5 ms·

"It's the poor use of land right now that I believe is the main driver of poor affordability of housing." The assumption that everyone who wants to live in {pl

by anamax 5y ago

"It's the poor use of land right now that I believe is the main driver of poor affordability of housing." The assumption that everyone who wants to live in {place} should be able to do so is interesting. It's quite likely that {place} is a good place to live because there aren't too many people who live there. If that's true, we either come up with some way to limit the number of people or we destroy {place}. As to the "but what about the poor people who provide services?" - sorry - I don't have have any sympathy for rich people who don't pay the help enough. Said rich people can do without.

beebmam 5y ago
>It's quite likely that {place} is a good place to live because there aren't too many people who live there. Citation needed. Intuitively to me, it seems that {place} is a good (or bad) place to live because of a lot of reasons, not just one, as you suggest.
- anamax 5y ago
  "because" was the wrong word as {place} isn't good just because there aren't too many people. ("not too many" is necessary, not sufficient.) However, "{place} won't be a good place to live if there are too many people there" is intuitively obvious. Consider Yosemite Valley. Do you really think that it would still be a good place if 1M people lived there? Okay - how about 100k? (There are easily 100k people who would love to live in YV.) Heck - consider Disneyland. Too many people is a horrible experience.
  - pertymcpert 5y ago
    Consider London.
    - anamax 5y ago
      Note that "{place} is not good because of too many people" happens at different numbers for different people. Some people think that YV already has too many people while others would be happy with 1M people. That said, it's not true that every place can remain good with an arbitrarily large number of people. More to the point, it's not true that every {good} place can remain good with as many people who would like to live there.
      - closeparen 5y ago
        People have different preferences, and different kinds of places are strengthened or weakened by different kinds of development. A pastoral scene is strengthened by pristine nature. An urban scene is strengthened by people and culture. However: a) Permitting systems are biased towards preferences for lower intensity; it is asymmetrically easier to block buildings than to force them through. b) People who would prefer to live in more intense settings are just as harmed by low-intensity settings as you would be by higher intensity. Their preferences are just as important. There has to be a sorting. But… c) Postwar suburban sprawl, with its quarter acres and strip malls and pedestrian hostility, is the near universal law of the land. Even in those places that are crying out to be more urban, like the vacant lots within or the slightly lower intensity suburbs neighborhoods encircling the cores of our thriving cities. Even though there is so much diversity in preference and place-appropriateness, the space of what can be built today is extremely homogeneous. The iconic neighborhoods, vistas, differences the character of the built environments of different places mostly comes down to how much is left, of which eras, prior to the disastrous suburban mania we’re stuck with today.
        anamax 5y ago
        > An urban scene is strengthened by people and culture. Not so fast. Rome wasn't strengthened by the Visigoths. More to your argument, while London is arguably unchanged by the addition of 1k or even 10k people, it is changed by the addition of 100M or even 10M. Maybe it's still good, but by a different definition. Forward reference: adding 10M people to London will necessarily destroy many of the "iconic neighborhoods" you're so fond of below. > Even in those places that are crying out to be more urban, like the vacant lots within or the slightly lower intensity suburbs There's a huge difference between a vacant lot in Manhattan and the burbs, which aren't "slightly lower intensity". > the cores of our thriving cities Our thriving cities where? > The iconic neighborhoods, vistas, differences the character of the built environments of different places mostly comes down to how much is left, of which eras, prior to the disastrous suburban mania we’re stuck with today. There's a typo in the above that I can't error-correct. That said, the suburbs didn't cause urban decay. As to the vistas, you're only counting urban vistas, and nothing that has happened in the suburbs has affected the NYC skyline. I get that you want to live in an "iconic neighborhood", whatever that means, but the other residents of those neighborhoods get to vote too, and many of them have decided "the hell with that." More to the point, what happens in suburbs has nothing to do with how those neighborhoods have fared over time.
closeparen 5y ago
Every square inch of America is governed according to the philosophy that what makes it valuable is having not too many people. Save for a few dozen blocks of half a dozen cities. And even then we’re suspicious. Our most iconic and beloved streetscapes are mostly non-conforming with postwar codes. But we obviously - obviously! - love these places. They are our travel destinations, our movie settings, our identity and sense of place. Superheroes defending the American way of life don’t defend Developer Model #4 on Pleasant View Court or the Denny’s in the strip mall, they defend fucking Manhattan. Yet our entire planning and zoning regime - including Manhattan’s own, to a surprising degree, treats it like like some kind of nuclear accident. I would like proper urbanism to be be on a few hundred more blocks, or a few thousand blocks, maybe even a few hundred thousand blocks. Still nowhere near 10% of the developable or inhabited land area. But no, not only does “not everyone want to live stacked on top of each other,” we must make sure walkable communities are kept so rare that one of those little hell boxes “nobody wants” costs $3 million. Every single unit permitted is its own little bloodbath, because no place, not even the heart of a city, is allowed to grow as a city anymore. All sprawl, all the time, exclusively.

by anamax 5y ago

beebmam 5y ago

>It's quite likely that {place} is a good place to live because there aren't too many people who live there. Citation needed. Intuitively to me, it seems that {place} is a good (or bad) place to live because of a lot of reasons, not just one, as you suggest.

anamax 5y ago
"because" was the wrong word as {place} isn't good just because there aren't too many people. ("not too many" is necessary, not sufficient.) However, "{place} won't be a good place to live if there are too many people there" is intuitively obvious. Consider Yosemite Valley. Do you really think that it would still be a good place if 1M people lived there? Okay - how about 100k? (There are easily 100k people who would love to live in YV.) Heck - consider Disneyland. Too many people is a horrible experience.
- pertymcpert 5y ago
  Consider London.
  - anamax 5y ago
    Note that "{place} is not good because of too many people" happens at different numbers for different people. Some people think that YV already has too many people while others would be happy with 1M people. That said, it's not true that every place can remain good with an arbitrarily large number of people. More to the point, it's not true that every {good} place can remain good with as many people who would like to live there.
    - closeparen 5y ago
      People have different preferences, and different kinds of places are strengthened or weakened by different kinds of development. A pastoral scene is strengthened by pristine nature. An urban scene is strengthened by people and culture. However: a) Permitting systems are biased towards preferences for lower intensity; it is asymmetrically easier to block buildings than to force them through. b) People who would prefer to live in more intense settings are just as harmed by low-intensity settings as you would be by higher intensity. Their preferences are just as important. There has to be a sorting. But… c) Postwar suburban sprawl, with its quarter acres and strip malls and pedestrian hostility, is the near universal law of the land. Even in those places that are crying out to be more urban, like the vacant lots within or the slightly lower intensity suburbs neighborhoods encircling the cores of our thriving cities. Even though there is so much diversity in preference and place-appropriateness, the space of what can be built today is extremely homogeneous. The iconic neighborhoods, vistas, differences the character of the built environments of different places mostly comes down to how much is left, of which eras, prior to the disastrous suburban mania we’re stuck with today.
      - anamax 5y ago
        > An urban scene is strengthened by people and culture. Not so fast. Rome wasn't strengthened by the Visigoths. More to your argument, while London is arguably unchanged by the addition of 1k or even 10k people, it is changed by the addition of 100M or even 10M. Maybe it's still good, but by a different definition. Forward reference: adding 10M people to London will necessarily destroy many of the "iconic neighborhoods" you're so fond of below. > Even in those places that are crying out to be more urban, like the vacant lots within or the slightly lower intensity suburbs There's a huge difference between a vacant lot in Manhattan and the burbs, which aren't "slightly lower intensity". > the cores of our thriving cities Our thriving cities where? > The iconic neighborhoods, vistas, differences the character of the built environments of different places mostly comes down to how much is left, of which eras, prior to the disastrous suburban mania we’re stuck with today. There's a typo in the above that I can't error-correct. That said, the suburbs didn't cause urban decay. As to the vistas, you're only counting urban vistas, and nothing that has happened in the suburbs has affected the NYC skyline. I get that you want to live in an "iconic neighborhood", whatever that means, but the other residents of those neighborhoods get to vote too, and many of them have decided "the hell with that." More to the point, what happens in suburbs has nothing to do with how those neighborhoods have fared over time.

closeparen 5y ago

Every square inch of America is governed according to the philosophy that what makes it valuable is having not too many people. Save for a few dozen blocks of half a dozen cities. And even then we’re suspicious. Our most iconic and beloved streetscapes are mostly non-conforming with postwar codes. But we obviously - obviously! - love these places. They are our travel destinations, our movie settings, our identity and sense of place. Superheroes defending the American way of life don’t defend Developer Model #4 on Pleasant View Court or the Denny’s in the strip mall, they defend fucking Manhattan. Yet our entire planning and zoning regime - including Manhattan’s own, to a surprising degree, treats it like like some kind of nuclear accident. I would like proper urbanism to be be on a few hundred more blocks, or a few thousand blocks, maybe even a few hundred thousand blocks. Still nowhere near 10% of the developable or inhabited land area. But no, not only does “not everyone want to live stacked on top of each other,” we must make sure walkable communities are kept so rare that one of those little hell boxes “nobody wants” costs $3 million. Every single unit permitted is its own little bloodbath, because no place, not even the heart of a city, is allowed to grow as a city anymore. All sprawl, all the time, exclusively.