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Land is a finite resource but housing units are not. Once America gets over it’s love affair with single family homes, we could undercut most speculators by jus

Land is a finite resource but housing units are not. Once America gets over it’s love affair with single family homes, we could undercut most speculators by just building up.

tmp_anon_22 5y ago
Single Family homes have the benefit of more autonomy where as building up means you're living on-top of your neighbor, its not binary but we should acknowledge the clear QoL tradeoffs of condensed living. Maybe its inevitable and necessary to force more people into condensed housing, maybe the societal benefits really outweigh the tradeoffs.
- davidw 5y ago
  No one's "forcing" anything. Legalize the housing, and if no one wants it, it won't be built. The problem is that it's not legal in so many places.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - greesil 5y ago
    The invisible hand is sometimes a fist.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- chii 5y ago
  > clear QoL tradeoffs of condensed living. and that's why single family homes should be more expensive, because it is better. People continue to bid it up, because they still believe that the price is worth and hasn't reached a ceiling yet. In asian hubs like hong kong or shanghai, they've reached a certain ceiling on land, and so building up is now what most people could buy and so they do that. The cities in countries like canada, australia and the west coast of the US, it hasn't reached that point due to large available land mass, and people prefer commute (or WFH now!) over living densely. Of course, regulation plays a part - i think there's unnecessarily large amount of red tape in making taller denser buildings, as well as a lobby of existing owners who don't want it near themselves.
  - sam_bristow 5y ago
    Interestingly, Hong Kong is apparently still ~40% public green space. The land they have developed is dense though.
- pj_mukh 5y ago
  This is a massive failure of imagination. I moved into a new 5 by 1. Don’t even know who lives above me (never heard em). Sound Insulation has come a long way. There’s a lot that can be done to add autonomy and privacy to the condo living. And then more to make it cheaper and accessible. It’s mostly a technical problem.
- BucketsMcG 5y ago
  As far as I'm concerned the quality-of-life tradeoff heavily favours higher-density housing. I live in an apartment block and so does everybody else for miles around. Our building, like almost every other around here, tops out at seven storeys. It's very solidly constructed, so there's little to no noise from neighbours, not that they make much noise to begin with as they're a pretty considerate bunch. The downside to this way of living is almost nonexistent, but the upside is massive. Instead of everybody having their own plot of land that's too small to do anything really interesting with, and which they have to maintain themselves, we have a communal garden. When that's not enough, there are no less than four parks within two minutes' walk. Because this higher density of living is able to sustain more amenities, everything you could possibly ever need is, at most, a short bike ride away. And I do mean everything. Bars, restaurants, shops, medical facilities, swimming pools, a velodrome, a planetarium... I've no need of a car because it's all on my doorstep. If I do need to travel, public transport's great. You can keep your "autonomy", I'll be too busy reaping the benefits of living among other people to worry about that.
  - seattle_spring 5y ago
    > It's very solidly constructed, so there's little to no noise from neighbours, not that they make much noise to begin with as they're a pretty considerate bunch. Neither of these things have been even remotely true in any apartment I've lived in the US, even ones billed "luxury". It's always been thin-walled garbage where I can hear every word of every conversation of my neighbors, who have typically felt that listening to music 24 hours a day and slamming down their boots while walking between rooms is the right thing to do.
    - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      >It's always been thin-walled garbage where I can hear every word of every conversation of my neighbors I feel this is mostly a US problem. In most of Europe, apartment blocks are solidly built, especially the older ones, even in Eastern Europe.
  - bliteben 5y ago
    You might as well live in the matrix, you seem to live in an artificial world with no connection to nature. I myself desire to live on the edge of "civilization" as much as I can, I know this presents a conundrum in that I'm creating a market for destroying it, but this is a human condition as old as time.
- clhodapp 5y ago
  If people can reasonably afford a (non-tiny) condo but pine after a single family home that they can't afford, there isn't a housing crisis there's economic diversity.
jasd 5y ago
In the last 2 years condo prices in the Seattle area have stayed flat while everyone is desperate to buy townhomes and single families that are becoming out of reach for most. That makes me wonder if building up will actually fix the issue.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Most people obviously want a family home, but it would be an improvent if they actually have an alternative.
- zamfi 5y ago
  That condo prices are staying flat is fantastic news. Now we just need to build condos that are appropriate for all stages of life -- not just young singlehood and coupledom. Building up will not solve the "not enough SFH/townhomes" problem, but it will fix the homeownership problem. And it may help with the former, if there are enough current SFH/townhome owners who would prefer a really nice condo close to work/downtown/parks/amenities/etc. But one issue there is that we currently build condos but don't build the public spaces that serve to supplement them and make them comfortable for, e.g., families with kids. As a result, they're full of a certain demographic, and less appealing to others, reinforcing the issue.
  - darkerside 5y ago
    > Now we just need to build condos that are appropriate for all stages of life -- not just young singlehood and coupledom. Can you share some ideas about what this would look like?
    - pj_mukh 5y ago
      I like what culdesac is trying: https://culdesac.com/ https://culdesac.com/ If we could only scale and therefore make this cheaper.
    - kag0 5y ago
      not the original commenter, but I think they said it > we currently build condos but don't build the public spaces that serve to supplement them and make them comfortable for, e.g., families with kids. you need * several bedrooms * some utility space (for things one would have otherwise done in the garage) * nearby [safe] parks and playgrounds * nearby recreation centers * good schools etc
bliteben 5y ago
Why can't the US just have less people with a higher standard of living? Why is "progress" always more. Why do we have to make everything worse by shifting the baseline (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline).
- pj_mukh 5y ago
  Because a higher standard of living requires more people to come up with the said standard of living (see: history, the shifting of innovation centers to population centers) The degrowth movements garden variety neo-pastoralist misanthropy makes it blind to the fact that more humans (given a good system of governance and rules) is actually an amazing thing.
  - bliteben 5y ago
    I hope you do accept there are physical limits to growth that there is no way get around short of colonizing other planets and that we should at least take care of our mother planet.
newbamboo 5y ago
Nonesense. People are going homeless because they can’t pay 3k a month to rent a shitty studio. Low income housing cannot be produced for less. Boomers wanting to mow lawns is obviously, for clear thinking individuals, not even a factor.

Land is a finite resource but housing units are not. Once America gets over it’s love affair with single family homes, we could undercut most speculators by just building up.

tmp_anon_22 5y ago

Single Family homes have the benefit of more autonomy where as building up means you're living on-top of your neighbor, its not binary but we should acknowledge the clear QoL tradeoffs of condensed living. Maybe its inevitable and necessary to force more people into condensed housing, maybe the societal benefits really outweigh the tradeoffs.

davidw 5y ago
No one's "forcing" anything. Legalize the housing, and if no one wants it, it won't be built. The problem is that it's not legal in so many places.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- greesil 5y ago
  The invisible hand is sometimes a fist.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
chii 5y ago
> clear QoL tradeoffs of condensed living. and that's why single family homes should be more expensive, because it is better. People continue to bid it up, because they still believe that the price is worth and hasn't reached a ceiling yet. In asian hubs like hong kong or shanghai, they've reached a certain ceiling on land, and so building up is now what most people could buy and so they do that. The cities in countries like canada, australia and the west coast of the US, it hasn't reached that point due to large available land mass, and people prefer commute (or WFH now!) over living densely. Of course, regulation plays a part - i think there's unnecessarily large amount of red tape in making taller denser buildings, as well as a lobby of existing owners who don't want it near themselves.
- sam_bristow 5y ago
  Interestingly, Hong Kong is apparently still ~40% public green space. The land they have developed is dense though.
pj_mukh 5y ago
This is a massive failure of imagination. I moved into a new 5 by 1. Don’t even know who lives above me (never heard em). Sound Insulation has come a long way. There’s a lot that can be done to add autonomy and privacy to the condo living. And then more to make it cheaper and accessible. It’s mostly a technical problem.
BucketsMcG 5y ago
As far as I'm concerned the quality-of-life tradeoff heavily favours higher-density housing. I live in an apartment block and so does everybody else for miles around. Our building, like almost every other around here, tops out at seven storeys. It's very solidly constructed, so there's little to no noise from neighbours, not that they make much noise to begin with as they're a pretty considerate bunch. The downside to this way of living is almost nonexistent, but the upside is massive. Instead of everybody having their own plot of land that's too small to do anything really interesting with, and which they have to maintain themselves, we have a communal garden. When that's not enough, there are no less than four parks within two minutes' walk. Because this higher density of living is able to sustain more amenities, everything you could possibly ever need is, at most, a short bike ride away. And I do mean everything. Bars, restaurants, shops, medical facilities, swimming pools, a velodrome, a planetarium... I've no need of a car because it's all on my doorstep. If I do need to travel, public transport's great. You can keep your "autonomy", I'll be too busy reaping the benefits of living among other people to worry about that.
- seattle_spring 5y ago
  > It's very solidly constructed, so there's little to no noise from neighbours, not that they make much noise to begin with as they're a pretty considerate bunch. Neither of these things have been even remotely true in any apartment I've lived in the US, even ones billed "luxury". It's always been thin-walled garbage where I can hear every word of every conversation of my neighbors, who have typically felt that listening to music 24 hours a day and slamming down their boots while walking between rooms is the right thing to do.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    >It's always been thin-walled garbage where I can hear every word of every conversation of my neighbors I feel this is mostly a US problem. In most of Europe, apartment blocks are solidly built, especially the older ones, even in Eastern Europe.
- bliteben 5y ago
  You might as well live in the matrix, you seem to live in an artificial world with no connection to nature. I myself desire to live on the edge of "civilization" as much as I can, I know this presents a conundrum in that I'm creating a market for destroying it, but this is a human condition as old as time.
clhodapp 5y ago
If people can reasonably afford a (non-tiny) condo but pine after a single family home that they can't afford, there isn't a housing crisis there's economic diversity.

jasd 5y ago

In the last 2 years condo prices in the Seattle area have stayed flat while everyone is desperate to buy townhomes and single families that are becoming out of reach for most. That makes me wonder if building up will actually fix the issue.

Aeolun 5y ago
Most people obviously want a family home, but it would be an improvent if they actually have an alternative.
zamfi 5y ago
That condo prices are staying flat is fantastic news. Now we just need to build condos that are appropriate for all stages of life -- not just young singlehood and coupledom. Building up will not solve the "not enough SFH/townhomes" problem, but it will fix the homeownership problem. And it may help with the former, if there are enough current SFH/townhome owners who would prefer a really nice condo close to work/downtown/parks/amenities/etc. But one issue there is that we currently build condos but don't build the public spaces that serve to supplement them and make them comfortable for, e.g., families with kids. As a result, they're full of a certain demographic, and less appealing to others, reinforcing the issue.
- darkerside 5y ago
  > Now we just need to build condos that are appropriate for all stages of life -- not just young singlehood and coupledom. Can you share some ideas about what this would look like?
  - pj_mukh 5y ago
    I like what culdesac is trying: https://culdesac.com/ https://culdesac.com/ If we could only scale and therefore make this cheaper.
  - kag0 5y ago
    not the original commenter, but I think they said it > we currently build condos but don't build the public spaces that serve to supplement them and make them comfortable for, e.g., families with kids. you need * several bedrooms * some utility space (for things one would have otherwise done in the garage) * nearby [safe] parks and playgrounds * nearby recreation centers * good schools etc

bliteben 5y ago

Why can't the US just have less people with a higher standard of living? Why is "progress" always more. Why do we have to make everything worse by shifting the baseline (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline).

pj_mukh 5y ago
Because a higher standard of living requires more people to come up with the said standard of living (see: history, the shifting of innovation centers to population centers) The degrowth movements garden variety neo-pastoralist misanthropy makes it blind to the fact that more humans (given a good system of governance and rules) is actually an amazing thing.
- bliteben 5y ago
  I hope you do accept there are physical limits to growth that there is no way get around short of colonizing other planets and that we should at least take care of our mother planet.

newbamboo 5y ago

Nonesense. People are going homeless because they can’t pay 3k a month to rent a shitty studio. Low income housing cannot be produced for less. Boomers wanting to mow lawns is obviously, for clear thinking individuals, not even a factor.