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Why would I do this? I hate apartments, they are cramped, noisy, I don't have a private yard, I can have bad neighbors and I don't really own it (just the apart

Why would I do this? I hate apartments, they are cramped, noisy, I don't have a private yard, I can have bad neighbors and I don't really own it (just the apartment not the land). I'll stick to living in a rural area. I hate this dystopia you people envision of living packed like sardines in a can. I wouldn't bike, either. Distances are too long (can be over 40 miles to go somewhere) and I'd be soaked in sweat after even a short ride most of the year. A lot more people think like me. We didn't work so we could move back into cities and live like broke 25 year olds. The life you're envisioning honestly sounds like it sucks. If not I'm open to hear why, but you'll need to convince most people that it's better, not just that it's greener.

Starlevel001 5y ago
If the worst thing that happens to you in the climate apocalpyse is having to live in a smaller apartment, consider yourself lucky.
- jiggyjace 5y ago
  "Climate apocalypse"? Is that what we're calling it now? Global warming --> climate change --> climate crisis --> climate apocalpyse What models are you looking at that you're seeing doom and gloom in the next few decades?
  - ericmay 5y ago
    I think the person you are replying to was being a little hyperbolic, but you can look at human-caused climate change and the effects on a spectrum based on whatever information you've obtained in your life. For some, naively, it means nothing will happen and it's all a "big government liberal hoax". For others it's an actual "apocalypse" with tidal waves and volcanoes erupting or something (also incorrect). But just like in normal life, you can chop both ends of the hysteria off because they're not useful, they're just the loudest. Global warming was probably a bad name choice, but it described the "thing happening" and not the effects. Climate change is probably a better term for it. It is a crises. Places like the American Gulf Coast and West Coast are in for a rough time ahead that's going to require gigantic expenses that probably won't materialize to solve problems. Aside from the actual effects that will occur, the degree of severity and location can certainly be debated within some sort of reasonable parameters, we really fucked ourselves with this car-first infrastructure. It's a gigantic tax on productivity. All the money that goes into maintaining cars, roads, parking lots, etc. while losing natural habitats, gaining obesity, and unnecessary deaths because instead of walking a half mile round trip to a local grocery store you have to drive 30 miles to go to Costco. I've also noticed comments about "living packed like sardines", which shows me that those making these comments really haven't thought much about this walkability thing. While I'd argue something like Hong Kong is better than Houston on just about every metric except the illusion of having "land", it's also not a desirable outcome. Better to look at Europe where small towns and villages, and medium-sized cities dot the landscape. If you still want to live in a rural community or live on a property with a lot of acreage nobody is stopping you! What we're trying to stop is a top-down program that enforces suburbia, to the benefit of car manufacturers and government transportation budgets, and to the degradation of the rest of us. You should be looking at mixed-use walkable neighborhoods as your model for the future. This "either Hong Kong or Houston" discussion is nonsense. And us Americans know this at their core. That's why they all "love Europe" and "love the cafe on the corner". Building in this way solves just about every problem we have. It can't be stressed enough how fucked up urban planning and architecture are making our country.
user-the-name 5y ago
You will, at some point, have to internalise the idea that life is going to start sucking more from now on. There is no alternative here, it will suck. This can not be avoided. And you need to take on your own share of that suckiness to help out. Refusing to do so means you are pushing more burden onto everyone else, and that is nothing but pure selfishness.
- makomk 5y ago
  It's probably worth thinking about how ugly this is going to get politically. Right now, we basically have a bunch of wealthy people jetting around the world on private planes pushing for changes to society that will make ordinary people worse off in ways visible to them every single day. Not the super-wealthy, of course; why, the very idea that they should change their lifestyles first is an evil right-wing plot to undermine necessary measures against climate change for the benefit of evil big businesses, according to the accepted mainstream media prespective. We have the banking industry and the super-wealthy using their control of funding to slowly starve and dismantle the energy infrastructure that supports people's current lifestyles; most of the cost of this will fall on ordinary people who effectively have no say, but the media coverage sytematically lies and says it's big businesses and the wealthy who benefit from it and will pay the price. (They do things like counting all CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use as being caused by the companies that extracted them, and spin this to make it sound like those companies are the ones benefitting.) Now, according to the media coverage, this will have the exact opposite effect - think about all the articles about "green jobs" and the "green economy", all the column inches claiming that ordinary people will be better off and rich right wingers are just trying to trick them into thinking otherwise to protect themselves. The propaganda can't go on forever though. Sooner or later, the true social costs of all this and who is actually losing out will become undeniable, and at that point a lot of people are going to be very angry.
- mythrwy 5y ago
  The history of the human race is one of making life suck less. I, for one, plan to be on the right side of history on this topic. If the oil is running out or is otherwise untenable lets make some rational plans for something better (oil is dirty anyway and makes life suck) rather then running around in rough goat haired shirts flagellating ourselves and congratulating each other on how much we have made life suck and how virtuous we now are.
kd913 5y ago
>Why would I do this? I hate apartments, they are cramped, noisy, I don't have a private yard, I can have bad neighbors and I don't really own it (just the apartment not the land). I'll stick to living in a rural area. I hate this dystopia you people envision of living packed like sardines in a can. Largely because traditional suburban/rural designs are not climate conscious, nor economically solvent. Your tax receipts wouldn't cover the maintenance costs of infrastructure. If the actual economic costs of maintaining the above weren't subsidized by people living in apartment blocks, you would probably change your tune.
- dionidium 5y ago
  There's actually a much more obvious and selfish reason somebody would want to do this: the tradeoffs are worth it. The reason people cluster together in cities is so that they can trade with each other and have sex with each other and learn from each other and attend gatherings with each other and look at each other's art and so on. And even most sexless, joyless, introvert-art-haters need to sell their labor or their wares. So, sure, everybody would like more space, more privacy, etc, but the way the world actually works is that you have to make tradeoffs.
  - tharne 5y ago
    > So, sure, everybody would like more space, more privacy, etc, but the way the world actually works is that you have to make tradeoffs. That's the beauty of technology though. I really don't have to make these tradeoffs anymore. I can work from home which means I'm no longer limited to the job market in my immediate geography. I can order practically any product I want online so it really doesn't matter if I live close to a city with great stores or not. I can use a plethora of apps to meet people and date. And of course, I have my car (and uber as a backup) so I don't need to be cramped into some terrible apartment in order to make the world accessible. We love to romanticize these crowded industrial era cities, but when given the choice, most people would rather not live in dense cities at all.
    - dionidium 5y ago
jhgb 5y ago
> I hate apartments, they are cramped, noisy, I don't have a private yard Is this something that can't be solved by building codes?
- namibj 5y ago
  Yes it can. Well, the private yard is harder, but also the least required.
  - jhgb 5y ago
    When I visited my step-grandmother in (then) West Germany in the 1980s, she had a private yard, despite living in an apartment tower...in the middle of Frankfurt. Apparently such allotments are common in Germany, even in cities.
    - collegeburner 5y ago
      I'm curious how this would work? I imagine it would have to be smalla and fenced in, and still everybody could see in from above.
      - jhgb 5y ago
        It's not a CIA black site. It's a garden. It works just fine even if people can see you from above.
- dionidium 5y ago
  This is basically what single-family zoning is. People noticed that most people express a preference for detached housing with extra space, so they made the alternatives illegal. The problem is that this ignores a pretty fundamental fact about economics (and the universe itself) -- people have to be free to make tradeoffs. In some sense I prefer a Lamborghini to the Hyundai I own. I guess everybody would. So why don't we make the Hyundai illegal? Because all things are not equal and when I'm free to weigh my options I make tradeoffs. In my case, I have decided I would rather own the worse car, so that I have the flexibility to use my money for other things. Some people would prefer to do this with apartments, too -- maybe to save money or maybe to be close to the urban center or for some other reason -- except that most cities have made them illegal in most districts. It's no good to say in the abstract, "most people prefer houses to apartments, so developers should only be allowed to build houses." People don't make decisions in the abstract. They have constraints. They weigh tradeoffs. Single-family zoning is a bunch of rich people making Hyundais illegal, because they're rich enough to ignore the tradeoffs and they think it's pretty obvious that everybody prefers a Lamborghini, anyway. Meanwhile, the rest of us would really like the option to buy a Hyundai -- the option to make tradeoffs.
dionidium 5y ago
"Packed like sardines" is a phrase that probably needs to be retired. First of all, people aren't packed like a factory worker packs a tin of sardines; they choose to live in cities, because they either enjoy it or find the tradeoffs to be worth it. Second, our cities are nowhere near as dense as they once were. There was maybe a time when people really were all packed in together in a way almost all of them found uncomfortable, but that's not really true anymore. Manhattan's population density is down 40% since 1910. But, ultimately I think you should be free to live however you want to live. What you should not be free to do is enforce your way of living via regulations that prevent density. If other people want to build density on property they own, then they should be allowed to do that, even if you don't like it. Somebody once said that buying a plot of land near a city and expecting the areas around it never to densify is like buying a puppy and getting mad when it turns into a full-sized dog. Cities have to be allowed to grow, your preferences notwithstanding.
- everdrive 5y ago
  I don't think your arguments are incorrect, but I honestly couldn't imagine anything worse than needing to live in a city surrounded by people. I live in a suburb now, and it's still too dense for my tastes. I strongly believe in environmentalist issues, and I understand intellectually that we would be better off if we mostly resided in compact environments. One issue I see is that ultimately when there are enough people, choice is removed. Eventually there is only density left. My town isn't very dense right now, but there is definitely pressure to build more homes. When that happens, my interests will be harmed, and the interests of people who would like more density would be served. It's effectively a zero-sum game. You could say "I have a choice to move somewhere less dense" -- but so too do the people who would prefer density: they can move somewhere else and leave me alone. Now I'm not arguing that I should be able to prevent people from making my area more dense. What I am arguing is that under this regime, people who like density will always eventually win, and people who abhor density will always eventually lose. Why is it fair that one group's preferences matter and another group's preferences do not?
  - dionidium 5y ago
    Because your preference requires onerous restrictions on your neighbor's right to the use of their own private property. Say your neighbor wants to build a duplex. You might not like it, but that's as far as your harm goes. To enforce your preference, though, you have to restrict your neighbor's behavior. The metaphorical "lines" here are pretty easy to draw, because they're literally property lines with direct physical representations.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
- kiliantics 5y ago
  The thing is that this person isn't even making a sacrifice. Their lifestyle is completely subsidised by those who make the sacrifice of living in a city and never get their dense, low-impact, cycling lifestyle subsidised but instead get billed with high rents, high pollution, high stress, etc.
- jimmaswell 5y ago
  Life has to be worth living, otherwise there's no point.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    Sure, but since when does life's value derive from our high standard of living? Are people with lower standards of living in other countries, or people in the past, less happy? What data we have seems to suggest otherwise and, in fact, depression is extremely common in our luxury-focused societies. But boy, the companies selling us things sure have done a great job of convincing that happiness comes from buying disposable plastic goods and driving big cars dozens of miles to get groceries collected from around the world haven't they?
bgroat 5y ago
Why would I do this? It inconveniences me personally, and only assists the survival of the species?
reaperducer 5y ago
I hate this dystopia you people envision of living packed like sardines in a can. I've lived in both (most recently moved out of a house about a year ago and into an apartment), and prefer apartments for a lot of reasons of reasons too numerous to list here. I wouldn't bike, either. Distances are too long Well, duh. You just said that you chose to live in a rural area. No kidding distances are too long. That was your choice. But if you live in a city, they're not. Because of my jobs, I've gone back-and-forth between city life and rural/suburban life several times. Every time I move back to a city, I'm so happy to sell my cars and not have a car payment; or pay for car insurance; pay for gas; oil changes (which are expensive now); worrying about it getting dinged, scratched, stolen, or crashed into. Cars were fun when I was a teen-ager. But I'm an adult now, and have better things to do with my life and money. A lot more people think like me. Because real estate agents, real estate developers, and construction companies spend billions on advertising to make people think that way. Congratulations, they've successfully implanted all these fears into your mind, and you fell for them. We didn't work so we could move back into cities and live like broke 25 year olds. Older, wealthier, people tend to move into cities because the benefits of city living outweigh the hassles and expense of living in the suburbs. Chicago's Lake Shore Drive isn't lined with apartment buildings with students "packed like sardines." They're filled with $5-$20 million condos inhabited by bankers, lawyers, and the people who own the companies that the people who live in the suburbs work for.
ineedasername 5y ago
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's a dystopia. I might as easily say the following: "Why would I do this? Over hundreds of years society has advanced to the point where I can easily have a ton of job opportunities without tearing myself away from the rest of my family and friends. I don't have to spend significant chunks of my time traveling back and forth from stores for basic necessities. If I have a medical emergency there's definitely a major trauma center close by, not to mention any chronic issue where I have multiple specialists in dozens of fields and access to ongoing treatment facilities at my fingertips. I don't want to live like some dystopian partial apocalypse set us back 80 years. A lot more people think like me. We didn't go through 20+ years of education so we could only see family at holidays and birthdays all to live like having to drive half an hour for groceries is actually some pastoral & pure way of life. Honestly it sounds like it sucks." Both your point of view and the one that I presented above (which is not my actual opinion) get it wrong. The truth is that we all make tradeoffs in these decisions, and we all choose where our own lines are, and there aren't just 2 options, it's a spectrum.
- collegeburner 5y ago
  Both are valid preferences but nobody is pushing legislation that would gradually coerce more people into the rural life. Not true of the sardine life.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    but nobody is pushing legislation that would gradually coerce more people into the rural life Sure there are, at the federal, state & local level. Here's a few examples that a quick search turned up: https://www.rd.usda.gov/programs-services/all-programs https://www.rd.usda.gov/programs-services/all-programs https://www.ahfc.us/buy/loan-programs/rural-programs https://www.ahfc.us/buy/loan-programs/rural-programs https://www.kansascommerce.gov/program/taxes-and-financing/rural-opportunity-zones-roz/ https://www.kansascommerce.gov/program/taxes-and-financing/r... https://www.harmony.mn.us/index.asp?SEC=022F2A6B-7FAA-4E0D-88F0-ED95E1CB6D8C&Type=B_BASIC https://www.harmony.mn.us/index.asp?SEC=022F2A6B-7FAA-4E0D-8...
scythe 5y ago
There are two competing perspectives among the people who advocate for a return to building dense urban environments: - environmentalism, which asks people to make personal sacrifices for the greater good (environment) - urbanism, which asks people to allow others to live in denser, more efficient configurations The problem we have is that the rhetoric is environmentalist but the policy is urbanist. I don't want to argue that you should make sacrifices. It's not essential to what I see as the core political-economic program I'm advocating for city development. Nobody anywhere ever is proposing to make you live in an apartment. But you're constantly asking me to defend this: >I hate this dystopia you people envision of living packed like sardines in a can. I never argue for this. I argue that zoning restrictions should be relaxed. I argue that bike commuters should be supported. I argue that buses should be funded. I argue that old poorly insulated buildings should be replaceable. But radicals always talk more. I have a job. I can't join every discussion about urbanism and re-re-re-reiterate the case for liberty as a form of moderation. Stop hyper-focusing on the most extreme version of urbanization in your complaints. It's not going to happen anyway.
marcosdumay 5y ago
> I wouldn't bike, either. Distances are too long Well, optimally, light transit would carry you to and from heavy public transit. The problem is that this requires good heavy public transit available. On places that rely on cars, it's normally not there.
Philip-J-Fry 5y ago
Apartments don't need to be cramped and noisy. We could build roomy apartments with private outdoor areas that would still be more space efficient than a normal house. I wouldn't mind living in an apartment, a backyard isn't a huge priority and these are perfect for single people, couples and small families. The key thing is that an apartment and what your perception of an apartment is aren't the same. There's nothing that says it has to be this way.
- teakettle42 5y ago
  An apartment by definition requires packing people in closely with their neighbors.
  - thih9 5y ago
    Yes; then again, who said it doesn't? I guess grandparent's point was about perceived comfort.
    - teakettle42 5y ago
      I would say that’s inherently and inescapably “cramped and noisy”.
      - thih9 5y ago
        I've seen apartments that seemed spacious and quiet to me.
  - poopypoopington 5y ago
    No it doesn't, you can build big well insulated apartments.
    - teakettle42 5y ago
      You could partially mitigate the noise problem, but it’d be quite expensive to do. Why would a commercial (or government) development project invest in something unprofitable (or unnecessary to their requirements)?
long_time_gone 5y ago
> I hate this dystopia you people envision of living packed like sardines in a can. This is a strawman. I live in a city and am not packed like a sardine in a can. We even have single-family homes in my city (here's one in a decent school boundary for $340k [1]). Lots of people also live in condos in 3-story walk-ups where they each have a private deck and share a large backyard. This is in Chicago, one of the largest and densest cities in the US. Your view of city living as exclusively high rises and tiny living quarters does not represent reality for the vast majority of city-dwellers. > A lot more people think like me. We didn't work so we could move back into cities and live like broke 25 year olds. The life you're envisioning honestly sounds like it sucks. If not I'm open to hear why, but you'll need to convince most people that it's better, not just that it's greener. According to PEW the breakdown is 14% Rural, 31% Urban, and 55% Suburban [2]. Rural preferences are in the minority, not majority. [1] https://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/5019-W-Wilson-Ave-60630/home/13478874 https://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/5019-W-Wilson-Ave-60630/ho... [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/demographic-and-economic-trends-in-urban-suburban-and-rural-communities/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/demogra...
thatfrenchguy 5y ago
> Why would I do this? I hate apartments, they are cramped, noisy, This is not 1970 anymore, have you ever spend time in a modern building?
- bluefirebrand 5y ago
  Plenty of apartment buildings from 1970 are still around. And they are indeed cramped and noisy. I've had to listen to my neighbours arguments and sex and whatever else in every apartment I've ever lived in. I couldn't get out of that lifestyle fast enough.
  - jandrewrogers 5y ago
    That is far from universal though. The apartments I've lived in have been essentially soundproof, and it isn't just a function of age -- one built in 1910 and the other built in 2020. I never hear my neighbors, even when they are being loud. How much space constitutes "cramped" in your view? My current apartment isn't that much smaller than the suburban house I used to live in, and that house had rooms that were almost never used.
    - bluefirebrand 5y ago
      1000 square feet or less is cramped, for me. You will have a small kitchen, only one bathroom, one bedroom, and not enough room in your living space for much more than a couch and a table. In a small space like that you can't have any hobbies that take up space. You certainly can't have a family. You can't have people stay over unless they are ok sleeping on a floor or couch. Chances are you can't even have two people use the kitchen at the same time. You can't host big gatherings like Christmas or Thanksgiving. Anyways I'm glad your experience with apartments was ok. Mine sucked. I'm also willing to bet that you not hearing your neighbours was a function of having respectful and quiet neighbours more than any quality in the construction of the apartment. You mean you never had people stomping on the roof above you? You never had people arguing in the hallways next door? You never had people blasting music so loud it shook the floor at 2am? Lucky.
throwaway894345 5y ago
Agreed. I live in a major US city, and I'm eager to move away. Not only are cities cramped and noisy, but they have a lot more crime, they're dirty, they're congested, and it's often difficult or impossible to get any regular access to nature. Similarly, regarding commuting, a car is a lot more pleasant than being freezing or else drenched in sweat/rain/snow 90% of the time, and it's also a lot better than being packed into a small box that smells of urine, vomit, BO, and cigarette smoke with a hundred other people for an hour and a half each day. Rideshare is better than cycling or public transit but more expensive and typically less convenient than owning a car. Overall, it's not really surprising that living in cities is associated with a sharp increase in depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders. I'm sure there are ways we can improve our ecological footprint without trading off everything that makes life worth living (maybe we should ship less plastic/electronic trash from China?).
BoxOfRain 5y ago
Yeah I'd be a miserable alcoholic within a month of living in a city, I'm just not wired for it at all. I get depressed living long enough in a place I can't see the stars, let alone being able to almost taste the pollution every day. A lot of city-dwellers seem to think people like you or I don't exist or can be 'nudged' (behavioural psychology word for 'gaslighted' in my opinion) into adopting urban life for an abstract greater good. People sell these massive vertical arcologies as some kind of ideal but frankly I'd rather jump off the top of one than live in it. If urbanisation became mandatory I'd literally emmigrate to anywhere it wasn't even if it meant giving up my profession, I'd rather be lonely in a foreign land than forced into an urban life I'd actively despise a good 2/3s of my existence in. I cannot stress enough how deeply I reject the idea of moving to a city, and the lengths I will go to so that I can retain a rural life.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  Rural living can be inefficient, especially for people who want the best of both worlds: lots of space and quick access to amenities. Fossil fuels are what made this possible, in moving away from them, rural living might mean living closer to how things were 100+ years ago. Or maybe it means living an rural lifestyle is just an expensive luxury.
  - nayuki 5y ago
    Not just fossil fuels, but urban infrastructure dedicated to helping people who don't live in the city - highways, parking lots, street parking.
    - 1234letshaveatw 5y ago
      That same infrastructure supplies consumables to urban residents and removes garbage, the residents aren't self-sustaining. The infrastructure doesn't exist solely for the benefit of visitors.
      - nayuki 5y ago
nsv 5y ago
Apartments don't have to be cramped, they can be spacious, and they don't have to be noisy, if you build them with thick walls. So the question becomes: why aren't we building more apartments like this? City living (at least near me) is definitely worse than suburban or rural living, but I don't think that's an unchangeable fact. More and better dense housing, mixed use areas, public transportation, and public common space are all vital to a healthy city. I believe that the lack of these is what drives people out of the city and into suburbs.
incahoots 5y ago
>I wouldn't bike, either. Distances are too long (can be over 40 miles to go somewhere) and I'd be soaked in sweat after even a short ride most of the year. You try riding an e-bike? I have grandmas passing me on trails and I'm avid cyclist, it's great to see more folks on bikes than every before.
schainks 5y ago
> I hate this dystopia you people envision When you refer to people that don’t make the same choices as you as an “other”, do you find it surprising when you and them want the same things, but in different ways? And that you can _both_ actually help each other?
Hakashiro 5y ago
I've been living in apartments for most of my life, and the constant petty fighting with the rest of the people living there got so infuriatingly annoying that, now that I'm living in a semi-d, it's almost like I'm in heaven. I used to be an advocate for high-density buildings, but they do suck, and suck a lot. OTOH, high density buildings allow me to have two GP clinics literally within 1 minute of walking whereas if I lived in a smaller rural village... good luck with that. Same goes for groceries, public transport (forget about parking, and you can text or read a book while you drive) High density buildings are very convenient, eco-friendly, practical, and allow land developers to get more money out of the same land, and governments to claw back more tax from the same horizontal footprint. But I still will avoid apartments like the plague and get myself a semi-d at the very least, if I can help it.
wlecometo 5y ago
Indeed, people should not be forced and they should be able to choose. And depending where they live different rules could apply. for example if you live in the city there's no point on having a car and you should rely on a bicycle and public transports if you live in a rural area you should be able to get some of the electricity you need from solar panels and windmills. we have room to allow choices and live more sustainable, without forcing one way of thinking to everyone..in the same it was done with this car centric world

Starlevel001 5y ago

If the worst thing that happens to you in the climate apocalpyse is having to live in a smaller apartment, consider yourself lucky.

jiggyjace 5y ago
"Climate apocalypse"? Is that what we're calling it now? Global warming --> climate change --> climate crisis --> climate apocalpyse What models are you looking at that you're seeing doom and gloom in the next few decades?
- ericmay 5y ago
  I think the person you are replying to was being a little hyperbolic, but you can look at human-caused climate change and the effects on a spectrum based on whatever information you've obtained in your life. For some, naively, it means nothing will happen and it's all a "big government liberal hoax". For others it's an actual "apocalypse" with tidal waves and volcanoes erupting or something (also incorrect). But just like in normal life, you can chop both ends of the hysteria off because they're not useful, they're just the loudest. Global warming was probably a bad name choice, but it described the "thing happening" and not the effects. Climate change is probably a better term for it. It is a crises. Places like the American Gulf Coast and West Coast are in for a rough time ahead that's going to require gigantic expenses that probably won't materialize to solve problems. Aside from the actual effects that will occur, the degree of severity and location can certainly be debated within some sort of reasonable parameters, we really fucked ourselves with this car-first infrastructure. It's a gigantic tax on productivity. All the money that goes into maintaining cars, roads, parking lots, etc. while losing natural habitats, gaining obesity, and unnecessary deaths because instead of walking a half mile round trip to a local grocery store you have to drive 30 miles to go to Costco. I've also noticed comments about "living packed like sardines", which shows me that those making these comments really haven't thought much about this walkability thing. While I'd argue something like Hong Kong is better than Houston on just about every metric except the illusion of having "land", it's also not a desirable outcome. Better to look at Europe where small towns and villages, and medium-sized cities dot the landscape. If you still want to live in a rural community or live on a property with a lot of acreage nobody is stopping you! What we're trying to stop is a top-down program that enforces suburbia, to the benefit of car manufacturers and government transportation budgets, and to the degradation of the rest of us. You should be looking at mixed-use walkable neighborhoods as your model for the future. This "either Hong Kong or Houston" discussion is nonsense. And us Americans know this at their core. That's why they all "love Europe" and "love the cafe on the corner". Building in this way solves just about every problem we have. It can't be stressed enough how fucked up urban planning and architecture are making our country.

user-the-name 5y ago

You will, at some point, have to internalise the idea that life is going to start sucking more from now on. There is no alternative here, it will suck. This can not be avoided. And you need to take on your own share of that suckiness to help out. Refusing to do so means you are pushing more burden onto everyone else, and that is nothing but pure selfishness.

makomk 5y ago
It's probably worth thinking about how ugly this is going to get politically. Right now, we basically have a bunch of wealthy people jetting around the world on private planes pushing for changes to society that will make ordinary people worse off in ways visible to them every single day. Not the super-wealthy, of course; why, the very idea that they should change their lifestyles first is an evil right-wing plot to undermine necessary measures against climate change for the benefit of evil big businesses, according to the accepted mainstream media prespective. We have the banking industry and the super-wealthy using their control of funding to slowly starve and dismantle the energy infrastructure that supports people's current lifestyles; most of the cost of this will fall on ordinary people who effectively have no say, but the media coverage sytematically lies and says it's big businesses and the wealthy who benefit from it and will pay the price. (They do things like counting all CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use as being caused by the companies that extracted them, and spin this to make it sound like those companies are the ones benefitting.) Now, according to the media coverage, this will have the exact opposite effect - think about all the articles about "green jobs" and the "green economy", all the column inches claiming that ordinary people will be better off and rich right wingers are just trying to trick them into thinking otherwise to protect themselves. The propaganda can't go on forever though. Sooner or later, the true social costs of all this and who is actually losing out will become undeniable, and at that point a lot of people are going to be very angry.
mythrwy 5y ago
The history of the human race is one of making life suck less. I, for one, plan to be on the right side of history on this topic. If the oil is running out or is otherwise untenable lets make some rational plans for something better (oil is dirty anyway and makes life suck) rather then running around in rough goat haired shirts flagellating ourselves and congratulating each other on how much we have made life suck and how virtuous we now are.

kd913 5y ago

>Why would I do this? I hate apartments, they are cramped, noisy, I don't have a private yard, I can have bad neighbors and I don't really own it (just the apartment not the land). I'll stick to living in a rural area. I hate this dystopia you people envision of living packed like sardines in a can. Largely because traditional suburban/rural designs are not climate conscious, nor economically solvent. Your tax receipts wouldn't cover the maintenance costs of infrastructure. If the actual economic costs of maintaining the above weren't subsidized by people living in apartment blocks, you would probably change your tune.

dionidium 5y ago
There's actually a much more obvious and selfish reason somebody would want to do this: the tradeoffs are worth it. The reason people cluster together in cities is so that they can trade with each other and have sex with each other and learn from each other and attend gatherings with each other and look at each other's art and so on. And even most sexless, joyless, introvert-art-haters need to sell their labor or their wares. So, sure, everybody would like more space, more privacy, etc, but the way the world actually works is that you have to make tradeoffs.
- tharne 5y ago
  > So, sure, everybody would like more space, more privacy, etc, but the way the world actually works is that you have to make tradeoffs. That's the beauty of technology though. I really don't have to make these tradeoffs anymore. I can work from home which means I'm no longer limited to the job market in my immediate geography. I can order practically any product I want online so it really doesn't matter if I live close to a city with great stores or not. I can use a plethora of apps to meet people and date. And of course, I have my car (and uber as a backup) so I don't need to be cramped into some terrible apartment in order to make the world accessible. We love to romanticize these crowded industrial era cities, but when given the choice, most people would rather not live in dense cities at all.
  - dionidium 5y ago

jhgb 5y ago

> I hate apartments, they are cramped, noisy, I don't have a private yard Is this something that can't be solved by building codes?

namibj 5y ago
Yes it can. Well, the private yard is harder, but also the least required.
- jhgb 5y ago
  When I visited my step-grandmother in (then) West Germany in the 1980s, she had a private yard, despite living in an apartment tower...in the middle of Frankfurt. Apparently such allotments are common in Germany, even in cities.
  - collegeburner 5y ago
    I'm curious how this would work? I imagine it would have to be smalla and fenced in, and still everybody could see in from above.
    - jhgb 5y ago
      It's not a CIA black site. It's a garden. It works just fine even if people can see you from above.
dionidium 5y ago
This is basically what single-family zoning is. People noticed that most people express a preference for detached housing with extra space, so they made the alternatives illegal. The problem is that this ignores a pretty fundamental fact about economics (and the universe itself) -- people have to be free to make tradeoffs. In some sense I prefer a Lamborghini to the Hyundai I own. I guess everybody would. So why don't we make the Hyundai illegal? Because all things are not equal and when I'm free to weigh my options I make tradeoffs. In my case, I have decided I would rather own the worse car, so that I have the flexibility to use my money for other things. Some people would prefer to do this with apartments, too -- maybe to save money or maybe to be close to the urban center or for some other reason -- except that most cities have made them illegal in most districts. It's no good to say in the abstract, "most people prefer houses to apartments, so developers should only be allowed to build houses." People don't make decisions in the abstract. They have constraints. They weigh tradeoffs. Single-family zoning is a bunch of rich people making Hyundais illegal, because they're rich enough to ignore the tradeoffs and they think it's pretty obvious that everybody prefers a Lamborghini, anyway. Meanwhile, the rest of us would really like the option to buy a Hyundai -- the option to make tradeoffs.

dionidium 5y ago

"Packed like sardines" is a phrase that probably needs to be retired. First of all, people aren't packed like a factory worker packs a tin of sardines; they choose to live in cities, because they either enjoy it or find the tradeoffs to be worth it. Second, our cities are nowhere near as dense as they once were. There was maybe a time when people really were all packed in together in a way almost all of them found uncomfortable, but that's not really true anymore. Manhattan's population density is down 40% since 1910. But, ultimately I think you should be free to live however you want to live. What you should not be free to do is enforce your way of living via regulations that prevent density. If other people want to build density on property they own, then they should be allowed to do that, even if you don't like it. Somebody once said that buying a plot of land near a city and expecting the areas around it never to densify is like buying a puppy and getting mad when it turns into a full-sized dog. Cities have to be allowed to grow, your preferences notwithstanding.

everdrive 5y ago
I don't think your arguments are incorrect, but I honestly couldn't imagine anything worse than needing to live in a city surrounded by people. I live in a suburb now, and it's still too dense for my tastes. I strongly believe in environmentalist issues, and I understand intellectually that we would be better off if we mostly resided in compact environments. One issue I see is that ultimately when there are enough people, choice is removed. Eventually there is only density left. My town isn't very dense right now, but there is definitely pressure to build more homes. When that happens, my interests will be harmed, and the interests of people who would like more density would be served. It's effectively a zero-sum game. You could say "I have a choice to move somewhere less dense" -- but so too do the people who would prefer density: they can move somewhere else and leave me alone. Now I'm not arguing that I should be able to prevent people from making my area more dense. What I am arguing is that under this regime, people who like density will always eventually win, and people who abhor density will always eventually lose. Why is it fair that one group's preferences matter and another group's preferences do not?
- dionidium 5y ago
  Because your preference requires onerous restrictions on your neighbor's right to the use of their own private property. Say your neighbor wants to build a duplex. You might not like it, but that's as far as your harm goes. To enforce your preference, though, you have to restrict your neighbor's behavior. The metaphorical "lines" here are pretty easy to draw, because they're literally property lines with direct physical representations.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

kiliantics 5y ago
The thing is that this person isn't even making a sacrifice. Their lifestyle is completely subsidised by those who make the sacrifice of living in a city and never get their dense, low-impact, cycling lifestyle subsidised but instead get billed with high rents, high pollution, high stress, etc.
jimmaswell 5y ago
Life has to be worth living, otherwise there's no point.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Sure, but since when does life's value derive from our high standard of living? Are people with lower standards of living in other countries, or people in the past, less happy? What data we have seems to suggest otherwise and, in fact, depression is extremely common in our luxury-focused societies. But boy, the companies selling us things sure have done a great job of convincing that happiness comes from buying disposable plastic goods and driving big cars dozens of miles to get groceries collected from around the world haven't they?

bgroat 5y ago

Why would I do this? It inconveniences me personally, and only assists the survival of the species?

reaperducer 5y ago

I hate this dystopia you people envision of living packed like sardines in a can. I've lived in both (most recently moved out of a house about a year ago and into an apartment), and prefer apartments for a lot of reasons of reasons too numerous to list here. I wouldn't bike, either. Distances are too long Well, duh. You just said that you chose to live in a rural area. No kidding distances are too long. That was your choice. But if you live in a city, they're not. Because of my jobs, I've gone back-and-forth between city life and rural/suburban life several times. Every time I move back to a city, I'm so happy to sell my cars and not have a car payment; or pay for car insurance; pay for gas; oil changes (which are expensive now); worrying about it getting dinged, scratched, stolen, or crashed into. Cars were fun when I was a teen-ager. But I'm an adult now, and have better things to do with my life and money. A lot more people think like me. Because real estate agents, real estate developers, and construction companies spend billions on advertising to make people think that way. Congratulations, they've successfully implanted all these fears into your mind, and you fell for them. We didn't work so we could move back into cities and live like broke 25 year olds. Older, wealthier, people tend to move into cities because the benefits of city living outweigh the hassles and expense of living in the suburbs. Chicago's Lake Shore Drive isn't lined with apartment buildings with students "packed like sardines." They're filled with $5-$20 million condos inhabited by bankers, lawyers, and the people who own the companies that the people who live in the suburbs work for.

ineedasername 5y ago

Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's a dystopia. I might as easily say the following: "Why would I do this? Over hundreds of years society has advanced to the point where I can easily have a ton of job opportunities without tearing myself away from the rest of my family and friends. I don't have to spend significant chunks of my time traveling back and forth from stores for basic necessities. If I have a medical emergency there's definitely a major trauma center close by, not to mention any chronic issue where I have multiple specialists in dozens of fields and access to ongoing treatment facilities at my fingertips. I don't want to live like some dystopian partial apocalypse set us back 80 years. A lot more people think like me. We didn't go through 20+ years of education so we could only see family at holidays and birthdays all to live like having to drive half an hour for groceries is actually some pastoral & pure way of life. Honestly it sounds like it sucks." Both your point of view and the one that I presented above (which is not my actual opinion) get it wrong. The truth is that we all make tradeoffs in these decisions, and we all choose where our own lines are, and there aren't just 2 options, it's a spectrum.

collegeburner 5y ago
Both are valid preferences but nobody is pushing legislation that would gradually coerce more people into the rural life. Not true of the sardine life.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  but nobody is pushing legislation that would gradually coerce more people into the rural life Sure there are, at the federal, state & local level. Here's a few examples that a quick search turned up: https://www.rd.usda.gov/programs-services/all-programs https://www.rd.usda.gov/programs-services/all-programs https://www.ahfc.us/buy/loan-programs/rural-programs https://www.ahfc.us/buy/loan-programs/rural-programs https://www.kansascommerce.gov/program/taxes-and-financing/rural-opportunity-zones-roz/ https://www.kansascommerce.gov/program/taxes-and-financing/r... https://www.harmony.mn.us/index.asp?SEC=022F2A6B-7FAA-4E0D-88F0-ED95E1CB6D8C&Type=B_BASIC https://www.harmony.mn.us/index.asp?SEC=022F2A6B-7FAA-4E0D-8...

scythe 5y ago

There are two competing perspectives among the people who advocate for a return to building dense urban environments: - environmentalism, which asks people to make personal sacrifices for the greater good (environment) - urbanism, which asks people to allow others to live in denser, more efficient configurations The problem we have is that the rhetoric is environmentalist but the policy is urbanist. I don't want to argue that you should make sacrifices. It's not essential to what I see as the core political-economic program I'm advocating for city development. Nobody anywhere ever is proposing to make you live in an apartment. But you're constantly asking me to defend this: >I hate this dystopia you people envision of living packed like sardines in a can. I never argue for this. I argue that zoning restrictions should be relaxed. I argue that bike commuters should be supported. I argue that buses should be funded. I argue that old poorly insulated buildings should be replaceable. But radicals always talk more. I have a job. I can't join every discussion about urbanism and re-re-re-reiterate the case for liberty as a form of moderation. Stop hyper-focusing on the most extreme version of urbanization in your complaints. It's not going to happen anyway.

marcosdumay 5y ago

> I wouldn't bike, either. Distances are too long Well, optimally, light transit would carry you to and from heavy public transit. The problem is that this requires good heavy public transit available. On places that rely on cars, it's normally not there.

Philip-J-Fry 5y ago

Apartments don't need to be cramped and noisy. We could build roomy apartments with private outdoor areas that would still be more space efficient than a normal house. I wouldn't mind living in an apartment, a backyard isn't a huge priority and these are perfect for single people, couples and small families. The key thing is that an apartment and what your perception of an apartment is aren't the same. There's nothing that says it has to be this way.

teakettle42 5y ago
An apartment by definition requires packing people in closely with their neighbors.
- thih9 5y ago
  Yes; then again, who said it doesn't? I guess grandparent's point was about perceived comfort.
  - teakettle42 5y ago
    I would say that’s inherently and inescapably “cramped and noisy”.
    - thih9 5y ago
      I've seen apartments that seemed spacious and quiet to me.
- poopypoopington 5y ago
  No it doesn't, you can build big well insulated apartments.
  - teakettle42 5y ago
    You could partially mitigate the noise problem, but it’d be quite expensive to do. Why would a commercial (or government) development project invest in something unprofitable (or unnecessary to their requirements)?

long_time_gone 5y ago

> I hate this dystopia you people envision of living packed like sardines in a can. This is a strawman. I live in a city and am not packed like a sardine in a can. We even have single-family homes in my city (here's one in a decent school boundary for $340k [1]). Lots of people also live in condos in 3-story walk-ups where they each have a private deck and share a large backyard. This is in Chicago, one of the largest and densest cities in the US. Your view of city living as exclusively high rises and tiny living quarters does not represent reality for the vast majority of city-dwellers. > A lot more people think like me. We didn't work so we could move back into cities and live like broke 25 year olds. The life you're envisioning honestly sounds like it sucks. If not I'm open to hear why, but you'll need to convince most people that it's better, not just that it's greener. According to PEW the breakdown is 14% Rural, 31% Urban, and 55% Suburban [2]. Rural preferences are in the minority, not majority. [1] https://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/5019-W-Wilson-Ave-60630/home/13478874 https://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/5019-W-Wilson-Ave-60630/ho... [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/demographic-and-economic-trends-in-urban-suburban-and-rural-communities/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/demogra...

thatfrenchguy 5y ago

> Why would I do this? I hate apartments, they are cramped, noisy, This is not 1970 anymore, have you ever spend time in a modern building?

bluefirebrand 5y ago
Plenty of apartment buildings from 1970 are still around. And they are indeed cramped and noisy. I've had to listen to my neighbours arguments and sex and whatever else in every apartment I've ever lived in. I couldn't get out of that lifestyle fast enough.
- jandrewrogers 5y ago
  That is far from universal though. The apartments I've lived in have been essentially soundproof, and it isn't just a function of age -- one built in 1910 and the other built in 2020. I never hear my neighbors, even when they are being loud. How much space constitutes "cramped" in your view? My current apartment isn't that much smaller than the suburban house I used to live in, and that house had rooms that were almost never used.
  - bluefirebrand 5y ago
    1000 square feet or less is cramped, for me. You will have a small kitchen, only one bathroom, one bedroom, and not enough room in your living space for much more than a couch and a table. In a small space like that you can't have any hobbies that take up space. You certainly can't have a family. You can't have people stay over unless they are ok sleeping on a floor or couch. Chances are you can't even have two people use the kitchen at the same time. You can't host big gatherings like Christmas or Thanksgiving. Anyways I'm glad your experience with apartments was ok. Mine sucked. I'm also willing to bet that you not hearing your neighbours was a function of having respectful and quiet neighbours more than any quality in the construction of the apartment. You mean you never had people stomping on the roof above you? You never had people arguing in the hallways next door? You never had people blasting music so loud it shook the floor at 2am? Lucky.

throwaway894345 5y ago

Agreed. I live in a major US city, and I'm eager to move away. Not only are cities cramped and noisy, but they have a lot more crime, they're dirty, they're congested, and it's often difficult or impossible to get any regular access to nature. Similarly, regarding commuting, a car is a lot more pleasant than being freezing or else drenched in sweat/rain/snow 90% of the time, and it's also a lot better than being packed into a small box that smells of urine, vomit, BO, and cigarette smoke with a hundred other people for an hour and a half each day. Rideshare is better than cycling or public transit but more expensive and typically less convenient than owning a car. Overall, it's not really surprising that living in cities is associated with a sharp increase in depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders. I'm sure there are ways we can improve our ecological footprint without trading off everything that makes life worth living (maybe we should ship less plastic/electronic trash from China?).

BoxOfRain 5y ago

Yeah I'd be a miserable alcoholic within a month of living in a city, I'm just not wired for it at all. I get depressed living long enough in a place I can't see the stars, let alone being able to almost taste the pollution every day. A lot of city-dwellers seem to think people like you or I don't exist or can be 'nudged' (behavioural psychology word for 'gaslighted' in my opinion) into adopting urban life for an abstract greater good. People sell these massive vertical arcologies as some kind of ideal but frankly I'd rather jump off the top of one than live in it. If urbanisation became mandatory I'd literally emmigrate to anywhere it wasn't even if it meant giving up my profession, I'd rather be lonely in a foreign land than forced into an urban life I'd actively despise a good 2/3s of my existence in. I cannot stress enough how deeply I reject the idea of moving to a city, and the lengths I will go to so that I can retain a rural life.

mywittyname 5y ago
Rural living can be inefficient, especially for people who want the best of both worlds: lots of space and quick access to amenities. Fossil fuels are what made this possible, in moving away from them, rural living might mean living closer to how things were 100+ years ago. Or maybe it means living an rural lifestyle is just an expensive luxury.
- nayuki 5y ago
  Not just fossil fuels, but urban infrastructure dedicated to helping people who don't live in the city - highways, parking lots, street parking.
  - 1234letshaveatw 5y ago
    That same infrastructure supplies consumables to urban residents and removes garbage, the residents aren't self-sustaining. The infrastructure doesn't exist solely for the benefit of visitors.
    - nayuki 5y ago

nsv 5y ago

Apartments don't have to be cramped, they can be spacious, and they don't have to be noisy, if you build them with thick walls. So the question becomes: why aren't we building more apartments like this? City living (at least near me) is definitely worse than suburban or rural living, but I don't think that's an unchangeable fact. More and better dense housing, mixed use areas, public transportation, and public common space are all vital to a healthy city. I believe that the lack of these is what drives people out of the city and into suburbs.

incahoots 5y ago

>I wouldn't bike, either. Distances are too long (can be over 40 miles to go somewhere) and I'd be soaked in sweat after even a short ride most of the year. You try riding an e-bike? I have grandmas passing me on trails and I'm avid cyclist, it's great to see more folks on bikes than every before.

schainks 5y ago

> I hate this dystopia you people envision When you refer to people that don’t make the same choices as you as an “other”, do you find it surprising when you and them want the same things, but in different ways? And that you can _both_ actually help each other?

Hakashiro 5y ago

I've been living in apartments for most of my life, and the constant petty fighting with the rest of the people living there got so infuriatingly annoying that, now that I'm living in a semi-d, it's almost like I'm in heaven. I used to be an advocate for high-density buildings, but they do suck, and suck a lot. OTOH, high density buildings allow me to have two GP clinics literally within 1 minute of walking whereas if I lived in a smaller rural village... good luck with that. Same goes for groceries, public transport (forget about parking, and you can text or read a book while you drive) High density buildings are very convenient, eco-friendly, practical, and allow land developers to get more money out of the same land, and governments to claw back more tax from the same horizontal footprint. But I still will avoid apartments like the plague and get myself a semi-d at the very least, if I can help it.

wlecometo 5y ago

Indeed, people should not be forced and they should be able to choose. And depending where they live different rules could apply. for example if you live in the city there's no point on having a car and you should rely on a bicycle and public transports if you live in a rural area you should be able to get some of the electricity you need from solar panels and windmills. we have room to allow choices and live more sustainable, without forcing one way of thinking to everyone..in the same it was done with this car centric world