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I live in Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. Nearly every single home is multi-family, and the single families that do exist are usually $2

I live in Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. Nearly every single home is multi-family, and the single families that do exist are usually $2 million and up. Take a stroll down one of our streets https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3130357,-71.1188873,3a,75y,175.75h,76.83t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sCjBDFfdRrZi4VuQG1-fVZw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3130357,-71.1188873,3a,75y,1... It is dense, walkable, and extremely beautiful. There is no reason every neighborhood with duplexes has to look like cookie cutter sprawl that makes people unhappy.

HNTA_1 5y ago
That just looks like many older, low density suburbs (single family homes with some duplexes and ADUs sprinkled in) all across the US (especially older suburbs in the South). >It is dense It's absolutely not dense, probably less dense than newer suburbs with smaller lots. >walkable, and extremely beautiful. I'll give you that, it definitely looks beautiful.
- nluken 5y ago
  I'd certainly call JP dense- it's got more than twice the population density of Houston, and it's slightly more dense than LA.
  - HNTA_1 5y ago
    >it's got more than twice the population density of Houston You're comparing a neighborhood of Boston to one of the largest cities in the US. A more apt comparison would be the West University Place suburb of Houston that has roughly the same population density and similar size as JP. It's an older Houston suburb. A "dense" suburban area would be something Jamaica in Queens, NYC. That has something like 6 times the density of JP.
sgt 5y ago
Have you ever had your mail sent to Jamaica?
- seibelj 5y ago
  Not yet!
Slow_Hand 5y ago
Seconded. I lived in JP for several years and it was easily my favorite of the Boston neighborhoods to live in. Absolutely gorgeous. I lived in a 6 bed unit on the top level of a 3-story duplex that had 4 people living on the ground floor. It was a massive house that allowed for ten non-related people to live together on a street filled with similar houses, lined with massive oak trees and a five minute walk from a lovely pond. Gorgeous neighborhood. Edit: I’ll add that I never experienced any negative effects in JP that I’d associate with such dense living. Unlike the more rowdy student oriented neighborhoods like Allston that were far more rough and messy.
- seibelj 5y ago
  It's for more mature and professional people than Allston, but there is a growing group of Northeastern students starting to populate things. I obviously can't prove this, but I believe because everything is so beautiful, people instinctively treat the location better. Whereas Allston is a party area and everything is grimy, so no one cares and joins into the debauchery and littering.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I've never spent a lot of time in JP, but my understanding is that it is nicer than it used to be. And the gentrification has been somewhat controversial: https://planetgeogblog.wordpress.com/2020/04/22/the-two-jps-how-a-whole-foods-split-a-gentrified-boston-neighborhood/ https://planetgeogblog.wordpress.com/2020/04/22/the-two-jps-... Also, for those not from the area, JP is indeed a "Boston neighborhood" but it's on the outskirts around parkland, the Arnold Arboretum, etc. and is about a 30 minute public transit ride [edit: on the Orange line not Green line]. So don't imagine this is in Boston in the way many might imagine. It probably has more in common with close in suburbs like Arlington than downtown.
    - seibelj 5y ago
      The JP line is the orange line, and getting downtown takes less than 20 minutes. It is the second fastest and most reliable line after the blue line. Arlington is a car suburb and is not Boston proper.
tjr225 5y ago
Boston was incorporated two hundred years before Los Angeles. Of course it is going to have more beautiful, old houses. Of course it is going to have more walkable neighborhoods. But what I'm more interested in is this: > Nearly every single home is multi-family, and the single families that do exist are usually $2 million and up. SFH are already 1 million and up in LA, really in SD, LA, SF, Seattle, and Vancouver. It will be interesting to see what happens to SFH values if they become scarcer. It seems like it might have the opposite effect that the NIMBYs generally fear, and make them even _more_ wealthy.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  Most houses in JP are from the ~40s.
  - quadrangle 5y ago
    Yup, in other words, the last period of development before the interstate highway push and car-sprawl suburban experiment ruined and bankrupted the country.
- grandmczeb 5y ago
  In my experience, it’s a misconception that NIMBYS are motivated by property values directly. There are exceptions of course, but usually it’s either some sort of perceived lifestyle impact (traffic, shade, “neighborhood character”, etc) or just general anxiety over change.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Tiktaalik 5y ago
  Yeah I mean, what do you figure the value of a SFH would be in downtown Manhattan? SFH's or rather, the underlying land the house sits on, is going to become insanely valuable as the amount available dwindles and population grows. There is no unwinding this trend. The only thing that can be done is to ignore and not worry about the price of a SFH, and subdivide the land into more apartments so that more people can afford to live on that parcel of land.
nluken 5y ago
Great example. JP isn't quite a suburb but I look to it as a fantastic example of how suburban development could be condensed without losing its character. With proper upzoning, suburbs could have denser cores of multi-family housing without impacting those that want less dense housing outside the core. These towns would be more walkable and prettier places to live.
foobarian 5y ago
Ah yes, Boston. No need to worry about what would happen to those 2, 3, and 4 story wood houses if they got a good shakeup at 5+ on the Richter scale.
- RandallBrown 5y ago
  Explain the thousands and thousands of new 2, 3, and 4 story wood houses in Seattle. From my understanding wood is actually pretty good for earthquakes.
- nluken 5y ago
  Right, that's why San Fransisco consists entirely of single story buildings.
- ethanbond 5y ago
  That’s why they build so small and spread out in Tokyo, and never with wood!
  - foobarian 5y ago
    Never say never, recently there has been a spate of news about engineered wood beams looking like pretty capable replacements for steel. Example: [1] [1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/is-mass-timber-the-building-material-of-the-future https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/is-mass-timber-the-buildin...
- ehutch79 5y ago
  It's not like developers in LA don't know how to build things resistant to seismic events.
- TYPE_FASTER 5y ago
  https://earthquaketrack.com/us-ma-boston/biggest https://earthquaketrack.com/us-ma-boston/biggest I remember that Sanbornton quake. We lived in rural NH. At first I thought it was the clothes washer...then the house really started shaking.
throwaway1777 5y ago
I agree it looks great. But the density is around 8500/sq mile, which happens to be almost the same as Los Angeles. So, this type of development wouldn’t do that much for housing affordability in LA. I feel like people seriously underestimate how dense Californian cities already are.
- nluken 5y ago
  I suspect that JP's density is actually a bit higher than that today, given that it was 8500/sq mile based on 2010 population. Regardless, it's important to consider that JP is miles outside the city center. It isn't so much a model of super dense housing as it is a good way to up the density of neighborhoods that might otherwise only support 3500/sq mile. JP represents a good middle ground between the car-centric deep suburbs and the extremely dense city center.

HNTA_1 5y ago

That just looks like many older, low density suburbs (single family homes with some duplexes and ADUs sprinkled in) all across the US (especially older suburbs in the South). >It is dense It's absolutely not dense, probably less dense than newer suburbs with smaller lots. >walkable, and extremely beautiful. I'll give you that, it definitely looks beautiful.

nluken 5y ago
I'd certainly call JP dense- it's got more than twice the population density of Houston, and it's slightly more dense than LA.
- HNTA_1 5y ago
  >it's got more than twice the population density of Houston You're comparing a neighborhood of Boston to one of the largest cities in the US. A more apt comparison would be the West University Place suburb of Houston that has roughly the same population density and similar size as JP. It's an older Houston suburb. A "dense" suburban area would be something Jamaica in Queens, NYC. That has something like 6 times the density of JP.

sgt 5y ago

Have you ever had your mail sent to Jamaica?

seibelj 5y ago
Not yet!

Slow_Hand 5y ago

Seconded. I lived in JP for several years and it was easily my favorite of the Boston neighborhoods to live in. Absolutely gorgeous. I lived in a 6 bed unit on the top level of a 3-story duplex that had 4 people living on the ground floor. It was a massive house that allowed for ten non-related people to live together on a street filled with similar houses, lined with massive oak trees and a five minute walk from a lovely pond. Gorgeous neighborhood. Edit: I’ll add that I never experienced any negative effects in JP that I’d associate with such dense living. Unlike the more rowdy student oriented neighborhoods like Allston that were far more rough and messy.

seibelj 5y ago
It's for more mature and professional people than Allston, but there is a growing group of Northeastern students starting to populate things. I obviously can't prove this, but I believe because everything is so beautiful, people instinctively treat the location better. Whereas Allston is a party area and everything is grimy, so no one cares and joins into the debauchery and littering.
- ghaff 5y ago
  I've never spent a lot of time in JP, but my understanding is that it is nicer than it used to be. And the gentrification has been somewhat controversial: https://planetgeogblog.wordpress.com/2020/04/22/the-two-jps-how-a-whole-foods-split-a-gentrified-boston-neighborhood/ https://planetgeogblog.wordpress.com/2020/04/22/the-two-jps-... Also, for those not from the area, JP is indeed a "Boston neighborhood" but it's on the outskirts around parkland, the Arnold Arboretum, etc. and is about a 30 minute public transit ride [edit: on the Orange line not Green line]. So don't imagine this is in Boston in the way many might imagine. It probably has more in common with close in suburbs like Arlington than downtown.
  - seibelj 5y ago
    The JP line is the orange line, and getting downtown takes less than 20 minutes. It is the second fastest and most reliable line after the blue line. Arlington is a car suburb and is not Boston proper.

tjr225 5y ago

Boston was incorporated two hundred years before Los Angeles. Of course it is going to have more beautiful, old houses. Of course it is going to have more walkable neighborhoods. But what I'm more interested in is this: > Nearly every single home is multi-family, and the single families that do exist are usually $2 million and up. SFH are already 1 million and up in LA, really in SD, LA, SF, Seattle, and Vancouver. It will be interesting to see what happens to SFH values if they become scarcer. It seems like it might have the opposite effect that the NIMBYs generally fear, and make them even _more_ wealthy.

thehappypm 5y ago
Most houses in JP are from the ~40s.
- quadrangle 5y ago
  Yup, in other words, the last period of development before the interstate highway push and car-sprawl suburban experiment ruined and bankrupted the country.
grandmczeb 5y ago
In my experience, it’s a misconception that NIMBYS are motivated by property values directly. There are exceptions of course, but usually it’s either some sort of perceived lifestyle impact (traffic, shade, “neighborhood character”, etc) or just general anxiety over change.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Tiktaalik 5y ago
Yeah I mean, what do you figure the value of a SFH would be in downtown Manhattan? SFH's or rather, the underlying land the house sits on, is going to become insanely valuable as the amount available dwindles and population grows. There is no unwinding this trend. The only thing that can be done is to ignore and not worry about the price of a SFH, and subdivide the land into more apartments so that more people can afford to live on that parcel of land.

nluken 5y ago

Great example. JP isn't quite a suburb but I look to it as a fantastic example of how suburban development could be condensed without losing its character. With proper upzoning, suburbs could have denser cores of multi-family housing without impacting those that want less dense housing outside the core. These towns would be more walkable and prettier places to live.

foobarian 5y ago

Ah yes, Boston. No need to worry about what would happen to those 2, 3, and 4 story wood houses if they got a good shakeup at 5+ on the Richter scale.

RandallBrown 5y ago
Explain the thousands and thousands of new 2, 3, and 4 story wood houses in Seattle. From my understanding wood is actually pretty good for earthquakes.
nluken 5y ago
Right, that's why San Fransisco consists entirely of single story buildings.
ethanbond 5y ago
That’s why they build so small and spread out in Tokyo, and never with wood!
- foobarian 5y ago
  Never say never, recently there has been a spate of news about engineered wood beams looking like pretty capable replacements for steel. Example: [1] [1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/is-mass-timber-the-building-material-of-the-future https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/is-mass-timber-the-buildin...
ehutch79 5y ago
It's not like developers in LA don't know how to build things resistant to seismic events.
TYPE_FASTER 5y ago
https://earthquaketrack.com/us-ma-boston/biggest https://earthquaketrack.com/us-ma-boston/biggest I remember that Sanbornton quake. We lived in rural NH. At first I thought it was the clothes washer...then the house really started shaking.

throwaway1777 5y ago

I agree it looks great. But the density is around 8500/sq mile, which happens to be almost the same as Los Angeles. So, this type of development wouldn’t do that much for housing affordability in LA. I feel like people seriously underestimate how dense Californian cities already are.

nluken 5y ago
I suspect that JP's density is actually a bit higher than that today, given that it was 8500/sq mile based on 2010 population. Regardless, it's important to consider that JP is miles outside the city center. It isn't so much a model of super dense housing as it is a good way to up the density of neighborhoods that might otherwise only support 3500/sq mile. JP represents a good middle ground between the car-centric deep suburbs and the extremely dense city center.