5 ms·

I wonder what it would take to just start forming new towns? You don't hear much about that anymore.

by brightball 3y ago

marssaxman 3y ago
Where would you put them? Every habitable corner of the globe has people living in it already.
- supportengineer 3y ago
  Leading to San Francisco you can drive on a freeway for almost 50 miles and see practically zero houses on either side of the road.
- baggy_trough 3y ago
  That is not anywhere close to the truth.
  - marssaxman 3y ago
    I suppose you are technically correct in that there are national parks and other wilderness areas we could choose to destroy, but that provides a pretty obvious answer to the previous question.
    - baggy_trough 3y ago
      New towns could be placed on, for example, farmland. There isn't any reason that a town has to use completely empty and undeveloped land. There is also an abundance of habitable land with nobody living there or using it, as a road trip around North America will attest.
      - marssaxman 3y ago
        My experience road-tripping around North America has shown me exactly the opposite: there are people living everywhere it is feasible to live, and then some. Anywhere there is water, there are people drinking it; anywhere there is flattish ground with any amount of water that can be piped in, there are people farming it; anywhere there are trees, people are logging them; anywhere there is grass, cows are grazing it. If land has no people, there is always some good reason nobody wants to live there. My experience is biased toward the west side of the continent; perhaps things are different elsewhere.
        baggy_trough 3y ago
        I guess we just see different things. I see extended areas of low and no intensity usage. So much so that I would say that the amount of space in the United States that is available for expansion, if needed, is close to unlimited. Naturally it might not make economic sense to develop there at this time, but that could change with regulatory/legal changes or by virtue of improved technology or increased population.
        Turing_Machine 3y ago
        > My experience road-tripping around North America has shown me exactly the opposite: there are people living everywhere it is feasible to live, and then some The population density of the United States is 33.6/km^2. The population density of Canada is 4.2/km^2. The population density of the United Kingdom is 270.7/km^2. The population density of Germany is 232/km^2 There's no shortage of space in North America, your road-tripping experience to the contrary.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        jacquesm 3y ago
        What you are seeing is land ownership, not necessarily land use. And that land use is extremely inefficient, you could fit all of the population of the United States in Texas alone, give or take at the population density of NL. And NL still has plenty of farmland.
    - happytoexplain 3y ago
      Trees are cleared constantly, everywhere, to build homes. Whether each case should be treated as part of an unsustainable "destruction of wilderness" is based on a universe of variables, subjective and otherwise, but no matter what the conversation looks like, the implication that it is "obviously" always unacceptable is unrealistic.
scoofy 3y ago
When the answer is "just go live somewhere else" that's not really an answer. I've thought a lot about this topic (in the sense of creating car-free cities in america), and it is technically feasible, but only if some benevolent billionaire were basically able to find some viable place, and build an entire city in place, and then create a deal with major employers to move their offices there, somehow fund the relocation of people who have already built a life for themselves elsewhere, and are already high up in these companies with homes and counter-incentives from moving elsewhere, and then somehow getting other people without any economic incentive to also move there. At the end of the day it's a pie-in-the-sky fantasy. Unless you're trying to court people who already have too much money to worry about housing prices (think Celebration, FL), then there is far, far too much cost and risk involved to do it. There is also a graveyard of failed attempts (see: California City, CA). The reason why this crisis happened is exactly that we have stopped allowing organic city growth from happening. Fixed-zoning is the problem, and does not allow for incremental growth. That the crisis didn't happen in the 60's is only because the proliferation of the automobile allowed cities to expand outward, but that outward expansion has a limit (when highway capacity is breached in such a way where commuting from exurban distances is completely unfeasible), and we hit that limit around the late 90's, when we saw the first housing crisis.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Why isn’t “go live somewhere else” a part of the answer though? We can’t all live in one or even the few most popular cities. That’s obviously not going to work, so some mechanism is needed to regulate who lives where, in the USA that mechanism is mostly market based. Even in Tokyo, a city mostly touted as one with minimal zoning, housing is still pricey (by Japanese standards) with standards at the low end many Americans wouldn’t accept (although I think we need more low end housing like this in the USA). And most of Japan’s young people want to live in Tokyo, it’s obvious not all of those who want to live there can.
  - scoofy 3y ago
    Because "go live somewhere else" is unsustainable in the long run. You have to remember that the time-scale of this crisis is literally just one parent-to-child generation. All of these zoning laws were passed when the boomers were in their prime home-buying age range ('60s-'70s), and the crisis is occurring now simply because their children have effectively nowhere to live. It's only politically feasible when the folks you're telling to live somewhere else are a political minority, and, to be honest, until the last few years, that's been the the only response. Now that millennials are becoming the dominant political force, it's just not going to fly. In cities in California they are literally creating company town-style housing for educators and other jobs that cities cannot afford to compensate with enough money to afford housing. Anyone who isn't directly benefiting from the system can trivially understand how inefficient and absurd it is, but the fact is that people who are benefiting from the system are wildly over-represented in terms of active voters. That's obviously changing.

I wonder what it would take to just start forming new towns? You don't hear much about that anymore.

marssaxman 3y ago

Where would you put them? Every habitable corner of the globe has people living in it already.

supportengineer 3y ago
Leading to San Francisco you can drive on a freeway for almost 50 miles and see practically zero houses on either side of the road.
baggy_trough 3y ago
That is not anywhere close to the truth.
- marssaxman 3y ago
  I suppose you are technically correct in that there are national parks and other wilderness areas we could choose to destroy, but that provides a pretty obvious answer to the previous question.
  - baggy_trough 3y ago
    New towns could be placed on, for example, farmland. There isn't any reason that a town has to use completely empty and undeveloped land. There is also an abundance of habitable land with nobody living there or using it, as a road trip around North America will attest.
    - marssaxman 3y ago
      My experience road-tripping around North America has shown me exactly the opposite: there are people living everywhere it is feasible to live, and then some. Anywhere there is water, there are people drinking it; anywhere there is flattish ground with any amount of water that can be piped in, there are people farming it; anywhere there are trees, people are logging them; anywhere there is grass, cows are grazing it. If land has no people, there is always some good reason nobody wants to live there. My experience is biased toward the west side of the continent; perhaps things are different elsewhere.
      - baggy_trough 3y ago
        I guess we just see different things. I see extended areas of low and no intensity usage. So much so that I would say that the amount of space in the United States that is available for expansion, if needed, is close to unlimited. Naturally it might not make economic sense to develop there at this time, but that could change with regulatory/legal changes or by virtue of improved technology or increased population.
      - Turing_Machine 3y ago
        > My experience road-tripping around North America has shown me exactly the opposite: there are people living everywhere it is feasible to live, and then some The population density of the United States is 33.6/km^2. The population density of Canada is 4.2/km^2. The population density of the United Kingdom is 270.7/km^2. The population density of Germany is 232/km^2 There's no shortage of space in North America, your road-tripping experience to the contrary.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        What you are seeing is land ownership, not necessarily land use. And that land use is extremely inefficient, you could fit all of the population of the United States in Texas alone, give or take at the population density of NL. And NL still has plenty of farmland.
  - happytoexplain 3y ago
    Trees are cleared constantly, everywhere, to build homes. Whether each case should be treated as part of an unsustainable "destruction of wilderness" is based on a universe of variables, subjective and otherwise, but no matter what the conversation looks like, the implication that it is "obviously" always unacceptable is unrealistic.

scoofy 3y ago

When the answer is "just go live somewhere else" that's not really an answer. I've thought a lot about this topic (in the sense of creating car-free cities in america), and it is technically feasible, but only if some benevolent billionaire were basically able to find some viable place, and build an entire city in place, and then create a deal with major employers to move their offices there, somehow fund the relocation of people who have already built a life for themselves elsewhere, and are already high up in these companies with homes and counter-incentives from moving elsewhere, and then somehow getting other people without any economic incentive to also move there. At the end of the day it's a pie-in-the-sky fantasy. Unless you're trying to court people who already have too much money to worry about housing prices (think Celebration, FL), then there is far, far too much cost and risk involved to do it. There is also a graveyard of failed attempts (see: California City, CA). The reason why this crisis happened is exactly that we have stopped allowing organic city growth from happening. Fixed-zoning is the problem, and does not allow for incremental growth. That the crisis didn't happen in the 60's is only because the proliferation of the automobile allowed cities to expand outward, but that outward expansion has a limit (when highway capacity is breached in such a way where commuting from exurban distances is completely unfeasible), and we hit that limit around the late 90's, when we saw the first housing crisis.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
Why isn’t “go live somewhere else” a part of the answer though? We can’t all live in one or even the few most popular cities. That’s obviously not going to work, so some mechanism is needed to regulate who lives where, in the USA that mechanism is mostly market based. Even in Tokyo, a city mostly touted as one with minimal zoning, housing is still pricey (by Japanese standards) with standards at the low end many Americans wouldn’t accept (although I think we need more low end housing like this in the USA). And most of Japan’s young people want to live in Tokyo, it’s obvious not all of those who want to live there can.
- scoofy 3y ago
  Because "go live somewhere else" is unsustainable in the long run. You have to remember that the time-scale of this crisis is literally just one parent-to-child generation. All of these zoning laws were passed when the boomers were in their prime home-buying age range ('60s-'70s), and the crisis is occurring now simply because their children have effectively nowhere to live. It's only politically feasible when the folks you're telling to live somewhere else are a political minority, and, to be honest, until the last few years, that's been the the only response. Now that millennials are becoming the dominant political force, it's just not going to fly. In cities in California they are literally creating company town-style housing for educators and other jobs that cities cannot afford to compensate with enough money to afford housing. Anyone who isn't directly benefiting from the system can trivially understand how inefficient and absurd it is, but the fact is that people who are benefiting from the system are wildly over-represented in terms of active voters. That's obviously changing.