights-automotive-...