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This isn't a discussion about housing availability. You should make a new submission about that if you want to go into that topic in depth. There are facets to

This isn't a discussion about housing availability. You should make a new submission about that if you want to go into that topic in depth. There are facets to this discussion that your post is glossing over; it's not a binary choice between HK style apartments or suburban sprawl.

hackerlight 4y ago
I don't really accept any discussion of reducing subjective eyesores when it comes to housing. It's always used as a political weapon against housing. Someone's ability to have shelter always beats out the other person's subjective aesthetic tastes that they have no right to impose on anyone.
- superchroma 4y ago
  I would suggest this speaks to the weight of your experiences coloring your view. It doesn't have to be this way, though, yours are just one set of lived experiences, and the systems you live in are not necessarily objectively the best ones. The issue you're discussing is that aesthetic objections are being used as a hard roadblock to progress. This suggests that aesthetic input needs to be received without them being an opportunity to derail a project if the projects is passing all other measures it has been evaluated on. It could be said that such input should have achievable criteria for success/passability without being significantly at odds with the premise of the exercise. Anyway, I would encourage you to make a new submission about it as this is a pressing and heated american issue, and it's clear that you feel strongly on the matter.
  - yazaddaruvala 4y ago
    > I would suggest this speaks to the weight of your experiences coloring your view. > Anyway, I would encourage you to make a new submission about it This is extremely condescending and unnecessary. There is no reason for the other poster to “create a new submission” for their points. If you disagree with them that is ok, feel free to respond to the points. If you’re having difficulty responding to their points, don’t respond. However, as far as I can tell their points are on topic for the example you provided and shouldn’t be dismissed in the way you keep trying multiple times.
    - superchroma 4y ago
      There's no point going into the weeds in a discussion ten posts deep when we deviate from the broader topic. It discourages community engagement from the discussion we're having and the main thread and derails the thread as people have to scroll past it to see other comments. This is not why people are here, even if we feel passionate about the topic.
      - yazaddaruvala 4y ago
        > There's no point going into the weeds in a discussion ten posts deep when we deviate from the broader topic. That is up to the other person and what the downvote button is for. > It discourages community engagement from the discussion Then the community can vote via the down button. Meanwhile, you do not need to be condescending or singly try to shepherd a group conversation. > This is not why people are here, even if we feel passionate about the topic. I’ve been using HN for 10 years, other than trying to shut down the other commenter, the back and forth and deviation/tangentiality in this thread isn’t different than I normally have seen on HN.
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    The only way that community input into aesthetics won't be used against housing is if land is decommoditized. Until then the financial incentives are such that this will be used as a weapon, as we've seen happen repeatedly. The hypothetical universe where aesthetics can be regulated and that government power isn't abused by the landowner lobby doesn't really exist pre-decommodification.
- briandon 4y ago
  Hi. Longtime Hong Kong resident here. Public housing and private housing in HK could both be described, in terms of appearance, as copy-pasted. Quality of construction is exceedingly poor (to get the flavor, you could watch this new-build home inspection video from local TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShJtbmkjKG8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShJtbmkjKG8) and backwards (e.g. single-pane windows are the norm, walls have zero insulation, etc.). The wait list for public housing is many years long. Depending on whose numbers you believe, between 100k and 200k people are living in subdivided apartments (which, in some cases, translates to a bed inside a literal metal cage -- hence the term "cage apartments"). Private housing costs have gone down very slightly thanks to political developments and purported pandemic control policies, but prices for badly-built, tiny, puzzle-piece-shaped apartments in huge copy-pasted high-rises are eye-wateringly high.
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    Saying it's copy-pasted is a criticism of the aesthetic, not the build quality. Copy-pasting designs is just economies of scale and should lead to cheaper construction and design costs, all else held equal. I have no problem with regulations of apartment quality. Those are usually too lax. This is a point made elsewhere in the thread. We need more good regulations and less bad regulations. More regulations of build quality (e.g noise transmission, double pane windows). Less zoning and aesthetic regulations.
    - briandon 4y ago
      There's technically no reason that copy-pasted skyscraper apartment buildings can't be built to a high standard, quality-wise, and it certainly may yield savings to the entity commissioning the project. But there's no reason they can't be built to a low standard (and this subthread is about Hong Kong, where that is certainly the case) and there's nothing preventing cheaply-built, shabby, cookie cutter housing from being sold at exorbitant prices (ditto). Your statement, in taking issue with someone else's completely accurate description of HK buildings as copy-paste jobs, that you "don't really accept any discussion of reducing subjective eyesores when it comes to housing" in tandem with an invocation of "ability to have shelter" signaled a deep lack of understanding about HK's housing situation. I'm telling you that HKers aren't seeing any of the "ability to have shelter" benefit you seem to be imputing to ugly, identical tower blocks. The wait list for copy-paste public housing is years long and it's a byzantine process to get into an apartment even then. Private copy-paste housing costs an arm and a leg for cubby-hole sized micro-apartments, so much so that 100-200 thousand people at any given moment are living in desperate conditions under spalling concrete, with rats and bedbugs, and shared toilets and "kitchens" that I suspect would give you the dry heaves if you were to take a tour of such places.
charles_kaw 4y ago
>This isn't a discussion about housing availability Down-talking dense, quickly built housing because you don't like how it looks IS making it about housing availability. Those buildings were built to quickly get people housing in a reliable way. Every month they waited was a worse housing situation.

hackerlight 4y ago

I don't really accept any discussion of reducing subjective eyesores when it comes to housing. It's always used as a political weapon against housing. Someone's ability to have shelter always beats out the other person's subjective aesthetic tastes that they have no right to impose on anyone.

superchroma 4y ago
I would suggest this speaks to the weight of your experiences coloring your view. It doesn't have to be this way, though, yours are just one set of lived experiences, and the systems you live in are not necessarily objectively the best ones. The issue you're discussing is that aesthetic objections are being used as a hard roadblock to progress. This suggests that aesthetic input needs to be received without them being an opportunity to derail a project if the projects is passing all other measures it has been evaluated on. It could be said that such input should have achievable criteria for success/passability without being significantly at odds with the premise of the exercise. Anyway, I would encourage you to make a new submission about it as this is a pressing and heated american issue, and it's clear that you feel strongly on the matter.
- yazaddaruvala 4y ago
  > I would suggest this speaks to the weight of your experiences coloring your view. > Anyway, I would encourage you to make a new submission about it This is extremely condescending and unnecessary. There is no reason for the other poster to “create a new submission” for their points. If you disagree with them that is ok, feel free to respond to the points. If you’re having difficulty responding to their points, don’t respond. However, as far as I can tell their points are on topic for the example you provided and shouldn’t be dismissed in the way you keep trying multiple times.
  - superchroma 4y ago
    There's no point going into the weeds in a discussion ten posts deep when we deviate from the broader topic. It discourages community engagement from the discussion we're having and the main thread and derails the thread as people have to scroll past it to see other comments. This is not why people are here, even if we feel passionate about the topic.
    - yazaddaruvala 4y ago
      > There's no point going into the weeds in a discussion ten posts deep when we deviate from the broader topic. That is up to the other person and what the downvote button is for. > It discourages community engagement from the discussion Then the community can vote via the down button. Meanwhile, you do not need to be condescending or singly try to shepherd a group conversation. > This is not why people are here, even if we feel passionate about the topic. I’ve been using HN for 10 years, other than trying to shut down the other commenter, the back and forth and deviation/tangentiality in this thread isn’t different than I normally have seen on HN.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  The only way that community input into aesthetics won't be used against housing is if land is decommoditized. Until then the financial incentives are such that this will be used as a weapon, as we've seen happen repeatedly. The hypothetical universe where aesthetics can be regulated and that government power isn't abused by the landowner lobby doesn't really exist pre-decommodification.
briandon 4y ago
Hi. Longtime Hong Kong resident here. Public housing and private housing in HK could both be described, in terms of appearance, as copy-pasted. Quality of construction is exceedingly poor (to get the flavor, you could watch this new-build home inspection video from local TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShJtbmkjKG8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShJtbmkjKG8) and backwards (e.g. single-pane windows are the norm, walls have zero insulation, etc.). The wait list for public housing is many years long. Depending on whose numbers you believe, between 100k and 200k people are living in subdivided apartments (which, in some cases, translates to a bed inside a literal metal cage -- hence the term "cage apartments"). Private housing costs have gone down very slightly thanks to political developments and purported pandemic control policies, but prices for badly-built, tiny, puzzle-piece-shaped apartments in huge copy-pasted high-rises are eye-wateringly high.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  Saying it's copy-pasted is a criticism of the aesthetic, not the build quality. Copy-pasting designs is just economies of scale and should lead to cheaper construction and design costs, all else held equal. I have no problem with regulations of apartment quality. Those are usually too lax. This is a point made elsewhere in the thread. We need more good regulations and less bad regulations. More regulations of build quality (e.g noise transmission, double pane windows). Less zoning and aesthetic regulations.
  - briandon 4y ago
    There's technically no reason that copy-pasted skyscraper apartment buildings can't be built to a high standard, quality-wise, and it certainly may yield savings to the entity commissioning the project. But there's no reason they can't be built to a low standard (and this subthread is about Hong Kong, where that is certainly the case) and there's nothing preventing cheaply-built, shabby, cookie cutter housing from being sold at exorbitant prices (ditto). Your statement, in taking issue with someone else's completely accurate description of HK buildings as copy-paste jobs, that you "don't really accept any discussion of reducing subjective eyesores when it comes to housing" in tandem with an invocation of "ability to have shelter" signaled a deep lack of understanding about HK's housing situation. I'm telling you that HKers aren't seeing any of the "ability to have shelter" benefit you seem to be imputing to ugly, identical tower blocks. The wait list for copy-paste public housing is years long and it's a byzantine process to get into an apartment even then. Private copy-paste housing costs an arm and a leg for cubby-hole sized micro-apartments, so much so that 100-200 thousand people at any given moment are living in desperate conditions under spalling concrete, with rats and bedbugs, and shared toilets and "kitchens" that I suspect would give you the dry heaves if you were to take a tour of such places.

charles_kaw 4y ago

>This isn't a discussion about housing availability Down-talking dense, quickly built housing because you don't like how it looks IS making it about housing availability. Those buildings were built to quickly get people housing in a reliable way. Every month they waited was a worse housing situation.