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Honestly, having had lived in mixed-income neighborhoods, the wealthy are missing out. Dense mixed-income neighborhoods, pockets of which are holding on for dea

Honestly, having had lived in mixed-income neighborhoods, the wealthy are missing out. Dense mixed-income neighborhoods, pockets of which are holding on for dear life in parts of New York for example, are an absolute delight. We need to find a way to rebrand the American dream to be this.

tptacek 4y ago
Everyone assumes multi-family development means 10-story apartment buildings, but SFZ rules prevent duplexes and town houses from being built too, and some of the most charming, walkable, vibrant neighborhoods in the country are defined by those kinds of buildings. If it's me, I'm authorizing all the 10-story buildings too. But we don't have to rip the band-aid off all at once; municipalities could start by letting up just a little bit and letting two households share a lot.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  There is hope. Wheaton just approved a ~330 unit 7 story apartment complex downtown on a 2 ac parcel, which came as quite a surprise considering the housing composition in the area.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    We've had some successes in Oak Park, too, and I'm really grateful to our board for navigating the onslaught of negative commenting and campaigning to get new multifamily developments approved. But the fact is that it's too much work, and not reasonable to expect sane, pro-development people to be permanently vigilant and organized against the too-powerful default of saying no to these things.
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      The other way of looking at zoning changes is as a gift for the future. It's unlikely to ever be subsequently down-zoned (network effects of utilities, tax revenue, etc), so it's a one-time battle. Even if per-parcel.
      - toomuchtodo 4y ago
        And those fighting for YIMBY need not do so perpetually; tap out when you’re weary, and the next folks are up to bat for the next project. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
        teakettle42 4y ago
        The multi-trillion-dollar national real-estate investment firms thank you for your service towards growing the permanent rental class from which they will extract wealth in perpetuity.
        tptacek 4y ago
        They are most welcome!
        teakettle42 4y ago
        It’s an incredible PR coup. The progressive position in the 90s was anti-gentrification, anti-greedy rent-seeking developers; “the evil developer” was a common trope in pop-culture. Now? Dust off your ceremonial hard hat and golden ground-breaking shovel, because apparently, facilitating a massive and permanent wealth transfer to those same greedy developers is now progressive orthodoxy. Density proponents are just unpaid lobbyists.
        tptacek 4y ago
        Sure. Nobody needs to pay me to lobby for density. I'll put energy into advocating density on its own merits.
        teakettle42 4y ago
        What merits, other than enriching real-estate investors and disenfranchising more of the population, exactly?
- leonidasv 4y ago
  Something I don't get about America (and most of Europe) is that 10-story is seen like "wow, too big". I live in the 14th floor of a 18-story building (4 apartments per floor), and next to me there are other ~20-story strictly residencial buildings. Life is amazing here, I have swimming pool, gym and sauna in the condo and it costs me next to nothing since the costs are shared between all residents. And it's never crowded. But the best part is that there's a positive side-effect: since I have everything at hand, I don't need to leave my home often and that made me switch to remote work full-time (the office started to seem boring). It means, I'm living in a densely populated building and commuting less than I was when I lived in a smaller apartment complex. I really think cities should consider this for their future: taller buildings with built-in amenities, ready for remote work. Make people want to live there and also don't want to commute. You get the density without the associated traffic congestion.
  - teakettle42 4y ago
    I live in a three story, single family home located at the top of a hill, with views for miles, surrounded by wooded acreage, in an area zoned “forest”. Life is amazing here. I exercise outside, explore the landscape and the hiking trails surrounding me, and not only is it never crowded, it’s also safe, quiet, and beautiful. The best part is that since I have everything at hand, including natural beauty, I don’t want or need to leave my home often, and have worked remotely for a Bay Area company for several years. I often walk out my front door and go for a hike before starting my work day. Living in an 18-story building surrounded by 20-story buildings would be, for me, a hellish existence. You couldn’t pay me enough money to want to live there.
    - leonidasv 4y ago
      Well, but those things can coexist. That's the difference between living in the heart of a metropolis vs living somewhere far away. Since I've grown in the countryside, surrounded by all the forests and hills, I really find the cosmopolitan life I've there more exciting. It may change overtime, sure, but at least I will never have to complain about having lost my time commuting.
lettergram 4y ago
Well, that would likely lead to greater unhappiness… https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21841151/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21841151/ I somewhat agree, it’s a delight for the wealthy or middle class. But the lower class often have a much more negative view (having come from said lower class). The reality, is the upper and middle class dominate in politics and try to do things that are the opposite of “good”. Take for example, “cheap housing for everyone”. Nah.. they want the opportunity to own a nice house, not a hand out. Frankly, you’d be right, if I had any faith the upper class wouldn’t have a god complex to try and “make things better”.
- p_j_w 4y ago
  Your link does not seem to support your thesis here, unless I'm missing something?
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  You can own a condo. Or a townhome, or a duplex, or any number of dense housing forms.
- kelnos 4y ago
  "Cheap" isn't a great word to use there, because it means something more negative than the reality I'd want. I want affordable housing for people. Good, quality housing, with sufficient space, but something that people of all income levels can afford. It's possible, but the political decisions that could allow it are hampered by the NIMBYs.
m_ke 4y ago
As a New Yorker driving around middle america is super depressing. I can't imagine growing up trapped in my own home on a street with no sidewalks, only being able to go where my parents take me and finally growing into driving age so that I can go from parking lot to parking lot.
- horns4lyfe 4y ago
  Plenty of middle America is not like that at all. We also have these things called bikes that work really well in small towns.
- kodah 4y ago
  Honestly, I found this a bit insulting.
- refurb 4y ago
  I grew up in a dense urban core and can’t imagine putting kids through it. Little to no green space, no riding your bikes down random streets until it’s get dark. No exposure to nature. Cramped in tiny $1M apartments immersed in the rat race.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    Tiny $1MM apartments aren't the alternative to SFZ.
    - bluGill 4y ago
      Be careful though. Until we fill all the demand of people who can afford to pay for those $1MM apartments nobody will be building cheaper stuff. That there is demand for tiny apartments says we have a problem with supply.
  - pcwalton 4y ago
    There are plenty of very livable US college towns with medium-density downtowns, condos for far less than $1M, plenty of green space, and streets I'd feel comfortable letting my kids (if I had any) ride their bikes around. Bloomington, Indiana, Madison, Wisconsin, and Davis, California (granted, that last one isn't as affordable as the others) come to mind among places I've been to. I imagine places like Ann Arbor, Michigan and Champaign, Illinois rank up there too.
vogt 4y ago
I would prefer we did not do that. Just personally. As an introvert and someone with a general distaste for being around most of the public, I'll keep my not-so-dense living situation. Whether it's mixed income, mixed familial structures, cultures, the last thing I ever want to be - if I can avoid it - is on living on top of people. Speaking only for myself - and yes, I am keenly aware of the injustices many groups have faced here over the years - at least some of the American dream was to create an environment for both of us to share these mutually exclusive stances in harmony. I am grateful for the ability of some percentage of Americans to have more space between their neighbors than simply one wall, even if that percentage is much smaller than it ought to be. And I grow increasingly resentful of the mechanisms both internal and external that keep that number so small.
- cheriot 4y ago
  You can make your choice without laws forbidding others from making a different choice.
  - vogt 4y ago
    I’n not advocating for that, it was pretty clear in my OP.
- tptacek 4y ago
  The natural response to this might be that, of course, you should be able to live on an SFZ lot with a big yard and lots of distance from your neighbors. You just shouldn't be able to enforce that condition within walking distance of Palo Alto.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - vogt 4y ago
    I agree. I’m not even defending Marc here, which seems to be how my comment is perceived so obviously I didn’t articulate the way I wanted to. I was responding to the GP’s sentiment of density becoming the new desired standard. I’d prefer availability of less dense neighborhoods in at least some capacity.
dclowd9901 4y ago
Not a delight if you’re raising a family, in my experience. I loved living in densely populated areas when I was single. You end up having to subject your kids to mountains of homeless folks’ garbage or explaining the irregular behavior of the local crack head to your curious 5 year old. Then again maybe that was just my neighborhood and no other densely populated area has ever dealt with such things.
- tptacek 4y ago
  That was indeed an idiosyncrasy of your neighborhood.
- cheriot 4y ago
  When we don't have enough housing it means people end up on the street. But people on the street is an argument against more housing? The crackheads on the street phenomena is an American thing, not a dense housing thing.
- astrange 4y ago
  You had homeless people because you didn't build enough housing; it probably wasn't densely populated enough then. (Homelessness is caused by most of the old cheap forms of housing like SROs/boarding houses being made illegal, causing locals to fall out of the system when they can't afford the nicer types - this is why you see it in cities and not in, say, West Virginia.)
  - fosk 4y ago
    This is a great lie, since homelessness is - often and especially in San Francisco - not the result of lack of a home, rather the result of mental illness and drug addiction. This is also reinforced by the great amount of non-native homeless people that travel cross-state to cities like San Francisco. Give your typical SF homeless a home, and they will rip the sink out the next day to raise enough money for more drugs. It is not always lack of housing. Sometimes it is, very often it is not.
    - 4y ago
baron816 4y ago
I spoke to a housing advocate who worked for a city government in the Bay Area some time ago, and he said that one of the best ways to convince people to allow for upzoning was to actually give them pictures of what their neighborhoods could look like. Showing them pictures of walkable neighborhoods with boutique shops and restaurants, space in the streets and sidewalks for children to play, musicians to perform, art to be displayed, etc. makes them believe that increasing density can lead to a more livable community. Some of the most desirable and expensive neighborhoods in the world are also some of the densest. NYC’s Upper East Side, for example, is it’s most densely populated.
namecheapTA 4y ago
It's not going to be mixed income. It's going to be segregated incomes living near by each other, both resenting the other. In Las Vegas suburbs you can sometimes see the various neighborhoods with Drastic obvious cost/value differences right next to each other. The lower cost one is hellish, and the nicer one is basically brought down by the worse one. If you could afford it, you'd never choose a neighborhood next to a bad neighborhood. So why build more of these bad ones near nice areas? Can't we just build more in bad areas? It's supposed to be cheap so why not build in cheaper areas?
- SenHeng 4y ago
  The problem here in your comment is associating dense neighbourhoods with bad neighbourhoods. The other problem is thinking all cheap neighbourhoods should be bad neighbourhoods.
  - namecheapTA 4y ago
    Ok I guess bad is not nice. But they're clearly not as safe nor as nice as the more expensive neighborhoods of the same community. And I wasn't saying they should be this way. I guess I was just going from basic observation and some memorable stats.
  - namecheapTA 4y ago
    I was trying to figure out why I equated cheap with bad which you pointed out to me. I think it's because I figured if someone built cheap housing, and it was actually nice and somewhere you wanted to be, it wouldn't stay cheap for very long at all. If someone built and sold condos for 250k in a town that usually sells for 1 million.... Wouldn't the buyer soon sell it for 750k? If it's cheap, it basically has to be much worse than other options or it'll soon become the price of the expensive options.
    - SenHeng 4y ago
      I'm not dimissing your experience which comes from the current situation. But the current situation came about because of intense gentrification and the housing prices rising faster than society could cope over the past few decades.
dalbasal 4y ago
Possibly, but I dunno if mixed income is the only ingredient required for that recipe.
hef19898 4y ago
Mixed-income neighborhoods are great, but fragile. We are definitely not low income, and living in mixed part of town is so much nicer tgatn thise, supposedly, high income parts. The thing is so, by livng where we live we are actually gentrifying the neighborhood. Whether we want or not (we don't), it is just a matter of fact. Which is said, because despite being by no means hip or artsy of so, the neighborhood is really doverse and colorfull. Despite being mainly housing, there still are small shops and bars. And it is great for kids to be exposed to different social circumstances, our older one went for day care reaons to a school in a more affluent neighborhood, our smaller one to a school just across the street. And the differences are stunning and subtile at the same time.
- wink 4y ago
  I'm not sure you can really avoid any sort of gentrification, even if the same people would stay and no one moved away. Guess it's more about the speed and the actual breadth of the income band, or it's the vanishing middle class, when before your kids would maybe move up one notch or two if they got a good job, now it's either "the amount of money feels rich, but still can't buy a house" or continued descent into low income...
busterarm 4y ago
I grew up in NYC with these dense mixed-income neighborhoods you speak of. It just means all classes share the same problems equally (emphasis on equally) The history of my youth in the city is knowing practically a trail of dead friends lost to drugs, abuse, murder and suicide. And I went to private school. When I was in middle school some kids I knew at the school behind mine made national news for murdering a guy in Central Park. During the OJ Trial. IMO anyone who raises a kid in an environment like I grew up in is insanely wreckless.
- m_ke 4y ago
  NY has one of the lowest suicide rates in the country (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/suicide-mortality/suicide.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/suicide-mortality/... / https://khn.org/news/among-u-s-states-new-yorks-suicide-rate-is-the-lowest-hows-that/ https://khn.org/news/among-u-s-states-new-yorks-suicide-rate...), is on the lower side for homicides (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/homicide_mortality/homicide.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/homicide_mortality...) (5.5 for NYC). Same goes for drug overdose rates (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/drug_poisoning_mortality/drug_poisoning.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/drug_poisoning_mor...), for which the state wide rate is skewed by more rural northern parts. I spent a large part of my time in the more dangerous areas of NY (Jamaica, Bushwick in early 2000s, Harlem) and never felt really unsafe.
  - busterarm 4y ago
    I didn't say that NYC is unsafe. Most of NYC is rich neighborhoods, comparatively. I was specifically referring to those described dense mixed-income neighborhoods where every classes's tragedies end up being spread equally. If you have means ans you raise your children in one of these environments, you're stupid.
moooo99 4y ago
> Honestly, having had lived in mixed-income neighborhoods, the wealthy are missing out. I cannot understand why cities in the US are built the way they are. I live in a relatively big city in Germany in a somewhat dense neighborhood (most buildings have 3-5 stories). I have two grocery stores within five minutes of walking, a great Italian restaurant around the corner. If I want to go to the city center it is a ten minute train ride, going to the lake is a 12 minute ride. I can quickly get around the city center by using the subway and all of this for a fraction of the cost of owning a car. I grew up in a more rural area and personally, living in a denser cities feels more "luxurious" than living in a town where I can't get anywhere if I don't drive. The cities are still far from perfect, but this is mostly because they desperately try to accomodate the car obsessed public (but not as desperately as American cities)
- aidenn0 4y ago
  Some of it is just how pervasive car ownership is in the US, how young of an age you can get licensed, and the degree to which parents are expected to drive children under the age of 16. I did an exchange to a rural village in Germany, and anything other than going to a party at someone's house in the village involved convincing (or bribing) one of the 18 year olds they knew from two years previous at the Realschule, so the most common evening event was drinking beer (or Diesel which was half beer, half cola) with friends. This place was not even remotely rural by USA standards, being maybe 20 kilometers from the state capital, and even closer to another city.
  - moooo99 4y ago
    > anything other than going to a party at someone's house in the village involved convincing (or bribing) one of the 18 year olds they knew from two years previous at the Realschule, so the most common evening event was drinking beer (or Diesel which was half beer, half cola) with friends. This has been my experience growing up as well with the only difference that we had a somewhat decent train connection to the next bigger town (30 min train ride, but last train departured at 10 PM). Anything that was out of the (small) village required either an expensive (and unreliable) Taxi ride or someone who loosed out and became the dedicated driver.
aidenn0 4y ago
I grew up in a highly segregated area, so my elementary school cohort was roughly 80 white kids 5 Asian kids and one Latina kid. There was also a single black kid, but he got kicked out in first grade when it was discovered he was using his grandparent's address to go to a better school. The junior high, however, drew from a larger geographic area so it was far more diverse. Junior high is always a bit of a culture shock, but I can't help but feel it was more-so for us. A white kid got suspended for bringing in a hunting knife because he was afraid one of the black kids was going to beat him up -- kind of a mini racism-in-action lesson for all of us, though we didn't know it at the time. Now my daughter just finished seventh grade. Her elementary school cohort had one Spanish-speaking kid, in a district that is 59% Hispanic and 18% English language learners, and had a bit of a similar culture shock. I checked if I could have done better in retrospect, and found that, while I could have done slightly better, the public schools were all either over 75% Hispanic or over 80% non-Hispanic, with the one exception being a school that required a lottery to get into. The only real diverse schools I found were the parochial schools, which are a strange combination of your traditional Hispanic Catholics, and "white flight" of kids at schools that were nearly entirely Hispanic.
sershe 4y ago
It's not a super useful comment but I feel like I need to reply every time I see a corresponding opinion-only comment ;) Many people apparently disagree. Why try to "rebrand" it for them? I have grown up in Moscow, lived in Yaletown in Vancouver BC, Richmond BC, Bellevue WA, and in SOMA in SF (all slightly different types of walkable, dense places), and I hated suburbs. Then I moved into suburbs and realized they are so much better! I wish I'd moved earlier, and to suburbier suburbs instead of the still-walkable ones that I have chosen. I've lived in dense neighborhoods for 34 years and now I don't think they have any advantages for me, other than perhaps it's more convenient to be drunk, and it's more convenient to be a kid who cannot drive. Oh and yeah, mixed income. I've heard quite a few middle class and higher immigrants say that one major advantage of the US compared to <their home country> is that you can move away from poor people. In Russia/Mexico/... the poor are fellow Russians/Mexicans/..., so it's not based on race either. I grew up surrounded by "mixed income" (well to be fair we were lower middle class if that, ourselves). Thanks but no thanks. I'd rather live in the cheapest house on the best street :)
- JSoet 4y ago
  Can you explain what changed about your opinion after moving into a suburb?
  - sershe 4y ago
    Driving is better than walking (I do outdoor stuff a lot, so 10-minute walk doesn't really count as exercise for me, it's just a hassle), except when parking is scarce, but that is specifically a problem of dense areas. Driving is also much faster than transit in most places... this was actually a "mind blown" moment - I was surprised it takes so long to get anywhere on a visit in Moscow, then I realized this used to be my "normal" to take 30-60mins to get places by transit, after starting to drive everywhere I think 20 minutes is kinda too far away. Weather is also less of an issue when driving. I used to buy groceries by bike or on a walk from the bus every 2-3 days, turns out buying a bunch of groceries every week or two is much more convenient. It's much quieter and somewhat safer (could be safer yet if I moved further away from town). One of my apartments was on a busy street and it's kinda funny how I notice a single car rolling by now when I used to have to tune out constant hum of traffic, sirens and honks. There is much more greenery, birds (from hummingbirds to eagles), trees, animals even. My friends who live in a really distant suburb had a bear in their backyard once, I guess that could be a disadvantage :) More space for the same amount of money (that actually translates into even less need for density - e.g. I have a squat rack at home now so I don't need to go to the gym). One hassle is that if I go somewhere to drink I need to take an uber. Also house is more pain to maintain than a flat, that actually does kinda suck, I am particularly averse to that kind of stuff... I wish there were condos in suburban areas, or e.g. some company where you pay a fee like a HOA and they have to keep track and do all the maintenance :)

tptacek 4y ago

Everyone assumes multi-family development means 10-story apartment buildings, but SFZ rules prevent duplexes and town houses from being built too, and some of the most charming, walkable, vibrant neighborhoods in the country are defined by those kinds of buildings. If it's me, I'm authorizing all the 10-story buildings too. But we don't have to rip the band-aid off all at once; municipalities could start by letting up just a little bit and letting two households share a lot.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
There is hope. Wheaton just approved a ~330 unit 7 story apartment complex downtown on a 2 ac parcel, which came as quite a surprise considering the housing composition in the area.
- tptacek 4y ago
  We've had some successes in Oak Park, too, and I'm really grateful to our board for navigating the onslaught of negative commenting and campaigning to get new multifamily developments approved. But the fact is that it's too much work, and not reasonable to expect sane, pro-development people to be permanently vigilant and organized against the too-powerful default of saying no to these things.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    The other way of looking at zoning changes is as a gift for the future. It's unlikely to ever be subsequently down-zoned (network effects of utilities, tax revenue, etc), so it's a one-time battle. Even if per-parcel.
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      And those fighting for YIMBY need not do so perpetually; tap out when you’re weary, and the next folks are up to bat for the next project. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
      - teakettle42 4y ago
        The multi-trillion-dollar national real-estate investment firms thank you for your service towards growing the permanent rental class from which they will extract wealth in perpetuity.
        tptacek 4y ago
        They are most welcome!
        teakettle42 4y ago
        It’s an incredible PR coup. The progressive position in the 90s was anti-gentrification, anti-greedy rent-seeking developers; “the evil developer” was a common trope in pop-culture. Now? Dust off your ceremonial hard hat and golden ground-breaking shovel, because apparently, facilitating a massive and permanent wealth transfer to those same greedy developers is now progressive orthodoxy. Density proponents are just unpaid lobbyists.
        tptacek 4y ago
        Sure. Nobody needs to pay me to lobby for density. I'll put energy into advocating density on its own merits.
        teakettle42 4y ago
        What merits, other than enriching real-estate investors and disenfranchising more of the population, exactly?
leonidasv 4y ago
Something I don't get about America (and most of Europe) is that 10-story is seen like "wow, too big". I live in the 14th floor of a 18-story building (4 apartments per floor), and next to me there are other ~20-story strictly residencial buildings. Life is amazing here, I have swimming pool, gym and sauna in the condo and it costs me next to nothing since the costs are shared between all residents. And it's never crowded. But the best part is that there's a positive side-effect: since I have everything at hand, I don't need to leave my home often and that made me switch to remote work full-time (the office started to seem boring). It means, I'm living in a densely populated building and commuting less than I was when I lived in a smaller apartment complex. I really think cities should consider this for their future: taller buildings with built-in amenities, ready for remote work. Make people want to live there and also don't want to commute. You get the density without the associated traffic congestion.
- teakettle42 4y ago
  I live in a three story, single family home located at the top of a hill, with views for miles, surrounded by wooded acreage, in an area zoned “forest”. Life is amazing here. I exercise outside, explore the landscape and the hiking trails surrounding me, and not only is it never crowded, it’s also safe, quiet, and beautiful. The best part is that since I have everything at hand, including natural beauty, I don’t want or need to leave my home often, and have worked remotely for a Bay Area company for several years. I often walk out my front door and go for a hike before starting my work day. Living in an 18-story building surrounded by 20-story buildings would be, for me, a hellish existence. You couldn’t pay me enough money to want to live there.
  - leonidasv 4y ago
    Well, but those things can coexist. That's the difference between living in the heart of a metropolis vs living somewhere far away. Since I've grown in the countryside, surrounded by all the forests and hills, I really find the cosmopolitan life I've there more exciting. It may change overtime, sure, but at least I will never have to complain about having lost my time commuting.

lettergram 4y ago

Well, that would likely lead to greater unhappiness… https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21841151/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21841151/ I somewhat agree, it’s a delight for the wealthy or middle class. But the lower class often have a much more negative view (having come from said lower class). The reality, is the upper and middle class dominate in politics and try to do things that are the opposite of “good”. Take for example, “cheap housing for everyone”. Nah.. they want the opportunity to own a nice house, not a hand out. Frankly, you’d be right, if I had any faith the upper class wouldn’t have a god complex to try and “make things better”.

p_j_w 4y ago
Your link does not seem to support your thesis here, unless I'm missing something?
bobthepanda 4y ago
You can own a condo. Or a townhome, or a duplex, or any number of dense housing forms.
kelnos 4y ago
"Cheap" isn't a great word to use there, because it means something more negative than the reality I'd want. I want affordable housing for people. Good, quality housing, with sufficient space, but something that people of all income levels can afford. It's possible, but the political decisions that could allow it are hampered by the NIMBYs.

m_ke 4y ago

As a New Yorker driving around middle america is super depressing. I can't imagine growing up trapped in my own home on a street with no sidewalks, only being able to go where my parents take me and finally growing into driving age so that I can go from parking lot to parking lot.

horns4lyfe 4y ago
Plenty of middle America is not like that at all. We also have these things called bikes that work really well in small towns.
kodah 4y ago
Honestly, I found this a bit insulting.
refurb 4y ago
I grew up in a dense urban core and can’t imagine putting kids through it. Little to no green space, no riding your bikes down random streets until it’s get dark. No exposure to nature. Cramped in tiny $1M apartments immersed in the rat race.
- tptacek 4y ago
  Tiny $1MM apartments aren't the alternative to SFZ.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    Be careful though. Until we fill all the demand of people who can afford to pay for those $1MM apartments nobody will be building cheaper stuff. That there is demand for tiny apartments says we have a problem with supply.
- pcwalton 4y ago
  There are plenty of very livable US college towns with medium-density downtowns, condos for far less than $1M, plenty of green space, and streets I'd feel comfortable letting my kids (if I had any) ride their bikes around. Bloomington, Indiana, Madison, Wisconsin, and Davis, California (granted, that last one isn't as affordable as the others) come to mind among places I've been to. I imagine places like Ann Arbor, Michigan and Champaign, Illinois rank up there too.

vogt 4y ago

I would prefer we did not do that. Just personally. As an introvert and someone with a general distaste for being around most of the public, I'll keep my not-so-dense living situation. Whether it's mixed income, mixed familial structures, cultures, the last thing I ever want to be - if I can avoid it - is on living on top of people. Speaking only for myself - and yes, I am keenly aware of the injustices many groups have faced here over the years - at least some of the American dream was to create an environment for both of us to share these mutually exclusive stances in harmony. I am grateful for the ability of some percentage of Americans to have more space between their neighbors than simply one wall, even if that percentage is much smaller than it ought to be. And I grow increasingly resentful of the mechanisms both internal and external that keep that number so small.

cheriot 4y ago
You can make your choice without laws forbidding others from making a different choice.
- vogt 4y ago
  I’n not advocating for that, it was pretty clear in my OP.
tptacek 4y ago
The natural response to this might be that, of course, you should be able to live on an SFZ lot with a big yard and lots of distance from your neighbors. You just shouldn't be able to enforce that condition within walking distance of Palo Alto.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- vogt 4y ago
  I agree. I’m not even defending Marc here, which seems to be how my comment is perceived so obviously I didn’t articulate the way I wanted to. I was responding to the GP’s sentiment of density becoming the new desired standard. I’d prefer availability of less dense neighborhoods in at least some capacity.

dclowd9901 4y ago

Not a delight if you’re raising a family, in my experience. I loved living in densely populated areas when I was single. You end up having to subject your kids to mountains of homeless folks’ garbage or explaining the irregular behavior of the local crack head to your curious 5 year old. Then again maybe that was just my neighborhood and no other densely populated area has ever dealt with such things.

tptacek 4y ago
That was indeed an idiosyncrasy of your neighborhood.
cheriot 4y ago
When we don't have enough housing it means people end up on the street. But people on the street is an argument against more housing? The crackheads on the street phenomena is an American thing, not a dense housing thing.
astrange 4y ago
You had homeless people because you didn't build enough housing; it probably wasn't densely populated enough then. (Homelessness is caused by most of the old cheap forms of housing like SROs/boarding houses being made illegal, causing locals to fall out of the system when they can't afford the nicer types - this is why you see it in cities and not in, say, West Virginia.)
- fosk 4y ago
  This is a great lie, since homelessness is - often and especially in San Francisco - not the result of lack of a home, rather the result of mental illness and drug addiction. This is also reinforced by the great amount of non-native homeless people that travel cross-state to cities like San Francisco. Give your typical SF homeless a home, and they will rip the sink out the next day to raise enough money for more drugs. It is not always lack of housing. Sometimes it is, very often it is not.
  - 4y ago

baron816 4y ago

I spoke to a housing advocate who worked for a city government in the Bay Area some time ago, and he said that one of the best ways to convince people to allow for upzoning was to actually give them pictures of what their neighborhoods could look like. Showing them pictures of walkable neighborhoods with boutique shops and restaurants, space in the streets and sidewalks for children to play, musicians to perform, art to be displayed, etc. makes them believe that increasing density can lead to a more livable community. Some of the most desirable and expensive neighborhoods in the world are also some of the densest. NYC’s Upper East Side, for example, is it’s most densely populated.

namecheapTA 4y ago

It's not going to be mixed income. It's going to be segregated incomes living near by each other, both resenting the other. In Las Vegas suburbs you can sometimes see the various neighborhoods with Drastic obvious cost/value differences right next to each other. The lower cost one is hellish, and the nicer one is basically brought down by the worse one. If you could afford it, you'd never choose a neighborhood next to a bad neighborhood. So why build more of these bad ones near nice areas? Can't we just build more in bad areas? It's supposed to be cheap so why not build in cheaper areas?

SenHeng 4y ago
The problem here in your comment is associating dense neighbourhoods with bad neighbourhoods. The other problem is thinking all cheap neighbourhoods should be bad neighbourhoods.
- namecheapTA 4y ago
  Ok I guess bad is not nice. But they're clearly not as safe nor as nice as the more expensive neighborhoods of the same community. And I wasn't saying they should be this way. I guess I was just going from basic observation and some memorable stats.
- namecheapTA 4y ago
  I was trying to figure out why I equated cheap with bad which you pointed out to me. I think it's because I figured if someone built cheap housing, and it was actually nice and somewhere you wanted to be, it wouldn't stay cheap for very long at all. If someone built and sold condos for 250k in a town that usually sells for 1 million.... Wouldn't the buyer soon sell it for 750k? If it's cheap, it basically has to be much worse than other options or it'll soon become the price of the expensive options.
  - SenHeng 4y ago
    I'm not dimissing your experience which comes from the current situation. But the current situation came about because of intense gentrification and the housing prices rising faster than society could cope over the past few decades.

dalbasal 4y ago

Possibly, but I dunno if mixed income is the only ingredient required for that recipe.

hef19898 4y ago

Mixed-income neighborhoods are great, but fragile. We are definitely not low income, and living in mixed part of town is so much nicer tgatn thise, supposedly, high income parts. The thing is so, by livng where we live we are actually gentrifying the neighborhood. Whether we want or not (we don't), it is just a matter of fact. Which is said, because despite being by no means hip or artsy of so, the neighborhood is really doverse and colorfull. Despite being mainly housing, there still are small shops and bars. And it is great for kids to be exposed to different social circumstances, our older one went for day care reaons to a school in a more affluent neighborhood, our smaller one to a school just across the street. And the differences are stunning and subtile at the same time.

wink 4y ago
I'm not sure you can really avoid any sort of gentrification, even if the same people would stay and no one moved away. Guess it's more about the speed and the actual breadth of the income band, or it's the vanishing middle class, when before your kids would maybe move up one notch or two if they got a good job, now it's either "the amount of money feels rich, but still can't buy a house" or continued descent into low income...

busterarm 4y ago

I grew up in NYC with these dense mixed-income neighborhoods you speak of. It just means all classes share the same problems equally (emphasis on equally) The history of my youth in the city is knowing practically a trail of dead friends lost to drugs, abuse, murder and suicide. And I went to private school. When I was in middle school some kids I knew at the school behind mine made national news for murdering a guy in Central Park. During the OJ Trial. IMO anyone who raises a kid in an environment like I grew up in is insanely wreckless.

m_ke 4y ago
NY has one of the lowest suicide rates in the country (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/suicide-mortality/suicide.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/suicide-mortality/... / https://khn.org/news/among-u-s-states-new-yorks-suicide-rate-is-the-lowest-hows-that/ https://khn.org/news/among-u-s-states-new-yorks-suicide-rate...), is on the lower side for homicides (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/homicide_mortality/homicide.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/homicide_mortality...) (5.5 for NYC). Same goes for drug overdose rates (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/drug_poisoning_mortality/drug_poisoning.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/drug_poisoning_mor...), for which the state wide rate is skewed by more rural northern parts. I spent a large part of my time in the more dangerous areas of NY (Jamaica, Bushwick in early 2000s, Harlem) and never felt really unsafe.
- busterarm 4y ago
  I didn't say that NYC is unsafe. Most of NYC is rich neighborhoods, comparatively. I was specifically referring to those described dense mixed-income neighborhoods where every classes's tragedies end up being spread equally. If you have means ans you raise your children in one of these environments, you're stupid.

moooo99 4y ago

> Honestly, having had lived in mixed-income neighborhoods, the wealthy are missing out. I cannot understand why cities in the US are built the way they are. I live in a relatively big city in Germany in a somewhat dense neighborhood (most buildings have 3-5 stories). I have two grocery stores within five minutes of walking, a great Italian restaurant around the corner. If I want to go to the city center it is a ten minute train ride, going to the lake is a 12 minute ride. I can quickly get around the city center by using the subway and all of this for a fraction of the cost of owning a car. I grew up in a more rural area and personally, living in a denser cities feels more "luxurious" than living in a town where I can't get anywhere if I don't drive. The cities are still far from perfect, but this is mostly because they desperately try to accomodate the car obsessed public (but not as desperately as American cities)

aidenn0 4y ago
Some of it is just how pervasive car ownership is in the US, how young of an age you can get licensed, and the degree to which parents are expected to drive children under the age of 16. I did an exchange to a rural village in Germany, and anything other than going to a party at someone's house in the village involved convincing (or bribing) one of the 18 year olds they knew from two years previous at the Realschule, so the most common evening event was drinking beer (or Diesel which was half beer, half cola) with friends. This place was not even remotely rural by USA standards, being maybe 20 kilometers from the state capital, and even closer to another city.
- moooo99 4y ago
  > anything other than going to a party at someone's house in the village involved convincing (or bribing) one of the 18 year olds they knew from two years previous at the Realschule, so the most common evening event was drinking beer (or Diesel which was half beer, half cola) with friends. This has been my experience growing up as well with the only difference that we had a somewhat decent train connection to the next bigger town (30 min train ride, but last train departured at 10 PM). Anything that was out of the (small) village required either an expensive (and unreliable) Taxi ride or someone who loosed out and became the dedicated driver.

aidenn0 4y ago

I grew up in a highly segregated area, so my elementary school cohort was roughly 80 white kids 5 Asian kids and one Latina kid. There was also a single black kid, but he got kicked out in first grade when it was discovered he was using his grandparent's address to go to a better school. The junior high, however, drew from a larger geographic area so it was far more diverse. Junior high is always a bit of a culture shock, but I can't help but feel it was more-so for us. A white kid got suspended for bringing in a hunting knife because he was afraid one of the black kids was going to beat him up -- kind of a mini racism-in-action lesson for all of us, though we didn't know it at the time. Now my daughter just finished seventh grade. Her elementary school cohort had one Spanish-speaking kid, in a district that is 59% Hispanic and 18% English language learners, and had a bit of a similar culture shock. I checked if I could have done better in retrospect, and found that, while I could have done slightly better, the public schools were all either over 75% Hispanic or over 80% non-Hispanic, with the one exception being a school that required a lottery to get into. The only real diverse schools I found were the parochial schools, which are a strange combination of your traditional Hispanic Catholics, and "white flight" of kids at schools that were nearly entirely Hispanic.

sershe 4y ago

It's not a super useful comment but I feel like I need to reply every time I see a corresponding opinion-only comment ;) Many people apparently disagree. Why try to "rebrand" it for them? I have grown up in Moscow, lived in Yaletown in Vancouver BC, Richmond BC, Bellevue WA, and in SOMA in SF (all slightly different types of walkable, dense places), and I hated suburbs. Then I moved into suburbs and realized they are so much better! I wish I'd moved earlier, and to suburbier suburbs instead of the still-walkable ones that I have chosen. I've lived in dense neighborhoods for 34 years and now I don't think they have any advantages for me, other than perhaps it's more convenient to be drunk, and it's more convenient to be a kid who cannot drive. Oh and yeah, mixed income. I've heard quite a few middle class and higher immigrants say that one major advantage of the US compared to <their home country> is that you can move away from poor people. In Russia/Mexico/... the poor are fellow Russians/Mexicans/..., so it's not based on race either. I grew up surrounded by "mixed income" (well to be fair we were lower middle class if that, ourselves). Thanks but no thanks. I'd rather live in the cheapest house on the best street :)

JSoet 4y ago
Can you explain what changed about your opinion after moving into a suburb?
- sershe 4y ago
  Driving is better than walking (I do outdoor stuff a lot, so 10-minute walk doesn't really count as exercise for me, it's just a hassle), except when parking is scarce, but that is specifically a problem of dense areas. Driving is also much faster than transit in most places... this was actually a "mind blown" moment - I was surprised it takes so long to get anywhere on a visit in Moscow, then I realized this used to be my "normal" to take 30-60mins to get places by transit, after starting to drive everywhere I think 20 minutes is kinda too far away. Weather is also less of an issue when driving. I used to buy groceries by bike or on a walk from the bus every 2-3 days, turns out buying a bunch of groceries every week or two is much more convenient. It's much quieter and somewhat safer (could be safer yet if I moved further away from town). One of my apartments was on a busy street and it's kinda funny how I notice a single car rolling by now when I used to have to tune out constant hum of traffic, sirens and honks. There is much more greenery, birds (from hummingbirds to eagles), trees, animals even. My friends who live in a really distant suburb had a bear in their backyard once, I guess that could be a disadvantage :) More space for the same amount of money (that actually translates into even less need for density - e.g. I have a squat rack at home now so I don't need to go to the gym). One hassle is that if I go somewhere to drink I need to take an uber. Also house is more pain to maintain than a flat, that actually does kinda suck, I am particularly averse to that kind of stuff... I wish there were condos in suburban areas, or e.g. some company where you pay a fee like a HOA and they have to keep track and do all the maintenance :)