8 ms·

In a perfect world, we would have dense cities, we would have wild land that belongs to nature, and we would have farmland; and most land would fall into one of

In a perfect world, we would have dense cities, we would have wild land that belongs to nature, and we would have farmland; and most land would fall into one of these classifications. While we might see "market share" fluctuate between these, a relatively stable population guarantees that we would not see a huge loss of wild land. In reality, every state, every city, and every town are in a de facto competition for tax dollars, and there is no central planning. So instead of adding dense housing to desirable Burlington, we clearcut forests or replace farmland to add low density housing 10 miles away in a subdivision near Shelburne. That family that was charmed to move to Vermont by the shops on Bank st will end up driving to the nearby big box store in Shelburne instead. The traffic will get worse, local farmland starts disappearing because suburban land is more valuable on a square foot basis, and once all the farms are gone the process begins again another 5-10 miles out. It's a vicious cycle, and it creates an ecosystem where most people can't even enjoy the city they came to love in the first place because they live miles and miles away (and good luck with traffic and parking)

mcdonje 5y ago
Yes. Cities should build up instead of out. That means changing building codes and zoning laws to reduce restrictions on building heights. It also means investing in transportation that can move people around with less space, like light rail. Refusing to build up will lead to sprawl. Car-centric transportation infrastructure will lead to sprawl and traffic jams. Sprawl a bad scenario for everyone, including car lovers.
- DocTomoe 5y ago
  Building up destroys the desirability of places. No-one wants to live in cypherpunk environments. See https://www.clemensgritl.com/video https://www.clemensgritl.com/video
  - SwetDrems 5y ago
    Building up doesn't mean building a cypherpunk environment. Building 4/5 story buildings with units for families is enough for healthy urbanization.
    - ericmay 5y ago
      I agree, but would probably place residential height limit around 3 stories (jump out of the window rule), and then for things like hospitals you can go a little taller maybe up to 20 stories. We have a serious problem in talking past each other though. When people talk about building density the conversation starts around skyscrapers (bad) like Hong Kong or something, but what we need is just medium-density, mixed use development so lots of single family homes, narrow streets, walking/biking, and of course town houses and apartments so we can get variety and mixed income levels living in the same place. The rich family has the giant house on the corner. The young couple fresh out of school lives in an apartment down the street. They see each other every day at the coffee shop or at the park in the neighborhood, or maybe even a local church, gym, or office. And in building this way we can weave in healthy natural aspects, trees, flowers, gardens, etc. and animals that are better adapted for these environments can live or "visit" these areas. Then as you get further away from this town/city you just get more and more hills and countryside and independent farms. We know how to do this. We choose not to. It's not profitable for Mercedes if we all walk to work. It's not profitable for Conagra if we grow our produce or buy from an independent farmer. Not that these companies are necessarily (although sometimes they are) evil or anything, it's just an incentives alignment. And unfortunately government officials literally just do not understand what we need to do, so they're like empty vessels chasing things like Sidewalk Labs in Toronto or the Smart Cities Challenge in Columbus where all it amounts to is a corporate handout because the only way to solve a lot of the problems we have is just to build correctly. No amount of EVs fixes our problems (I have an EV btw). What does fix our problems is when families have 1 car per family instead of 2-4, and 90% of their day-to-day activities are within a short walking distance. We need a lot less of this giant SUV to Costco 30 miles away because you're cosplaying living in nature attitude. This is what an appropriately dense city looks like: https://twitter.com/trad_arch_bdays/status/1517141185667600384?s=21&t=V2DUolwYT78lIlkdgkic9A https://twitter.com/trad_arch_bdays/status/15171411856676003... This is what a correct neighborhood looks like: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/37/9b/26/379b266652e0a2013c0cff83b4011bfa.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/37/9b/26/379b266652e0a2013c0c... This is an anti-pattern. It’s devoid of life. https://facts.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/edward-he-uKyzXEc2k_s-unsplash.jpg https://facts.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/edward-he-uKyzX... This is also absolutely dead. There is no nature here. http://media.beam.usnews.com/70/0d/89b92a674c3b894107a03641e5c5/151130-suburb-stock.jpg http://media.beam.usnews.com/70/0d/89b92a674c3b894107a03641e... Idk what it looks like yet but I'm going to figure out a way to fix this.
  - L_Rahman 5y ago
    If this is true, why do the cities with the tallest buildings have the highest cost per unit area of housing and commercial real estate, population density and GDP per capita?
    - DocTomoe 5y ago
      These "tallest buildings" usually are not mass-available apartment buildings - they are mostly office buildings and house few, exclusive apartments. Once you pack thousands of people into flats in such buildings, the appeal shrinks, quickly.
  - lovich 5y ago
    I kinda want to live in a cyberpunk environment but I also don’t have kids which makes that an easier choice. My spouse and I take our vacations in dense urban centers instead of tropical or rural destinations precisely because we like the culture and energy of super high density environments
- giantg2 5y ago
  "Cities should build up instead of out. That means changing building codes and zoning laws to reduce restrictions on building heights." I'll probably be hated for this, as usual... You also have to have people who want to live there. Personal preferences and overall population seem to be important factors overlooked (or conveniently ignored) by many during these conversations. It's more convenient to focus solely on zoning.
  - helen___keller 5y ago
    I think most places with this sort of zoning discussion (cities) have no shortage of demand for housing
    - giantg2 5y ago
      It can vary from neighborhood to neighborhood. It depends on what type of demand there is too (sfh vs apt, etc). If the majority of people had a preference for condos, then we wouldn't see large single family homes being developed. Even in areas where zoning is more lax (many suburbs).
      - helen___keller 5y ago
        > If the majority of people had a preference for condos, then we wouldn't see large single family homes being developed I'm saying that these sort of zoning discussions are most common in areas that are (a) very high demand broadly across the entire housing stock, and (b) very restrictive on what can be built where For example, I live in Cambridge, MA. There is a critical housing shortage. There is very little choice in what gets developed; development generally only happens if you have a large team to push the development through the necessary approvals and reviews, such as telling the zoning board that if they allow your non-compliant building then you'll sponsor a park and set aside 10% of your units as income restricted. Even the existing structures tend to be "illegal" because they were grandfathered in from the 1920s or earlier, when zoning did not exist. The only new developments that meet this bar are ultra expensive condo buildings and offices. Whether the demand exists is not in question. Whatever gets built, people will live in it. But there is very much a question of what is allowed to be built. Some people want more condo buildings. Some people say it ruins the neighborhood character. But whether a condo building can find residents isn't really in question.
m0llusk 5y ago
Competition can't be it because sprawl is terribly uncompetitive by almost any metric. It seems more like there is a large skew between what people think will make them happy and what actually does work out to produce happiness.
- helen___keller 5y ago
  It's a local optimum. Wealthy suburbs are better than small farms for tax dollars. There's lots of demand for housing due to a neighboring municipality's desirability (Burlington, VT). Ergo, it's worth replacing small farms with suburbs that supply this demand.
- JaimeThompson 5y ago
  >between what people think will make them happy and what actually does work out to produce happiness. People aren't all the same some like having a yard, a garden, and no people living right next to their walls.
  - helen___keller 5y ago
    Right, there's a LOT of rural and semi-rural places in Vermont already if you aren't a fan of cities. In particular though, we're seeing subdivisions of housing sprout up in municipalities neighboring Burlington, typical suburban developments that prey off the desire to live in/near the city but avoid the high city prices (And the high city prices stem from the fact that the city itself, already more or less "fully" developed, has no incentives to upzone and plan for growth) For example, take this listing https://www.zillow.com/community/kwiniaska-ridge/29091765_plid/ https://www.zillow.com/community/kwiniaska-ridge/29091765_pl... Look at the descriptions used to sell it: > Just minutes from the lake and downtown Burlington you have everything you need and already do. This isn't aimed at people looking to escape the city. This is aimed at people looking to buy into the city at a lower price point.
    - nerdponx 5y ago
      That or it's aimed at people trying to have it both ways. I know a couple of people like this, they claim they want to get out of the city, but also aren't willing to live more than 5 minutes from a supermarket. The result is a compromise: suburban sprawl.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
>and every town are in a de facto competition for tax dollars, So (mostly) turn off the faucet and make everywhere pay closer to their own way. Not getting $1-$1.10 back on the dollar isn't gonna bankrupt rural areas. It just means you the yuppies will have to suffer through the state highway to the u-pick orchard being replaced every 12yr instead of 10. The whole "pay taxes and then let whoever you paid them to give you them back with strings attached about exactly how you use it" model and designing to qualify for funding that said model incentivizes is exactly how you wind up with boondoggle sprawl. If places were using their own money things would look very different.
- mechanical_bear 5y ago
  > Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    > Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Since when is "the community" roughly analogous to "yuppies" and since when is being a yuppie a bad thing?
    - mechanical_bear 5y ago
      At least some would identify with the lifestyle, etc you deemed “yuppie”. You understand what you are doing with comments like that, it’s divisive and not productive. Edit: I won’t edit my comment to better address your comment since you edited after I responded.
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        Surely some identify as yuppies but I think that's immaterial here. Yuppie isn't a slur. It's a colloquial expression for a set of demographics. You know what's divisive and not productive? Drive-by low effort comments quoting the guidelines and projecting offense on other's behalf.
dahfizz 5y ago
> That family that was charmed to move to Vermont by the shops on Bank st will end up driving to the nearby big box store in Shelburne instead. Frankly, I don't think this happens with any frequency. The thing that makes Burlington so nice is how quiet, clean, and spacious it is. Nobody moves to Burlington expecting it to be NYC. If you try to make Burlington into NYC, you will ruin it. People move to VT to be in nature. To be spread out. And it's a nice benefit that they can visit a cool, small city every once in a while.
- helen___keller 5y ago
  > People move to VT to be in nature. To be spread out. This describes the vast majority of Vermont, but not Burlington. It's not NYC but it's also not Montpelier and it's definitely not Stowe. Burlington is the "small city" for people who want everything local - local brewers, local farms, co-ops and farmer's markets, etc. I'm not suggesting that Burlington should build highrises everywhere. I'm suggesting that the building forms that already exist in downtown Burlington - tightly packed 2-4 story buildings - should perhaps continue a little further out. It's possible to have urbanism that isn't Manhattan. With unchecked suburban sprawl, Burlington is going to become the opposite of what it represents now - generic big box stores and chains.
  - dont__panic 5y ago
    Precisely. Just look at what's happening to the Front Range in Colorado -- Boulder and Fort Collins specifically -- for a peek at the future of Burlington.

mcdonje 5y ago

Yes. Cities should build up instead of out. That means changing building codes and zoning laws to reduce restrictions on building heights. It also means investing in transportation that can move people around with less space, like light rail. Refusing to build up will lead to sprawl. Car-centric transportation infrastructure will lead to sprawl and traffic jams. Sprawl a bad scenario for everyone, including car lovers.

DocTomoe 5y ago
Building up destroys the desirability of places. No-one wants to live in cypherpunk environments. See https://www.clemensgritl.com/video https://www.clemensgritl.com/video
- SwetDrems 5y ago
  Building up doesn't mean building a cypherpunk environment. Building 4/5 story buildings with units for families is enough for healthy urbanization.
  - ericmay 5y ago
    I agree, but would probably place residential height limit around 3 stories (jump out of the window rule), and then for things like hospitals you can go a little taller maybe up to 20 stories. We have a serious problem in talking past each other though. When people talk about building density the conversation starts around skyscrapers (bad) like Hong Kong or something, but what we need is just medium-density, mixed use development so lots of single family homes, narrow streets, walking/biking, and of course town houses and apartments so we can get variety and mixed income levels living in the same place. The rich family has the giant house on the corner. The young couple fresh out of school lives in an apartment down the street. They see each other every day at the coffee shop or at the park in the neighborhood, or maybe even a local church, gym, or office. And in building this way we can weave in healthy natural aspects, trees, flowers, gardens, etc. and animals that are better adapted for these environments can live or "visit" these areas. Then as you get further away from this town/city you just get more and more hills and countryside and independent farms. We know how to do this. We choose not to. It's not profitable for Mercedes if we all walk to work. It's not profitable for Conagra if we grow our produce or buy from an independent farmer. Not that these companies are necessarily (although sometimes they are) evil or anything, it's just an incentives alignment. And unfortunately government officials literally just do not understand what we need to do, so they're like empty vessels chasing things like Sidewalk Labs in Toronto or the Smart Cities Challenge in Columbus where all it amounts to is a corporate handout because the only way to solve a lot of the problems we have is just to build correctly. No amount of EVs fixes our problems (I have an EV btw). What does fix our problems is when families have 1 car per family instead of 2-4, and 90% of their day-to-day activities are within a short walking distance. We need a lot less of this giant SUV to Costco 30 miles away because you're cosplaying living in nature attitude. This is what an appropriately dense city looks like: https://twitter.com/trad_arch_bdays/status/1517141185667600384?s=21&t=V2DUolwYT78lIlkdgkic9A https://twitter.com/trad_arch_bdays/status/15171411856676003... This is what a correct neighborhood looks like: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/37/9b/26/379b266652e0a2013c0cff83b4011bfa.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/37/9b/26/379b266652e0a2013c0c... This is an anti-pattern. It’s devoid of life. https://facts.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/edward-he-uKyzXEc2k_s-unsplash.jpg https://facts.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/edward-he-uKyzX... This is also absolutely dead. There is no nature here. http://media.beam.usnews.com/70/0d/89b92a674c3b894107a03641e5c5/151130-suburb-stock.jpg http://media.beam.usnews.com/70/0d/89b92a674c3b894107a03641e... Idk what it looks like yet but I'm going to figure out a way to fix this.
- L_Rahman 5y ago
  If this is true, why do the cities with the tallest buildings have the highest cost per unit area of housing and commercial real estate, population density and GDP per capita?
  - DocTomoe 5y ago
    These "tallest buildings" usually are not mass-available apartment buildings - they are mostly office buildings and house few, exclusive apartments. Once you pack thousands of people into flats in such buildings, the appeal shrinks, quickly.
- lovich 5y ago
  I kinda want to live in a cyberpunk environment but I also don’t have kids which makes that an easier choice. My spouse and I take our vacations in dense urban centers instead of tropical or rural destinations precisely because we like the culture and energy of super high density environments
giantg2 5y ago
"Cities should build up instead of out. That means changing building codes and zoning laws to reduce restrictions on building heights." I'll probably be hated for this, as usual... You also have to have people who want to live there. Personal preferences and overall population seem to be important factors overlooked (or conveniently ignored) by many during these conversations. It's more convenient to focus solely on zoning.
- helen___keller 5y ago
  I think most places with this sort of zoning discussion (cities) have no shortage of demand for housing
  - giantg2 5y ago
    It can vary from neighborhood to neighborhood. It depends on what type of demand there is too (sfh vs apt, etc). If the majority of people had a preference for condos, then we wouldn't see large single family homes being developed. Even in areas where zoning is more lax (many suburbs).
    - helen___keller 5y ago
      > If the majority of people had a preference for condos, then we wouldn't see large single family homes being developed I'm saying that these sort of zoning discussions are most common in areas that are (a) very high demand broadly across the entire housing stock, and (b) very restrictive on what can be built where For example, I live in Cambridge, MA. There is a critical housing shortage. There is very little choice in what gets developed; development generally only happens if you have a large team to push the development through the necessary approvals and reviews, such as telling the zoning board that if they allow your non-compliant building then you'll sponsor a park and set aside 10% of your units as income restricted. Even the existing structures tend to be "illegal" because they were grandfathered in from the 1920s or earlier, when zoning did not exist. The only new developments that meet this bar are ultra expensive condo buildings and offices. Whether the demand exists is not in question. Whatever gets built, people will live in it. But there is very much a question of what is allowed to be built. Some people want more condo buildings. Some people say it ruins the neighborhood character. But whether a condo building can find residents isn't really in question.

m0llusk 5y ago

Competition can't be it because sprawl is terribly uncompetitive by almost any metric. It seems more like there is a large skew between what people think will make them happy and what actually does work out to produce happiness.

helen___keller 5y ago
It's a local optimum. Wealthy suburbs are better than small farms for tax dollars. There's lots of demand for housing due to a neighboring municipality's desirability (Burlington, VT). Ergo, it's worth replacing small farms with suburbs that supply this demand.
JaimeThompson 5y ago
>between what people think will make them happy and what actually does work out to produce happiness. People aren't all the same some like having a yard, a garden, and no people living right next to their walls.
- helen___keller 5y ago
  Right, there's a LOT of rural and semi-rural places in Vermont already if you aren't a fan of cities. In particular though, we're seeing subdivisions of housing sprout up in municipalities neighboring Burlington, typical suburban developments that prey off the desire to live in/near the city but avoid the high city prices (And the high city prices stem from the fact that the city itself, already more or less "fully" developed, has no incentives to upzone and plan for growth) For example, take this listing https://www.zillow.com/community/kwiniaska-ridge/29091765_plid/ https://www.zillow.com/community/kwiniaska-ridge/29091765_pl... Look at the descriptions used to sell it: > Just minutes from the lake and downtown Burlington you have everything you need and already do. This isn't aimed at people looking to escape the city. This is aimed at people looking to buy into the city at a lower price point.
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    That or it's aimed at people trying to have it both ways. I know a couple of people like this, they claim they want to get out of the city, but also aren't willing to live more than 5 minutes from a supermarket. The result is a compromise: suburban sprawl.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

>and every town are in a de facto competition for tax dollars, So (mostly) turn off the faucet and make everywhere pay closer to their own way. Not getting $1-$1.10 back on the dollar isn't gonna bankrupt rural areas. It just means you the yuppies will have to suffer through the state highway to the u-pick orchard being replaced every 12yr instead of 10. The whole "pay taxes and then let whoever you paid them to give you them back with strings attached about exactly how you use it" model and designing to qualify for funding that said model incentivizes is exactly how you wind up with boondoggle sprawl. If places were using their own money things would look very different.

mechanical_bear 5y ago
> Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  > Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Since when is "the community" roughly analogous to "yuppies" and since when is being a yuppie a bad thing?
  - mechanical_bear 5y ago
    At least some would identify with the lifestyle, etc you deemed “yuppie”. You understand what you are doing with comments like that, it’s divisive and not productive. Edit: I won’t edit my comment to better address your comment since you edited after I responded.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Surely some identify as yuppies but I think that's immaterial here. Yuppie isn't a slur. It's a colloquial expression for a set of demographics. You know what's divisive and not productive? Drive-by low effort comments quoting the guidelines and projecting offense on other's behalf.

dahfizz 5y ago

> That family that was charmed to move to Vermont by the shops on Bank st will end up driving to the nearby big box store in Shelburne instead. Frankly, I don't think this happens with any frequency. The thing that makes Burlington so nice is how quiet, clean, and spacious it is. Nobody moves to Burlington expecting it to be NYC. If you try to make Burlington into NYC, you will ruin it. People move to VT to be in nature. To be spread out. And it's a nice benefit that they can visit a cool, small city every once in a while.

helen___keller 5y ago
> People move to VT to be in nature. To be spread out. This describes the vast majority of Vermont, but not Burlington. It's not NYC but it's also not Montpelier and it's definitely not Stowe. Burlington is the "small city" for people who want everything local - local brewers, local farms, co-ops and farmer's markets, etc. I'm not suggesting that Burlington should build highrises everywhere. I'm suggesting that the building forms that already exist in downtown Burlington - tightly packed 2-4 story buildings - should perhaps continue a little further out. It's possible to have urbanism that isn't Manhattan. With unchecked suburban sprawl, Burlington is going to become the opposite of what it represents now - generic big box stores and chains.
- dont__panic 5y ago
  Precisely. Just look at what's happening to the Front Range in Colorado -- Boulder and Fort Collins specifically -- for a peek at the future of Burlington.