4 ms·

An absolute metric shitton. If you made Berlin (today at ~4k people / sq km) the same density as Paris (today at ~20k people / sq km), you could add nearly 15m

An absolute metric shitton. If you made Berlin (today at ~4k people / sq km) the same density as Paris (today at ~20k people / sq km), you could add nearly 15m residents.

rad_gruchalski 4y ago
Where would they live? I hear that Berlin is having housing problems.
- ben_w 4y ago
  Mainly because we're not building houses fast enough right now. Although, I'm not even sure how much of a problem the city really has even then, it's kind of difficult to match up given the attitudes to renting here are like the attitudes to buying in the UK, and all the follow-on consequences of that. However, "build millions of affordable houses really fast with almost no money" is something that this city, indeed the whole country and several adjacent countries, have done when they had to, so housing definitely isn't an insurmountable problem. We're still regularly digging up the unexploded bombs from the same bombing runs that made rebuilding (with no money) necessary, but that's a local issue, you don't get so much of that in Washington or Mississippi. Or indeed (the original) Cambridge.
  - rad_gruchalski 4y ago
    How green is all that construction? How expensive is it to build all those green buildings? It’s not a tricky question, I assure you, having just finished a six months investigation on rent/buy and renovate/build in Germany.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      > How green is all that construction? How expensive is it to build all those green buildings? Wildly indeterminate on both questions because at that scale it is primarily a function of government rules and interventions rather than personal actions — just consider how much money people actually had when half the city was built. But that also goes both ways, because a single building doesn't need to care about most of the infrastructure — sure, the site needs to have utility connections and a road, but you personally neither need to nor care to make the decisions about the capacity of the nearby sewage farm/high voltage power lines, or if there are enough schools/hospital beds/police stations, or if the Autobahn and Eisenbahn have enough capacity to supply the supermarkets. I know it can be done cheap because of how little money there was when most of it was first put together, and that other much poorer nations also do many of these things. But exactly how cheap? Exactly how green? I don't know if your investigation was professional or personal, but either way I suspect you have more to tell me than vice-versa.

An absolute metric shitton. If you made Berlin (today at ~4k people / sq km) the same density as Paris (today at ~20k people / sq km), you could add nearly 15m residents.

rad_gruchalski 4y ago

Where would they live? I hear that Berlin is having housing problems.

ben_w 4y ago
Mainly because we're not building houses fast enough right now. Although, I'm not even sure how much of a problem the city really has even then, it's kind of difficult to match up given the attitudes to renting here are like the attitudes to buying in the UK, and all the follow-on consequences of that. However, "build millions of affordable houses really fast with almost no money" is something that this city, indeed the whole country and several adjacent countries, have done when they had to, so housing definitely isn't an insurmountable problem. We're still regularly digging up the unexploded bombs from the same bombing runs that made rebuilding (with no money) necessary, but that's a local issue, you don't get so much of that in Washington or Mississippi. Or indeed (the original) Cambridge.
- rad_gruchalski 4y ago
  How green is all that construction? How expensive is it to build all those green buildings? It’s not a tricky question, I assure you, having just finished a six months investigation on rent/buy and renovate/build in Germany.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    > How green is all that construction? How expensive is it to build all those green buildings? Wildly indeterminate on both questions because at that scale it is primarily a function of government rules and interventions rather than personal actions — just consider how much money people actually had when half the city was built. But that also goes both ways, because a single building doesn't need to care about most of the infrastructure — sure, the site needs to have utility connections and a road, but you personally neither need to nor care to make the decisions about the capacity of the nearby sewage farm/high voltage power lines, or if there are enough schools/hospital beds/police stations, or if the Autobahn and Eisenbahn have enough capacity to supply the supermarkets. I know it can be done cheap because of how little money there was when most of it was first put together, and that other much poorer nations also do many of these things. But exactly how cheap? Exactly how green? I don't know if your investigation was professional or personal, but either way I suspect you have more to tell me than vice-versa.