5 ms·

Alright, well I don't care about nebulous concepts like "social fabric" and neither do a lot of other people. Way more people would move to big cities if it wa

by stale2002 5y ago

Alright, well I don't care about nebulous concepts like "social fabric" and neither do a lot of other people. Way more people would move to big cities if it was affordable, and these people's wishes should be supported. Almost by definition, this is true, as if everyone did not want to move to the city, then prices would be lower. This romanticism for making everyone live in small towns is not something that most people support, given that way more people would leave small towns if they could.

DoreenMichele 5y ago
I don't care about nebulous concepts like "social fabric" and neither do a lot of other people. This is likely true. And yet people bitch plenty about how homeless folks are interfering with their enjoyment of the good life in the downtown areas of big cities. In practical terms you get to pick one. You can care about nebulous concepts like the social fabric and have less feces, discarded needles and the like or you can not care and see people moving out of cities like San Francisco because they are going to hell as all the poor people ruin it for the upper classes who still don't care about those people but hate stepping over the mess.
- renewiltord 5y ago
  LA is sprawl and has loads of homeless too. So that’s not it.
- stale2002 5y ago
  > about how homeless folks are interfering with their enjoyment > In practical terms you get to pick one. You can care about nebulous concepts like the social fabric Actually there was the other solution. The other solution compared to yours of "make people live in the small towns.", is instead "Make lots of tall skyscapers, so that big cities are affordable". If we lower the costs of big cities (By making lots and lots of supply, including tall skyscapers), then prices are lower for those who need them, and more people can live here, and take advantage of the big cities, and it can also benefit the poor by actually making it possible for them to live here, instead of on the streets. We don't have to force out the poor from the big cities. Instead we can make the big cities affordable to live in, with lots and lots of tall skyscrapers. > see people moving out of cities like San Francisco Actually, you are the one who is trying to get people to move out of the big cities. I want there to be more supply for everyone, in these big cities, with more skyscapers.
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    Skyscrapers are inherently expensive to build, so building more skyscrapers isn't likely to make urban cores affordable for the types of folks who wind up homeless. I know a lot about homelessness. I spent nearly six years homeless and before that had a college class through SFSU called Homelessness and Public Policy and I still run several blogs on the topic, though I update them less than I used to as my focus has shifted to trying to solve the housing shortage that is a root cause of homelessness in the US.
    - stale2002 5y ago
      > so building more skyscrapers isn't likely to make urban cores affordable for the types of folks who wind up homeless. Yes it will. Think of a skyscaper like a Yuppie containment center. For every high end apartment that exists, a Yuppie is no longer filling up an apartment in the mission, that very well could be afforable if they weren't currently full of yuppies. There are lots of yuppies who would love to live in those skyscapers, and if we build more of them, then those people will no longer be taking away afforable housing from other people who need it. Also, historically, this is how housing has worked. Previously high end apartments, become low end, over time, as the rich move out of those places, into other, newer apartments. > Skyscrapers are inherently expensive to build Doesn't matter. Because the goal is to get wealthy individuals, out of the existing apartments. The poor aren't forced to live in those skyscapers, but if the skyscapers exist, then there is less competition for the lower end of the market.
      - DoreenMichele 5y ago
        Building more housing generally is good and does bring down rents. It still will not make big cities and skyscrapers in specific affordable for the types of people who end up homeless. Having been homeless and spoken to many homeless and so forth, I think we need some housing stock below $600/month in rent that will take households of up to three people. Skyscrapers are unlikely to be a means to provide housing at that price point, though they can be found sometimes in older low to mid-rise buildings. More skyscrapers may make downtowns more affordable for more middle class types who are currently forced out to the suburbs. They are unlikely to serve the types of people at high risk of homelessness, either directly or indirectly. There comes a point past which you simply can't lower the rent any further if your carrying costs are simply too high.
- quacked 5y ago
  I think you're missing a golden opportunity here. You can take all the people who agree with the commenter you're talking to and put them in giant Tokyo-style megacities, with ultra high-speed rail, blazing-fast internet, free housing, the works. Then we can tear down the cities, towns, and suburbs they moved out of, establish a bunch of small towns with lots of forest and prairie, and produce goods for them to consume, on the condition that they stay in their megacities. It would be like a Morlock/Eloi situation, except that we'll all be Morlocks. They'll do the missile defense systems and the smartphone OS's, and I'll grow the corn and mine the rare earth minerals. We can all even adopt a bicameral government, one that governs areas of population density above a certain value and one that governs areas below a certain value.
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    Morlocks ate Eloi. It was a story where the subtext was "And after you rich assholes have become helplessly dependent on your servants, the servants will take over the world and eat the rich because you people are becoming sheeple." I have difficulty seeing any world where the goal is Morlocks and Eloi as some kind of positive thing to shoot for as a goal. Personally, I would like to see a world where fewer people have reason to bitterly suggest that we should eat the rich.
    - quacked 5y ago
      Perhaps my sentence structure wasn't clear enough; I mean "we'll all be Morlocks", in that the cities shall serve the non-cities, and vice versa. You can't have a functioning nation of all urban or all small-town.
      - DoreenMichele 5y ago
        I agree that we need both big cities and small towns.
  - stale2002 5y ago
    > you can take all the people who agree with the commenter you're talking to and put them in giant Tokyo-style megacities So, funnily enough, this is actually a similar argument that I often make. I believe it benefits everyone, if yuppies like myself, get what we want with Tokyo megacities, so that we don't cause all these problems with the rest of society, with our high income, driving up prices of everything around us. Someone who described this very well, was noahpinion. He called this strategy, the Yuppie Containment Protocol. Society creates "Gentrification Containment Units", so that we the Yuppies don't cause this horrible harm, of extra income and wealth, hurting everyone else. Us yuppies, bringing in demand for gentrified coffee shops, fancy skyscapers, and upscale restaurants drives out existing residents. It is better to just give us a couple megacities somewhere, so our horrible terrible income and wealth, and willingness to spend it on the economy doesn't hurt those gentrification vulnerable people.
- pests 5y ago
  Doreen, I read a lot of your comments here, appreciate the perspective. stale2002 perfectly makes the point you've been advocating for throughout the thread.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  The 'nebulous' bit referenced in parent comment is your claim that hyperdensity is uniformly detrimental to the social fabric. Do you think there is less of a meaningful social fabric in the most dense neighborhoods of NYC or Tokyo, compared to the average American suburb? There will always be people who opt to live in smaller towns, but those simply cannot sustain the sheer level of density that big city cores can.
- dillondoyle 5y ago
  How would having more people live in rural or small towns reduce homelessness, instead of just dispersing it? To me social fabric in this context of decaying small towns has a negative connotation that in my mind it reads as a reversion to white, sis, straight, nuclear families as the idea of what America is. And it's used that way by political campaigns as well to play on fears, racism, and us/them to win votes.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    Most people in the U.S. are one or more of "white, cis, straight". What often passes for 'diversity' in some places is very much the exception, not the rule.
    - dillondoyle 5y ago
      Probably not true. Non-hispanic white is only 57% right now and declining. a ton of cities are white minority - kind of to the point about this picture of past american rural ideals are out of date. Out LGTBQ is somewhere approaching 5% across all generations. Key word out. Gen Z are ~15% out. I wouldn't be surprised if the true non-cis/non-straight % is closer to 20%. So that probably puts cis white in the slight minority and shrinking. And I'm not sure what 'passes' means I will try to use HN rule of benefit of the doubt

DoreenMichele 5y ago

I don't care about nebulous concepts like "social fabric" and neither do a lot of other people. This is likely true. And yet people bitch plenty about how homeless folks are interfering with their enjoyment of the good life in the downtown areas of big cities. In practical terms you get to pick one. You can care about nebulous concepts like the social fabric and have less feces, discarded needles and the like or you can not care and see people moving out of cities like San Francisco because they are going to hell as all the poor people ruin it for the upper classes who still don't care about those people but hate stepping over the mess.

renewiltord 5y ago
LA is sprawl and has loads of homeless too. So that’s not it.
stale2002 5y ago
> about how homeless folks are interfering with their enjoyment > In practical terms you get to pick one. You can care about nebulous concepts like the social fabric Actually there was the other solution. The other solution compared to yours of "make people live in the small towns.", is instead "Make lots of tall skyscapers, so that big cities are affordable". If we lower the costs of big cities (By making lots and lots of supply, including tall skyscapers), then prices are lower for those who need them, and more people can live here, and take advantage of the big cities, and it can also benefit the poor by actually making it possible for them to live here, instead of on the streets. We don't have to force out the poor from the big cities. Instead we can make the big cities affordable to live in, with lots and lots of tall skyscrapers. > see people moving out of cities like San Francisco Actually, you are the one who is trying to get people to move out of the big cities. I want there to be more supply for everyone, in these big cities, with more skyscapers.
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  Skyscrapers are inherently expensive to build, so building more skyscrapers isn't likely to make urban cores affordable for the types of folks who wind up homeless. I know a lot about homelessness. I spent nearly six years homeless and before that had a college class through SFSU called Homelessness and Public Policy and I still run several blogs on the topic, though I update them less than I used to as my focus has shifted to trying to solve the housing shortage that is a root cause of homelessness in the US.
  - stale2002 5y ago
    > so building more skyscrapers isn't likely to make urban cores affordable for the types of folks who wind up homeless. Yes it will. Think of a skyscaper like a Yuppie containment center. For every high end apartment that exists, a Yuppie is no longer filling up an apartment in the mission, that very well could be afforable if they weren't currently full of yuppies. There are lots of yuppies who would love to live in those skyscapers, and if we build more of them, then those people will no longer be taking away afforable housing from other people who need it. Also, historically, this is how housing has worked. Previously high end apartments, become low end, over time, as the rich move out of those places, into other, newer apartments. > Skyscrapers are inherently expensive to build Doesn't matter. Because the goal is to get wealthy individuals, out of the existing apartments. The poor aren't forced to live in those skyscapers, but if the skyscapers exist, then there is less competition for the lower end of the market.
    - DoreenMichele 5y ago
      Building more housing generally is good and does bring down rents. It still will not make big cities and skyscrapers in specific affordable for the types of people who end up homeless. Having been homeless and spoken to many homeless and so forth, I think we need some housing stock below $600/month in rent that will take households of up to three people. Skyscrapers are unlikely to be a means to provide housing at that price point, though they can be found sometimes in older low to mid-rise buildings. More skyscrapers may make downtowns more affordable for more middle class types who are currently forced out to the suburbs. They are unlikely to serve the types of people at high risk of homelessness, either directly or indirectly. There comes a point past which you simply can't lower the rent any further if your carrying costs are simply too high.
quacked 5y ago
I think you're missing a golden opportunity here. You can take all the people who agree with the commenter you're talking to and put them in giant Tokyo-style megacities, with ultra high-speed rail, blazing-fast internet, free housing, the works. Then we can tear down the cities, towns, and suburbs they moved out of, establish a bunch of small towns with lots of forest and prairie, and produce goods for them to consume, on the condition that they stay in their megacities. It would be like a Morlock/Eloi situation, except that we'll all be Morlocks. They'll do the missile defense systems and the smartphone OS's, and I'll grow the corn and mine the rare earth minerals. We can all even adopt a bicameral government, one that governs areas of population density above a certain value and one that governs areas below a certain value.
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  Morlocks ate Eloi. It was a story where the subtext was "And after you rich assholes have become helplessly dependent on your servants, the servants will take over the world and eat the rich because you people are becoming sheeple." I have difficulty seeing any world where the goal is Morlocks and Eloi as some kind of positive thing to shoot for as a goal. Personally, I would like to see a world where fewer people have reason to bitterly suggest that we should eat the rich.
  - quacked 5y ago
    Perhaps my sentence structure wasn't clear enough; I mean "we'll all be Morlocks", in that the cities shall serve the non-cities, and vice versa. You can't have a functioning nation of all urban or all small-town.
    - DoreenMichele 5y ago
      I agree that we need both big cities and small towns.
- stale2002 5y ago
  > you can take all the people who agree with the commenter you're talking to and put them in giant Tokyo-style megacities So, funnily enough, this is actually a similar argument that I often make. I believe it benefits everyone, if yuppies like myself, get what we want with Tokyo megacities, so that we don't cause all these problems with the rest of society, with our high income, driving up prices of everything around us. Someone who described this very well, was noahpinion. He called this strategy, the Yuppie Containment Protocol. Society creates "Gentrification Containment Units", so that we the Yuppies don't cause this horrible harm, of extra income and wealth, hurting everyone else. Us yuppies, bringing in demand for gentrified coffee shops, fancy skyscapers, and upscale restaurants drives out existing residents. It is better to just give us a couple megacities somewhere, so our horrible terrible income and wealth, and willingness to spend it on the economy doesn't hurt those gentrification vulnerable people.
pests 5y ago
Doreen, I read a lot of your comments here, appreciate the perspective. stale2002 perfectly makes the point you've been advocating for throughout the thread.
zozbot234 5y ago
The 'nebulous' bit referenced in parent comment is your claim that hyperdensity is uniformly detrimental to the social fabric. Do you think there is less of a meaningful social fabric in the most dense neighborhoods of NYC or Tokyo, compared to the average American suburb? There will always be people who opt to live in smaller towns, but those simply cannot sustain the sheer level of density that big city cores can.
dillondoyle 5y ago
How would having more people live in rural or small towns reduce homelessness, instead of just dispersing it? To me social fabric in this context of decaying small towns has a negative connotation that in my mind it reads as a reversion to white, sis, straight, nuclear families as the idea of what America is. And it's used that way by political campaigns as well to play on fears, racism, and us/them to win votes.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Most people in the U.S. are one or more of "white, cis, straight". What often passes for 'diversity' in some places is very much the exception, not the rule.
  - dillondoyle 5y ago
    Probably not true. Non-hispanic white is only 57% right now and declining. a ton of cities are white minority - kind of to the point about this picture of past american rural ideals are out of date. Out LGTBQ is somewhere approaching 5% across all generations. Key word out. Gen Z are ~15% out. I wouldn't be surprised if the true non-cis/non-straight % is closer to 20%. So that probably puts cis white in the slight minority and shrinking. And I'm not sure what 'passes' means I will try to use HN rule of benefit of the doubt