4 ms·

I’ve mentioned tire pollution here in the past. I don’t think you are going to get people to give up personal transportation any time soon. Also living closer t

by 14 5y ago

I’ve mentioned tire pollution here in the past. I don’t think you are going to get people to give up personal transportation any time soon. Also living closer to work simply doesn’t work the housing just isn’t there and many live out farther because cost of living close to work increases. I think those are nice goals but the real solution has to be we change what tires are made of. If they are not as safe then we need to lower speed limits and redesign road systems.

davidw 5y ago
> the housing just isn’t there If only it were possible to stack dwellings on top of one another. Perhaps someone like Elon Musk will figure out a way!
- epistasis 5y ago
  Or stack dwellings under each other. The boring machine will be putting personal sleeping tubes all along the tunnels, allowing people to hop straight onto their commute. Disruption!
  - carom 5y ago
    I would absolutely rent a meditation hole.
epistasis 5y ago
> Also living closer to work simply doesn’t work the housing just isn’t there and many live out farther because cost of living close to work increases. The specific intervention under discussion is to change the housing situation. Allow more housing to be built close to jobs. This is not set in stone, it's just the arbitrary laws that were made in the mid - to late-20th century as a way to enforce racial and economic segregation in communities. And we don't need to ban all cars to greatly reduce their harms. Cutting VMT in half would provide great benefits, and could be done without forcing anybody to give up their car. The number of e-bikes I see on the roads today is absolutely immense compared to pre-pandemic days, and this will hopefully continue as we make biking safer by providing more protected lanes. And as fewer people drive, biking also becomes safer. And as we have fewer long stroads because there's less demand for driving, biking also becomes safer and more attractive. But it all starts with city planning, and allowing the people who want to live close to groceries and child care and work to live in mixed use neighborhoods. And the major blockage to that is a small law that can be flipped quickly.
lkbm 5y ago
> Also living closer to work simply doesn’t work the housing just isn’t there The OP was specifically recommending adding such housing: > Isn't a 'quick fix', but legalizing the production of various shapes and sizes of housing would help a lot of people, especially long term. The reason the housing isn't there is because massive parts of our cities are zones to prohibit building dense housing, or housing+commercial together.
- 14 5y ago
  The other issue is the new housing that is being built in my inner city is very expensive to rent. They are capitalizing on the shortage of housing so being closer to work isn’t the cheaper option. The areas outside of town are older houses but are often much cheaper. Way too much investment purchases happening. People who don’t ever intend to live in a house just make money off of it. And I’m not against investing but we are getting to the point now that large swaths of the population are struggling to get by. If housing eats up all of ones money they certainly are not going to be contributing to the greater economy which can’t be good for all other sectors.
  - epistasis 5y ago
    These concerns: 1) high housing prices of new housing, and 2) non-resident investor ownership of housing, 3) housing costs eating up all the incomes of those with less income, all result from the same cause: too little housing and intense opposition to more housing from those who financially benefit from the shortage. So there's a great solution to stop all these problems: legalize more housing to be built, but with some caveats. We should make the approval process more clear and with less bribery and discretion, and it can happen faster so that there's not a multi year delay between securing financing and actual start of construction, in which time costs change and financing options may expire. Those who are hardest hit by housing shortages are those with the least. And those who benefit the most are those with the most skin in the financial land-ownership game. And when those new luxury apartments are stopped, that isn't turn hurts those with the lowest incomes the most, because rather than the high incomes financing new building, those high incomes chase whatever else housing they can find, which raises prices all over, in addition to kicking out those with lower incomes in a game of musical chairs. And since in a market economy, if we only trickle out a tiny supply of new housing, that newest supply will only go to those high incomes, since newer housing is generally far more desirable than old housing that is worn down. So complaining about the high cost of new construction, without complaining about the ever rising cost of the existing housing stock, is tremendously damaging to housing affordability. I also favor a controversial option, but I think that there should be state- or federal-level agencies that build housing countercyclicallt, to ensure that when there's a construction downturn, that labor can continue to be employed, and the workforce remains steady, competent, and capable. The boom bust cycle for construction drives up construction prices significantly by labor shortages followed by labor shrinkage, which is hell on labor's personal lives too.

by 14 5y ago

davidw 5y ago

> the housing just isn’t there If only it were possible to stack dwellings on top of one another. Perhaps someone like Elon Musk will figure out a way!

epistasis 5y ago
Or stack dwellings under each other. The boring machine will be putting personal sleeping tubes all along the tunnels, allowing people to hop straight onto their commute. Disruption!
- carom 5y ago
  I would absolutely rent a meditation hole.

epistasis 5y ago

> Also living closer to work simply doesn’t work the housing just isn’t there and many live out farther because cost of living close to work increases. The specific intervention under discussion is to change the housing situation. Allow more housing to be built close to jobs. This is not set in stone, it's just the arbitrary laws that were made in the mid - to late-20th century as a way to enforce racial and economic segregation in communities. And we don't need to ban all cars to greatly reduce their harms. Cutting VMT in half would provide great benefits, and could be done without forcing anybody to give up their car. The number of e-bikes I see on the roads today is absolutely immense compared to pre-pandemic days, and this will hopefully continue as we make biking safer by providing more protected lanes. And as fewer people drive, biking also becomes safer. And as we have fewer long stroads because there's less demand for driving, biking also becomes safer and more attractive. But it all starts with city planning, and allowing the people who want to live close to groceries and child care and work to live in mixed use neighborhoods. And the major blockage to that is a small law that can be flipped quickly.

lkbm 5y ago

> Also living closer to work simply doesn’t work the housing just isn’t there The OP was specifically recommending adding such housing: > Isn't a 'quick fix', but legalizing the production of various shapes and sizes of housing would help a lot of people, especially long term. The reason the housing isn't there is because massive parts of our cities are zones to prohibit building dense housing, or housing+commercial together.

14 5y ago
The other issue is the new housing that is being built in my inner city is very expensive to rent. They are capitalizing on the shortage of housing so being closer to work isn’t the cheaper option. The areas outside of town are older houses but are often much cheaper. Way too much investment purchases happening. People who don’t ever intend to live in a house just make money off of it. And I’m not against investing but we are getting to the point now that large swaths of the population are struggling to get by. If housing eats up all of ones money they certainly are not going to be contributing to the greater economy which can’t be good for all other sectors.
- epistasis 5y ago
  These concerns: 1) high housing prices of new housing, and 2) non-resident investor ownership of housing, 3) housing costs eating up all the incomes of those with less income, all result from the same cause: too little housing and intense opposition to more housing from those who financially benefit from the shortage. So there's a great solution to stop all these problems: legalize more housing to be built, but with some caveats. We should make the approval process more clear and with less bribery and discretion, and it can happen faster so that there's not a multi year delay between securing financing and actual start of construction, in which time costs change and financing options may expire. Those who are hardest hit by housing shortages are those with the least. And those who benefit the most are those with the most skin in the financial land-ownership game. And when those new luxury apartments are stopped, that isn't turn hurts those with the lowest incomes the most, because rather than the high incomes financing new building, those high incomes chase whatever else housing they can find, which raises prices all over, in addition to kicking out those with lower incomes in a game of musical chairs. And since in a market economy, if we only trickle out a tiny supply of new housing, that newest supply will only go to those high incomes, since newer housing is generally far more desirable than old housing that is worn down. So complaining about the high cost of new construction, without complaining about the ever rising cost of the existing housing stock, is tremendously damaging to housing affordability. I also favor a controversial option, but I think that there should be state- or federal-level agencies that build housing countercyclicallt, to ensure that when there's a construction downturn, that labor can continue to be employed, and the workforce remains steady, competent, and capable. The boom bust cycle for construction drives up construction prices significantly by labor shortages followed by labor shrinkage, which is hell on labor's personal lives too.