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Spain lives in flats: why we have built our cities vertically

• ttfkam 3y ago
  Love the visualizations.
  • unwind 3y ago
    Yes, it was very beautiful. As someone up in the dark pre-wintery Sweden, it would have been awesome with some floating photos of each neighborhood too, to convey the feel of each a bit better. The 3D maps were initially very impressive, but photos would have made the various housing forms come to life even more, at least for me.
    • digitalsushi 3y ago
      I agree it would have been more immersive but I believe real photos would distract from the information they were conveying; their use of color coded building shapes was an easy way for me to follow along with the points their graphs were making. This presentation made me feel like I was walking into a dark corridor of a new science museum and feeling captivation
• whalesalad 3y ago
  Different strokes for different folks. I’m a very happy single family home dweller. Living in a dense city feels claustrophobic.
  • capableweb 3y ago
    Indeed :) Living too far away from any metropolitan area makes me feel claustrophobic as there is usually very little social groups active in my favorite hobbies/niches unless near a city.
    • jansan 3y ago
      You really should look up the meaning of "claustrophobia"
      • capableweb 3y ago
        Maybe isolated is a better word then, for me they feel just about the same.
        • galangalalgol 3y ago
          It is two sides of the same coin I think. People are horrible and wonderful, and museums and forests are both wonderful. If we invent spatial warps I want a front door in one of these big Galician high rises and a back door in a tiny house somewhere forested mountains meet the sea. I'm up for learning Galego. Edit: I am aware green spain has places where forested mountains meet the sea, so I guess it could be a really short spatial warp, but there is something about standing somewhere you can sing as loud as you can, and knowing no one could hear you but the squirrels.
      • prmoustache 3y ago
        As do the original commenter. Agoraphobia may be a better word in both cases.
      • marssaxman 3y ago
        Claustrophobia feels like the right word to me; suburban life feels like being trapped in whichever tiny little patch of land is yours, hemmed in on all sides by not-yours, not-welcome, keep-out places belonging to other people. Such places feel especially confining to those who cannot drive.
    • anonzzzies 3y ago
      Indeed. I'm very happy I can live in a large house with a lot of land for next to nothing. Please all stay in cities, but don't complain about the housing crisis and housing prices; it's quite obvious that if you want to all live together prices will rise.
  • bitwize 3y ago
    The Anglosphere is more car dependent and more prone to NIMBY policies and housing shortages than continental Europe, because continental Europeans are more comfortable with density. Density is the solution to many land management problems.
    • galangalalgol 3y ago
      I would love to read more on that. It would also be interesting to look at the places in former english colonies that do have higher residential buildings to see if continental immigration there might have been involved. It sounds like spain had a brief love affair with sprawl as well. Perhaps some of it is just that when the population boom arrived for the US sprawl was in style and we had the room?
    • dotcoma 3y ago
      Yes, but they got many things right in the Netherlands even with an incredibly low percentage of people living in flats. Bikes, not cars, please.
      • VancouverMan 3y ago
        The feasibility of widespread bike usage doesn't just depend on density. It depends a lot on a region's weather, too. Amsterdam, for example, happens to have weather that's relatively compatible with biking, all throughout the year. On the other hand, for four to six months of the year, most areas of Canada, and even a good portion of the US, definitely don't. While a very small handful of people can handle biking when it's consistently -10 °C (14 °F) or colder out, possibly through 10 cm (4") or more of uncleared snow/slush, and possibly on ice, the vast majority of people can't and won't. The summer isn't necessarily any better. The cities in southern Ontario, for example, where many Canadians live, can become surprisingly hot and humid for weeks at a time, and biking isn't pleasant then. Given those conditions, people will definitely try to drive instead of biking.
        • bluefirebrand 3y ago
          Even in perfect conditions there's a lot of reasons not to bike. Distances are more difficult, you can't bring someone with you, your carrying capacity is much smaller for shopping trips. It also just plain takes longer to get anywhere and people just don't like spending more time than they have to on errands.
  • jeffbee 3y ago
    Everyone on the receiving end of a tacit subsidy is pretty happy about it.
    • whalesalad 3y ago
      not sure what this means
      • kdmccormick 3y ago
        It means that when you look at government revenue vs expenditure per square mile, urban dwellers are massively subsidizing surburbanites. It's mainly because maintainence of roads, parking, and utilities for a spread-out surburbia is vastly less efficient than it is for a tightly packed city.
        • whalesalad 3y ago
          We all pay taxes, I don't see an issue. I pay significantly more taxes than people who are living in more affordable/dense housing in the city - both in property taxes as well as the fact that I earn a higher income. I am subsidizing lots of other people in my community.
          • jeffbee 3y ago
            There are loads of people who believe this but who are mistaken. Typically they are underestimating the value of services delivered to them for free at the point of use. We don't know your individual situation of course, but it's true in the aggregate.
            • whalesalad 3y ago
              Sounds like a problem with the system, and not a problem that should be projected/blamed on individuals. No one likes paying taxes, but I believe most people are willing to contribute to the common good when they know that it is actually going towards the common good. I feel this way at least and have a decent sense based on anecdotal conversations that a lot of others do too. I am willing to pay more taxes if I know that it is going to directly help people around me, and raise the quality of my entire community. Unfortunately that is often not the case.
  • bigbacaloa 3y ago
    Living in a single family home may be nice, but it's resource inefficient to the point of wasteful. Among the resources wasted are energetic and spatial resources. There is a reason per capita energy consumption in the US dwarfs that in other countries. The society bears a huge cost for the individual decision to live alone.
  • rsynnott 3y ago
    Yes, takes all sorts, and probably a lot of it comes down to what you're used to. Paradoxically I find being down the country claustrophobic; in truly rural areas (and in places with particularly poor provision for pedestrians, like most of the US, this often manifests even in outer suburbs) you can't really get anywhere without driving, and you may not be able to leave your house at all without driving (probably no footpath, narrow unsafe road). I'd never consider living somewhere where I couldn't, at minimum, walk to supermarkets, bars, restaurants, parks, etc.
    • nerdbert 3y ago
      Same here. If I can't walk to things I want to do and people I want to see, I feel like a prisoner.
  • stetrain 3y ago
    More dense construction in urban areas will probably help make single family homes affordable for those who want them. I imagine people who own single family homes in nice suburbs are pretty happy about it, especially if they bought it when prices were half of what they are currently and are paying <3% interest.
    • Axsuul 3y ago
      > More dense construction in urban areas will probably help make single family homes affordable for those who want them. Probably the opposite effect for SFHs in the urban areas. People usually prefer living in a detached house, especially when raising a family, and those are gradually being replaced by these multi-family dwellings, so the supply of them is actually going down.
      • stetrain 3y ago
        Well yes. There is more demand for housing in urban areas than there is room for detached single family homes. Either prices will continue to increase beyond the affordability of those raising families, or density can increase. That's why they are urban areas, not suburban or rural. > People usually prefer living in a detached house, especially when raising a family I also think this is kind of a US-centric experience, or at least doesn't take pricing and location into account. I suppose most people would prefer a single family home in central Manhattan but that doesn't exist, and if it did it would be unaffordable. Now a single family detached home with a convenient transit commute into the city would be great. The US isn't great at building those either.
      • ska 3y ago
        > People usually prefer living in a detached house, especially when raising a family, I don't think it's that simple. I mean, everyone would love a big house on a big yard that is close to everything, but approximately nobody gets to do that. In reality there are always tradeoffs, and the the tradeoffs build in incentives - sometimes intentionally, sometimes not, that people respond to. In a lot of the US those incentives have skewed pretty hard recently to exurban singles but that's not universal. These sorts of things are hugely affected by infrastructure planning and subsidies, etc. At the end of the day people choose between the options they have, not the ones they wish they had.
  • matsemann 3y ago
    I feel being trapped in a suburb more claustrophobic. Can't walk anywhere, entirely car dependant for even the smallest things.
  • stronglikedan 3y ago
    Same. I grew up in a house, but I've lived in apartments and buildings in the city. When it came time to buy, I bought a house. I can't ever see myself not living in a house ever again.
  • mupuff1234 3y ago
    Have you ever lived in a city? There's also a pretty big variance between a European city for example which usually doesn't have very tall high rises, and living in midtown Manhattan.
    • whalesalad 3y ago
      Yep - SF and Honolulu were frustrating places to live. Waiting for elevators. Shared laundry spaces. No privacy. Noisy neighbors. Noisy parking garages. Noisy street traffic. I spent 6 months in Sweden and have traveled to a handful of other European countries. The quiet suburban/rural life is for me. After growing up in LA, bouncing around SF, DC and HNL I have settled in Michigan and really enjoy it here. Plenty of room, not very congested, progressive policies. Life is good (albeit sometimes very cold)
  • j_heffe 3y ago
    Single family homes are fine. The problem in the U.S. is that it's illegal to build anything _but_ single family homes in the majority of suburbs. Wouldn't it be better if people had access to a walkable grocery store, coffee shop or park? Or if kids could safely walk or bike to school? Many communities have absolutely zero options and are completely reliant on cars in order to go about daily life.
    • bluGill 3y ago
      Most suburbs also have higher density zones where you can have apartments. The single family homes get the majority of the land space, but there are also apartments and townhouses which are more dense.
      • munk-a 3y ago
        Those high density zones suffer economically by being forced to subsidized the extensive infrastructure for single family homes - and in the US it's quite difficult to find an area to inhabit that actually prioritizes pedestrians over cars.
      • mikebenfield 3y ago
        There are sometimes apartments spotted around in a suburby area, but due to the nature of US suburbs they don't really get many of the advantages density should bring - everything you might want to go to is still at least a moderate car ride away, there's no people out and about because there's no reason for them to be there, etc. Any time you leave your apartment you go straight to the parking lot and get in your car. It's pathetic really.
        • jjav 3y ago
          > due to the nature of US suburbs The US is a big place. Lots of different suburbs. > everything you might want to go to is still at least a moderate car ride away, there's no people out and about because there's no reason for them to be there Can you point at specific places like this? Google street view links? Every suburb I've lived in the US I can walk to just about everything I need, kids walk to playground and parks, friends houses, etc. I'm curious to see these suburbs where one can't walk anywhere.
  • SkeuomorphicBee 3y ago
    Different strokes indeed. As a very happy apartment/flat/condo dweller, the suburban home life feels to me like being trapped in a tiny deserted island (the cartoon ones, with a single coconut tree), just a tiny personal plot surrounded by endless nothingness, with nowhere to go within reach. When in the suburbs I end up just staying in the couch all the time, because I can't be bothered to face the big journey necessary to go places, feels very isolating.
    • whalesalad 3y ago
      > just a tiny personal plot surrounded by endless nothingness Truthfully this is the dream.
    • jjav 3y ago
      > As a very happy apartment/flat/condo dweller, the suburban home life feels to me like being trapped in a tiny deserted island (the cartoon ones, with a single coconut tree), just a tiny personal plot surrounded by endless nothingness, with nowhere to go within reach. When in the suburbs I end up just staying in the couch all the time, because I can't be bothered to face the big journey necessary to go places, feels very isolating. This sounds like a cartoon version of suburbs! Can you point at actual suburbs (google map links) where you might be surrounded by endless nothingness and can't walk anywhere? I've lived most of my life in suburbs in the US and have never experienced this. The only time I lived in a place I couldn't walk to any destination was when I lived in a quite rural area. But that was rural, not suburban.
      • Barrin92 3y ago
        > Can you point at actual suburbs Not the OP but when I lived in the US as an exchange student I lived in a suburb that looked exactly like the one in this video[1], which seems to be a fairly typical middle class neighborhood. Like him I had the same experience of barely being able to walk anywhere, given how little space there even is for pedestrians. [1]https://youtu.be/39QOw4IL0Gk?t=509 https://youtu.be/39QOw4IL0Gk?t=509
        • 3y ago
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• RicDan 3y ago
  Great way to tell a story and bring data closer to the reader. Educational pages could learn a thing or two from this one.
  • lelima 3y ago
    Great point, imagine learning about Roman history and some 3d models of the Roman cities pops up. Work environment have changed so much in the latest years and I feel school remained the same. Last week a young family member asked what does excel do? and she's about to enter college, and we're talking about Ireland that it supposed to have a good school system
• pantulis 3y ago
  Spaniard here, I expected to see an infographic basically based around Madrid and Barcelona but it seems that special care has been taken to cover the whole country, kudos to El Diario team.
  • serial_dev 3y ago
    One thing that annoyed me is that I constantly had to pause and Google all the locations. They really could have put some images about the different places and buildings so that it's easier to imagine what they were talking about. ... and I think I'm about to throw up, but that's a smaller issue, I take one for the team to encourage creative web development.
  • causality0 3y ago
    Always interesting to me that the Spanish get a special demonym. I am American and also an American, but a Spanish person is a Spaniard.
    • lsllc 3y ago
      No need to feel left out, in Spanish you're a Estadounidense. https://www.quora.com/What-does-estadounidense-mean-in-Spanish https://www.quora.com/What-does-estadounidense-mean-in-Spani...
      • PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
        I think that the correct english translation of that is "Usonian" (Frank Lloyd Wright's term).
        • anthk 3y ago
          United-statian?
    • huytersd 3y ago
      What would the standard demonym be here? Spainian? Spainese? Seems like the British, French and Polish also get unique ones.
• coldcode 3y ago
  Great analysis. I wonder if Spanish town planners have different powers than we do in the US. Town layouts are generally historical, you get to today by the sum of decisions potentially made decades or centuries or even millennia ago. It's very difficult to change a town layout drastically.
  • bertil 3y ago
    Powers are comparable, but people’s expectations are dramatically different for many reasons: * Climate: a shaded courtyard is pretty much necessary given the weather, for instance; * History: not only most city centers in Spain were built in the Middle Ages, but they were also built in the Arabic tradition of having fountains, slated blinds; * Economic: Spain grew economically a bit later than the US and the rest of Europe: 1980 rather than 1960, they had a similar wave of car adoption, but a decade after rebuilding the country after the Spanish war. * Ecology: most of the country is pretty arid: there are beautiful vistas, but it’s not the place where one wants to stay out, baking in the sun, as much. Spaniards want to be outside, but not in a sea of green grass. They much prefer a table in the shade.
    • anthk 3y ago
      Not all Spain has a Mediterranean climate.
      • bertil 3y ago
        No, of course – Galicia famously doesn’t, but they still have tall buildings and courtyards to shelter from the unspeakable wind.
      • Maken 3y ago
        Outside of the areas in the Cantabrian Coast and the Pyrenees, Spain is basically a dessert.
        • mbroncano 3y ago
          That’s awfully inaccurate
• capableweb 3y ago
  Very nice visualization, bit slow animations but overall it was informative and looked well! It seems they're getting the data from the catastral (official goverment data), I wonder how accurate this is? Not sure how it is in other cities around in Spain, but in Barcelona there are a ton of illegal atticos and other addons to buildings, which would add more height to the building in real life compared to the visualization. After a quick look, I could see at least two buildings I know are taller than what the visualization says (the building next door is the same height in the visualization, but has one more floor when you see the building in real-life).
• vanderZwan 3y ago
  I wonder if Barcelona's "ventilation-oriented" architecture from the cholera period had a measurable effect on the spread of covid. Of course the article itself notes that a lot of the architecture was "speculative", and that modern-day Barcelona is very densely populated, but still. IIRC Spain was also one of the first countries during the pandemic to publish research on the importance of keeping rooms well-ventilated, so now I'm wondering if there is a connection to history there (meaning: more likely to look at the importance of ventilation due to cultural history).
  • jvican 3y ago
    Keep in mind Barcelona and Madrid are some of the densest cities in the whole Europe. It's one of the reasons why COVID took such a big hit at the beginning of the pandemic.
    • pjerem 3y ago
      Barcelona is pretty aerial though. I’ve been there twice in my life and I’m very impressed by its original urbanism. At first sight by looking at a map it looks really American inspired but once you dig a little, it’s in fact a unique "modular" urbanism (of course I’m not talking about the historical city center, that’s another interesting topic). What amazed me is how that city manages to be so densely populated but is designed so you never feel packed. My only "complaint" would be that there could be more trees but there were still more than in most French cities (which I’m from) so …
• flagged24 3y ago
  I'm okay with these high rises so I can enjoy the quiet tranquility of rural Spain. Everytime we do stay in an apartment in Spain the lack of sound proofing really stands out. Perhaps even more so because everything is tiled, no carpets.
  • bedobi 3y ago
    was gonna comment the same :melting face: I'm an armchair urbanist and all about density, and in well built buildings it's fine, even with tiled floors you can't really hear your neighbors but in Spain it's as if the buildings are built with zero soundproofing - you hear every single neighbor in the whole building and their tvs, radios, conversations, footsteps... it's maddening, I don't understand it
    • galangalalgol 3y ago
      Noise is the largest complaint my spouse has with dense buildings. I tune things out easily, but I also found myself self conscious about walking softly when I lived above people.
      • globular-toast 3y ago
        Me too. What's annoying is it seems hard to tell what it's going to be like before you actually move in. I've lived in a few different flats in the UK, all purpose built flats. I already knew flats in converted houses are generally terrible. I've been in some where you can hear everything your neighbour is up to. I'm not sure what's worse: hearing them or knowing they can hear you too. In two of them I could never hear a peep from the neighbours apart from footsteps on the floor upstairs. But seriously wondered if the neighbours ever made any noise at all, or whether it was just that well soundproofed. In my most recent flat, though, it's terrible. You can hear conversations through the floor but what's worse is when people make direct contact with walls/ceilings, like closing curtains or closing doors, it's like they are in your room. And this is despite the building having solid concrete floors that appear to be over a foot thick. I do also wonder if it was really an illusion as the first two flats were in noisier areas. But, whatever the reason, it's so hard to tell what it's going to be like before moving in. I wish there standards so you could guarantee what it's going to be like. But until then, I will be seeking detached housing because I just can't stand the noise.
• rsynnott 3y ago
  > Only in South Korea more people live in collective dwellings than in Spain. I... have doubts. (Looks like they're only looking at OECD countries, so Singapore and HK, the most obvious counter-examples, are excluded.)
  • alephnerd 3y ago
    Singapore and HK are outliers in general as they're city states (and the latter won't be a separate government in 23 years anyhow). Also by OECD standards it definetly tracks.
  • bertil 3y ago
    I’m tempted to think that the author saw those two examples (and Monaco) as cities more than countries, which, for an analysis of urban density makes sense. That would be like excluding the Vatican from an analysis of immigration.
    • rsynnott 3y ago
      Ah, yeah, I think it's fair enough to leave them out; they're very much special cases.
  • hbarka 3y ago
    I agree with you. Also, comparing by countries is intuitively not a good measure due to the averaging out of highs and lows. It would be absurd to compare Spain versus Alaska or Texas but these are two US states larger than Spain. How about comparing by cities? How does Madrid fare versus New York City or Chicago or Hong Kong?
    • rsynnott 3y ago
      You then get into messy definitional stuff; what's a city, anyway? :)
  • dghughes 3y ago
    Population is one thing but density of people per sq km is another. For these cities people must be crammed into apartments I can't imagine that density would mean people are in single homes. Mumbai India pop. 23,355,000 density 24,740 Hong Kong Hong Kong pop. 7,347,000 density 25,254 Dhaka Bangladesh pop. 15,443,000 density 33,852 Density is almost a pun "dense city"
• medo-bear 3y ago
  One of the worst things about new development in post-socialist urban areas (high density vertical) are lack of public and green spaces in neighbourhoods.
  • thriftwy 3y ago
    Socialist housing has schools and kindergardens on large plots of land, lots of kids playgrounds between houses, a small park here and there. "Microraion" planning deprioritizes public road so every apartment house is a part of a superblock a-la Barcelona. The downside is often that places of commerce are lacking. They have to be built separately or have first floors repurposed for commerce. I've heard that capital city of Brasilia had this problem too.
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    • medo-bear 3y ago
      Precisely. Yugoslavia had plenty of commercial places planned. So much so that even today many of these commercial spaces remain empty. A good example of what I mean is 'New Belgrade' in Belgrade and 'Split 3' in Split.
• rambambram 3y ago
  One of the first websites with all kinds of Apple-like scrolling effects that doesn't slow down the scrolling experience. I'm on a RPi4 by the way. Good job of the dev!
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• jmyeet 3y ago
  Americans have a very skweed view of what apartment living is actually like, in part because the construction of such buildings in America (outside of the ultra-luxury market) is generally terrible. Lumber is abundant in North America and cheap so everything is timber-framed, which is awful for noise. I actually do not understand how people can live in two-story houses in the US. Such people complaining about noise seems crazy to me. Only drywall separating rooms. Only a plank between floors pretty much. Awful. Anyway, a lot of apartments in the US are what's called 5-over-1 construction. That's 1 concrete framed floor, often commercial and then 5 floors of timber-framed apartments above that. Terrible. Live in a decently built apartment and it's a completely different world. Actual high-rises tend to be decent because they have to be concrete and steel framed (although they may have cheap walls). Any pre-war apartments in NYC are generally amazing. It's also worth pointing out that complaining about noise and wanting things to be quiet isn't universal. Whenever you hear such complaints, make a mental note of their demographics and see what patterns you notice.
  • ernestrc 3y ago
    Spaniard living in the US here. I grew up in apartment complexes and don’t ever remember worrying about noise. I think there’s definitely a component of just being used to it. Agree with your point on construction materials in the US, in relation to noise levels: the only time in my life that I was bothered by my loud neighbors was when I lived in a multi-family home unit in San Mateo, CA. It was a 4-unit home and I could literally hear all my neighbors whereabouts 24/7.
  • bluGill 3y ago
    You have a very incorrect build of what modern American construction is like. Yes it is mostly timer-framed, but we have fire codes which means walls are not as thin as you seem to think. Sure if you look at an apartment built in 1950 your summary is valid, but that isn't done anymore. 5 over 1 refers to section 1 and section 5 of the building code and not the number of floors built for each. It is coincidence that with section 5, five floors is about the max you can have - but that is an about (sometimes 4 is all, sometimes you can get 6 - see a proper civil engineer for details). Section 1 is a lot more expensive to build, but it is also higher strength (and other features that make is useful for a parking garage)
• Vinnl 3y ago
  What's interesting is that the Netherlands is pretty low on the list of countries with the highest percentage of people in collective dwellings (at 21% vs Spain's 65%, only the UK is lower), even though it's one of the most densely populated countries in Europe. I suppose that's the result of the mentioned "mushroom neighbourhoods"? Great visuals btw.
  • itointegral 3y ago
    That's what surprised me too. I think it might be because for every big, dense Dutch city there are n farmhouses in Friesland, Groningen, etc. Also I'm not sure whether they categorise semidetached houses as houses or flats, given how common they are in the Netherlands the 21% would be no surprise if they're considered houses.
  • user_7832 3y ago
    From what I’ve seen while cycling between cities in the Netherlands, the “rural” areas still have houses frequently (and even more in “urban” areas - for example between The Hague and Rotterdam you probably won’t be able to go 500m without finding a house/building). However, the density of most cities isn’t that high (most/median residential buildings are probably 4-5 floors or less, except Rotterdam). For comparison Mumbai has way more taller buildings than almost any city in the Netherlands except for Rotterdam, and Mumbai hasn’t had a lot of high rises due to FSI limitations.
    • Vinnl 3y ago
      Yeah, I think often the Netherlands makes more sense if you just think of the Randstad -or even the entirety of the Netherlands- as a big city. Population-wise, that's not a crazy idea either. Then obviously it will be denser than an entire country like Spain, while it can still be less dense than actual cities within Spain.
  • pxndx 3y ago
    Lots of deserts and mountains in Spain, while the Netherlands is mostly flat and it's a bunch of small villages that are really close together.
• spaintech 3y ago
  What a fantastic site! Wish more titea were build this way. It was an awesome experience! I’m an outsider living in Spain for the last 22 years, I think that while the content portrays a reality of the high rise movement in Spain, there is an angle that was missed. It is important to say that the at time draconian land laws pay an important role in the urban landscape. Not to mention that Spain relative young democracy ( we won’t talk about that the today ) also plays am important role into shaping the urban seen. Lots of change in the government parties have also lead to constrains and or retains during several periods. Ok his has mean that different areas would grow artificially dependent on the “favoritism” at play at the moment through favorable zoning changes or subsidized public housing. Albeit and thankfully at the moment, Spain has not discovers property taxes like the US, it contains growth with little planning and driven by massive speculation which has been an economic driver for major cities even with relative low occupation rates. There is also the fundamental culture of buy vs rent that drives for more flats been built to keep up with the demand. On the plus side, one the the biggest differences I have seen in Spain is a relative wide spread economic demographic in the cities, where you don’t see the major changes like most other major city across the world, it happens but it’s neither common or as drastic as the rest.
  • wackget 3y ago
    Unpopular opinion but I hate the design of the site. The transitions are too slow and the entire site is inaccessible to anyone with vertigo, visual processing or balance disorders. Needless to say it also doesn't respect the browser's `prefers-reduced-motion` preference. A massive case of style over substance for me.
    • Narishma 3y ago
      Agreed. Another downside is that it consumes huge amounts of memory.
      • calderknight 3y ago
        my philosophy: its ok to have fun on the internet
• mupuff1234 3y ago
  I find the ideal building height to be up to 6 floors at most - anything more makes the streets start to feel a bit too claustrophobic and the area less "neighborly".
  • elric 3y ago
    ~6 floors is sometimes referred to as the goldilocks zone of building density. Treehugger has some good articles on it [1]. Horizontal navigation is much easier than vertical navigation (gravity and all that). Having a bunch of ~6 floor buildings next to each other makes for great walkability, while still allowing for ample daylight (and trees and whatnot), without attracing the windy conditions of all towers. [1] https://www.treehugger.com/search?q=goldilocks https://www.treehugger.com/search?q=goldilocks
    • shiroiuma 3y ago
      >Horizontal navigation is much easier than vertical navigation (gravity and all that). Vertical navigation should be easier, at least for going down. All you have to do is jump... If they could just come up with a safe and reliable way of getting people from the top of a tall building to the bottom quickly, taller buildings would be easier. Perhaps a spiral slide? Faster elevators would be nice too. If they allowed up to, say, 3gs of acceleration, we could move between floors of tall buildings much more quickly. "Going up. Brace yourself!"
  • bobthepanda 3y ago
    Building comfort is really a function of height divided by roadway width and surrounding open space. What makes a single lane road claustrophobic might be light and airy on a six or eight lane road. Central Park is surrounded by skyscrapers but is plenty airy. There are also strategies, like setbacks, to make the building massing less imposing and obvious to the person at street level, who at the end of the day is walking with their head straight, not craning up to the sky.
    • ajmurmann 3y ago
      Yeah, places like Pudong, Shanghai really drive this home. Pudong felt very open and airy to me when I was there last in 2009 because there is so much space between the buildings. That said, it of course felt somewhat sterile and didn't have the awesome qualities you by contrast get from the cool parts of Tokyo that have much lower buildings, but right next to each other and allow every building to be different, have businesses on random floors etc.
• dvt 3y ago
  A bit ironic how the first example is of La Coruña and literally everyone from there absolutely hates the fact that the ugly brutalist Franco-era flats absolutely destroyed the vibe of the coastal cities in Galicia (e.g. Cayon, O Grove, Baiona, etc.). My sister lives in Santiago de Compostela and her in-laws are from the area so I've had a lot of conversations with them.
  • kdmccormick 3y ago
    So talking with your in-laws is enough to make you sure that literally eveyone from there absolutely hates them?
  • derivada 3y ago
    That was probably the point of the article.
• mathverse 3y ago
  Condos are absolutely atrocious, inhuman way of living. If I could I would move to a villa or a suburb house.
  • willio58 3y ago
    By condo you mean apartment right? Condos are usually just apartments you own. Apartments are not inherently bad. They allow for density which, if you went through the tour this site provides, you know allows for cheaper public services. I've lived in many great apartments and a few bad ones. It's not the style of building that's bad, it's the owners and the laws they are forced to or not forced to follow. Suburbs are _heavily_ subsidized. They require a ton of money from taxpayers to sustain their existence. So much so that many North American cities are essentially permanently in a state of insolvency because they can't sustain the infrastructure needed for suburbs. Think about this, for a suburb you have inherently more roads and more distance to cover for things like sewers, power/cable lines, water mains, etc. Plus you just take up more space so suburbs don't tend to be walkable in terms of productive travel. You can walk your dog in a suburb, but if you need groceries you'll be driving. So you pay more for suburbs even if you don't live in them AND they require you to pay for a car which depending on circumstances can total a few thousand dollars a year, especially if you don't have the money to drop on a car that doesn't require a lot of maintenence. As mentioned in this website, suburbs should always be considered a luxury. The vast majority of people should live in more dense areas. It's better for the environment, personal finances, city economies, physical and social health (ever wonder why Europeans live longer?), etc. If you want to live in a suburb, good for you! But I believe we should fully stop subsidizing them. Start making suburb communities compensate cities financially for the imbalance they impose on our systems.
    • mathverse 3y ago
      I always feel bad not replying or replying with a short sentence to such long comment. Anyway I have never lived in NA and while I understand your concerns I dont think they are valid. I am not a cattle that you need to optimize. In Europe we subsidize many, many things and I dont see a reason why living like a human should not be one of them.
• Lolaccount 3y ago
  Excellent site ... except for the UI nit of not being able to judge how long the article is ... on my browser, at least. Saved for later as I had no idea how long it will take to read it ...
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• treis 3y ago
  Spain also has the lowest fertility rate in Europe at 1.28. Not sure how much apartment living is cause or effect on that but it's a grim number. Every generation is only 60% the size of the one that came before it.
  • alfonsodev 3y ago
    Does it take in account population age ? Spain absorbs a lot of European elderly that decide to retire in Spain.
    • foliveira 3y ago
      The UN report shared by the sibling poster, has a graph that distinguishes the rates between Spanish and non-Spanish nationals, so I think that’s a positive answer to your question
  • jack_riminton 3y ago
    That was shocking so had to look it up, and it seems to be true. UN article on it here: https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/events/pdf/expert/24/Policy_Briefs/PB_Spain.pdf https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/events/pdf...
    • emptyfile 3y ago
      [dead]
  • codr7 3y ago
    You'll find similar patterns in many countries. The population explosion isn't happening very much, quite the opposite.
  • Lord-Jobo 3y ago
    This is slightly aside, but the concerns over fertility rates in the first world really seem REALLY misplaced to me. Population growth concerns are easily mitigated with immigration which will stay in demand until the rest of the worlds fertility rates catch up(40+ years), and the population growth concerns themselves are a reflection of an outdated (or soon to be outdated) economic model that we should probably focus on replacing or phasing out? Im not sure why THAT isnt the next step, and instead we have so many whackos in government trying to force pregnancies and other wild policies. Yeah, its a hard, big, complex problem and will probably require a decade of modeling/testing like what is happening with UBI testing in small cities. Maybe its just a reflection of the times when the people we elect reach for the most insane heavy handed solutions for every problem, and proceed to publicly fill their pants at the very concept of change.
• simple10 3y ago
  I love sites like this! Instead of reading them, it's an instant switch to code view and looking through their javascript libraries. It's built on scrollama and d3. Excellent implementation with very smooth scroll behavior... at least on desktop.
  • bluGill 3y ago
    On a fast desktop. I have a slower desktop (pinebook pro laptop) and it was not smooth.
• seltzered_ 3y ago
  The site is beautiful, and yet I ask myself questions like: What is the hydrological impact of urbanization? This can both impact hydrological cycles (see millan millan's papers "greening and browning in a climate change hotspot") and possibly subsurface in karst and aquifer life
  • bluGill 3y ago
    Don't forget when asking this question that a higher city is less wide (probably) and so while it affects the area it covers more, there is less area affected at all.
    • manbitesdog 3y ago
      Also car usage is way lower
• anovikov 3y ago
  Poverty, that's how. They live in flats because they can't afford US-style houses (climate would allow them easily), and can't afford 70km average commute radius - car-only because sprawl can't be covered by public transport. They live in apartments not because they are so conscious about urban planning, but because they can't afford to do otherwise. Give people money and they want to move to single-family houses in suburbs.
  • Darmody 3y ago
    That's far from the truth. People want to live near the city center. They want to be able to walk and get anywhere easily and that's means they want to live in an apartment in a city. Actually, nowadays is cheaper to buy a house with a garden than an apartment and guess what people are trying to buy?
  • electrozav 3y ago
    It's much more expensive to live in the center of a big city. And not just in Spain.
  • anthk 3y ago
    No, buddy, it's the reverse. The sparsest provinces with rural backgrounds (the Castilles [except for maybe Zamora-Salamanca-Leon] , Aragon, Extremadura)... are the poorest. The most populated ones are the ones with the most quality jobs and people has much better salaries and ofc the cost of everything it's on par: Bilbao, Valencia, Barcelona, Madrid... Also, as they stated owning a flat in the center of your city or town it's expensive as fuck, while owning a 'villa' in the outskirts in the middle of nowhere in Ye Olde Farmtown it's dirt cheap.
  • manuelabeledo 3y ago
    > ... and can't afford 70km average commute radius Do we consider this abomination a luxury now?
• germandiago 3y ago
  It is true. One of the things that stroke me the most when I first visited England is that, at least in Hove and Brighton and Eastbourne, all streets had houses, no flats at all. This also made distances longer. Written from a flat :)
  • notahacker 3y ago
    Tbf, some of those houses have been turned into as many as half a dozen small studio flats (worth as much as proper houses in some other UK cities - Brighton is expensive)
• nologic01 3y ago
  Excellent storytelling, fluidly integrating geospatial data and other visual elements and statistics in a smooth flow. Who knows, maybe one day such a "visual space" inside a browser would be interactive, a Google Earth type of thing as far as navigation goes, but with data queries that allow on the fly to populate various widgets. An expert could livestream a story or "save" it for later publication.
  • subpixel 3y ago
    Journalism presented as some sort of CD-ROM experience was quite neat when we were all a little bit interested in what web browsers could do. Today I assume a web browser and/or the device it is on could kill me and eat my lunch given the proper input. I just want to read an article with illustrations, a format that will never cease to be effective.
  • j-a-a-p 3y ago
    The New York Times regularly have this flowing style of stories. It is often quite impressive. Once they did a simple flowless scroll type of story called 78 long minutes, about a scared police force during a school shooting. Very impressive, you keep thinking do something! while reading and scrolling. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/05/28/us/school-shooting-timeline-uvalde-texas.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/05/28/us/school-sho...
    • jojobas 3y ago
      [flagged]
• bluGill 3y ago
  I don't have a large enough sample to make a statement, but my impression is apartments in Spain are larger than in the US. Even if you want to live in an apartment, if you want more space you are forced to buy a house. You can't get a 4 bedroom apartment (3 kids? separate office? hobby room?...) You can't get an apartment with two "living rooms" (music room, tv room, rec room...). You don't need any of that, but if you are not poor you may want those things and be willing to pay if it was available.
  • davidw 3y ago
    Not sure about Spain, but in Italy, you definitely find a lot of 'family size' flats. We had a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom flat in a 6-plex, and that is a pretty common sort of living arrangement.
    • balfirevic 3y ago
      What's the area of those flats? Where I live there are plenty of 3 bedroom flats, but they are usually under 100 m^2 (often smaller) and almost always under 150 m^2. 3 bedrooms in 100 m^2 is pretty cramped.
      • epolanski 3y ago
        It really comes down to your wallet. There's plenty of 150/200/250 m^2 flats in Italy (Rome and Milan especially), but they are very expensive. Here's a non comprehensive list of actual apartments above 250m (I didn't filter by flat, but you can see plenty are) and this is only the core center of Rome (what would you call downtown), not the entire city. https://www.immobiliare.it/vendita-case/roma/?criterio=rilevanza&superficieMinima=200&superficieMassima=1000&idMZona[]=10303&idMZona[]=10145&idMZona[]=10146&idMZona[]=10147&idMZona[]=10156&idMZona[]=10159&idMZona[]=10149&idMZona[]=10151&idMZona[]=10155&idMZona[]=10148 https://www.immobiliare.it/vendita-case/roma/?criterio=rilev...
      • bombcar 3y ago
        100 sq meters is about 1000 sq ft, and that's definitely on the small side for a 3 bedroom. 150 at 1600 is much more "normal" even in the US (for apartments, houses are usually bigger now).
• EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
  I live in a high rise condo now, love that basically everything I need is one elevator trip away. Grocery delivers in under 15 minutes, like a charm. Maintenance takes me one hour a month, mostly changing various filters. Building is of higher quality so no noise issues. No steps to climb. But I'm a lazy retiree. For young people with children and dogs math is different.
  • mlrtime 3y ago
    Counter point: (I lived in apartments/condos for 20+ years) I live in a SFH now, love that I can simply walk 5 feet from my kitchen to the back yard and have no noise and fresh air. No noisy neighbors above me constantly dropping things on the floor, no smelly hallways, or people leaving garbage in common areas. I don't have to wait for an elevator, or hope that it doesn't have maintenance issues. Maintenance takes no hours a month other than a call to a handyman to fix various issues in the house. I could go on, but to each their own, pursuit what makes you happy!
    • EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
      Yeah, I too call a handyman everytime neighbors above me think of dropping something on the floor!
• glitchc 3y ago
  One should not discount the impact of climate/weather on the style of construction. Buildings enclosing gardens or a common area open to sunlight in an internal square is a great idea in moderate climates, but would work poorly in heavy snow regions.
  • rewmie 3y ago
    In Spain, most of those socialized residential housing projects were not designed with quality of life in mind. Instead, they are more in line with France's post-war operational urban planning approach mainly designed to maximize how many lower-class people could be stored in small areas. They might place a roof over your head, but apartments are extremely small with extremely small rooms, quality of life is very poor, and zoning didn't even allowed any type of non-residential use. Some neighborhoods are outright designed after prison blocks. In contrast, the middle/upper middle class residential areas often come in the form of locked up apartment blocks manned by one or more "conserges" (like a mix between a janitor and private security guard) with the ground and first floor completely locked up.
    • omginternets 3y ago
      I'm not sure I agree with your characterization of post-war urban planning in France. In particular, the "HLMs" of the 60's and 70's are known for their explicit interest in providing for quality-of-life in communal living. What happened instead is that these utopian plans didn't survive contact with reality.
  • Tade0 3y ago
    Define moderate climate. I'm currently in a building from 1990 in Eastern Europe which apparently was inspired by those in Barcelona, because it's the same shape and we have a common area with greenery and trees, but the latitude is 51° N and we used to have -30°C winters as recently as the late 90s, so I wouldn't call the climate (at least back then) moderate.
    • glitchc 3y ago
• layer8 3y ago
  I dream of a world where, given the data set, such a presentation would be straightforward to create with standard office software, or from a few interoperable ubiquitous software components, and easy to safely share online and offline, in a format that could be assumed to still work without issues 20 years later.
• ShrigmaMale 3y ago
  i'm glad they're happy but that sounds actually terrible. infinitely worse than living on a large plot of land with trees and a garden, having a nice shop to work in, a comfortable home office, a spacious kitchen, plenty of space for cars. i honestly can't see how people prefer this; i am assuming at this point it's cope and/or people who are trying to gaslight everyone into preferring it for policy/environmental/political reasons.
  • kdmccormick 3y ago
    I don't live in Spain but I live in a reasonably dense city. * More things to do. * More people to meet. * More restaurants, which leads to the best restaurants being better. * More mom and pop businesses. I didn't know independent shoe stores were a thing until I moved here. * Live entertainment everywhere, both to enjoy and to participate in. * Walking to get coffee is very nice. Walking to get groceries is super nice. * Huge freedom of movement on a bike. OK, rural rail trails are cool, but they're lines. In a good city, I have trails but also the entire street grid. * Access to trains and buses which will take me to places I can drink without worrying about DUI. * Watching the innocent shenanigans that go on around makes life more interesting. The peace of mind of knowing that my living arrangements are reasonably sustainable, both environmentally and economically, is also nice. FWIW, I could afford to life in suburbia or the country, but I like the city better. I do love taking weekend backpacking trips in the mountains, so I'm not some nature-phobe.
• gumby 3y ago
  > Between 1950 and 1975, thousands of Spaniards migrated from the countryside to the city. Franco's dictatorship Ministry of Housing promoted the construction of high-rise housing estates to accommodate them. The same thing happened in other countries like the US, UK and France, yet the outcome was negative rather than positive. What was different about Spain that it worked out well? (side point: I would rather have read an article with figures than a movie-like feature like this).
  • sofixa 3y ago
    How was the outcome negative in France? There were failures in ensuring the new high rising estates don't become ghettos due to lack of opportunities and self-reinforcing vicious cycles, which have been in large part corrected and have been taken into account for any new high rise / housing (re)developments. And there has been a lack of enough developments in the big cities for a variety of reasons. But overall I wouldn't say the outcome wss negative. Millions of people have somewhere to live which is more often than not with decent quality and availability of opportunities.
    • gumby 3y ago
      > How was the outcome negative in France? Your point is good: I have friends in some developments around Paris and they are perfectly fine. But the hostile banlieus are pretty bad, and such hostile environments have developed in the UK and USA to the point where they are being torn down. Is the same true in Spain?
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• wiseowise 3y ago
  > Percentage (%) of population living in collective dwellings, as opposed to single-family houses and townhouses Love how they’ve included only advanced western/westernized countries there and not third world hellholes or post-soviet dumps.
  • ska 3y ago
    Love why? It's not the only comparison/analysis that can be made but it's an interesting one, to pick countries with roughly equivalent planning parameters.
• nzzn 3y ago
  Outstanding—compelling presentation loaded with data. Perhaps the conclusion should be that the world should move to efficient 75% or so apartment living. UK at 15% is a huge outlier for a top 10 economy.
  • pvaldes 3y ago
    Much more efficient to bomb also (2023 was a real eye opener).
    • shiroiuma 3y ago
      The lesson there is: if you're going to live densely, then don't make enemies out of your neighbors who have a lot more military power than you.
• sleepingbot 3y ago
  [dead]
• RomanPushkin 3y ago
  The website is ugly, this is exactly how you should NOT build websites, consumes CPU, and everything is lagging. Animation is like 0.1 FPS
  • acchow 3y ago
    Animation is smooth as butter for me (M1 Mac, Chrome)
    • RomanPushkin 3y ago
      Linux, Chrome. I can't even read the website, feels like it watching animated GIF loading on dialup modem in 1994. It jumps from one area to another randomly
      • jupp0r 3y ago
        Sounds like hardware rendering is not working for you. No need to blame that on the website.
        • RomanPushkin 3y ago
          Hardware rendering, lol? It's just a website, not a video game. My system is quite powerful. At least high-res OpenArena runs like a charm. Why do I need GPU to access the information - that's the question. What did they do so the website works worse than a 3D video game? Obviously I am missing something.
          • pezezin 3y ago
            OpenArena is really old by current standards, I don't know what you are trying to prove here.
          • acchow 3y ago
            The animated map focus actually helps convey geographic information. I think you just have some hardware-software conflict issue.
• dathinab 3y ago
  not nice for skimming, but very nicely done, gave me a feeling I just made a trip to a museum, thanks
• kleton 3y ago
  Isn't there an optimum of about 8-12 stories for any sort of building, before the cross section of plumbing and elevator shafts make it less economical?
  • bombcar 3y ago
    The optimum is based on land value, clearly, because in places where the land is effectively free or incredibly low cost, buildings don't seem to naturally get above 2 or 3 stories. So somewhere between 3 and 12 stories is a local optimum, and it's probably about where you need additional "machine floors".
    • bluGill 3y ago
      Where land is free 5 floors is the optimum just because nobody will accept more than 3 without expensive elevators (it may not even be legal if you would accept it!). Most people are willing to pay a little bit more for a larger foundation just for less floors. For car oriented locations 1 floor is optimal because the type of building that can handle more than one level of cars is so expensive you want to just build a large parking lot. (In theory the humans could be in taller buildings, but the space used for humans becomes a rounding error, and so you may as well avoid the expensive elevator)
  • jupp0r 3y ago
    This is obviously a function of the price of land, otherwise you wouldn't see very large high rises in Manhattan or similar.
  • bluGill 3y ago
    There are lots of different factors the come into play as you go higher. Above 3 floors you need elevators for the disabled, while shorter buildings often cant get by without. (check with a lawyer for what your local law says - I've been told that the 3 floor isn't what the ADA doesn't actually say the highest is, just what most consider it to say). Even without disability laws, people generally want elevators to go higher. Conventional wood framing is the cheapest, but 5 is about the max floors you can get. Brick framing can apparently get you to about 10 floors. There are lots of other construction methods - check with a proper civil engineer for what the limits and costs of each are. Somewhere around 6-15 floors your city water will no longer have enough pressure and so your building will need booster pumps. Similarly, drain water needs special care to ensure the falling water doesn't burst the plumbing. You local fire may code allow for less strict standards if the fire department ladder trucks can just drive up to each window and rescue someone in a burning building. If that cannot happen people need to get down the stairs in case of fire (I've always wondering how the disabled will do this) so you need to ensure those stairs can be used in case of fire. Floor space per person is also a factor. Richer people tend to be willing to pay for more space than poor people, and poor people tend to have more kids. Thus if you make larger apartments you don't need as much elevator space. This one is tricky though as rich people tend to prefer newer buildings so you might discover that when the building gets old you can't rent some apartments because of the building max occupancy. Still, office buildings tend to have a lot more people per area, and they are more likely to leave at the same time, so I don't think space per person can be a big factor. (but school dorms need to consider all students going to class at the same time) As the person paying for a building you get to optimize those factors (generally for profit, but you can pick other considerations). Good luck.
• dzonga 3y ago
  look at the anomaly that is the uk. no wonder uk property prices are crazy.
• CLIML 3y ago
  [dead]
• andyferris 3y ago
  Great website. I lived in Spain for 2.5 years. I have to say, the appartment life there was fantastic. I'm back home living in the 'burbs and I still miss the "15 minute city" keenly. I know the status-quo in Spain, but the history presented here is kinda fascinating. I keep forgetting how dynamic these things are. Also... is anyone else shocked how little development there is currently? Maybe this is just because it doesn't have e.g. 2010-2023 numbers (the downturn _was_ extremely brutal) but I thought the development sector had rebounded at least somewhat.
  • candeira 3y ago
    The downturn was brutal, but the drop in development was also needed. At the height of the property bubble around 2005-2007, Spain (pop ~44M) was building more units per year than Germany, France and the UK (combined pop. ~195M).[1] During the GFC Spain suffered from population shrinkage [2], surfeit of available housing stock, and the economic crunch pushed into the market some of the housing stock that would previously have been kept in reserve, so yeah, it wasn't necessarily a bad thing that building activities slowed down. [1] I don't have a source, because I learnt this from a bunch of attendees to a conference on concrete (yes, the kind you use for building) in Madrid in 2007. We exchanged impressions on how software conferences (PyCon forever!) are different from the ones in the building industry, and they shared some eye opening statistics. [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/ESP/spain/population https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/ESP/spain/population
• ptaffs 3y ago
  maybe off topic but home ownership is one good and common way to build generational wealth (opinions/citations below) but renting or lease-holding does not realize as an asset which retains its value to be passed to children. (leases can be traded, i suppose, but have a landlord and possibility of termination). But how is generational wealth and social mobility improved or hindered by multi occupancy, high-rise living and city planning such as talked about here? https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/mortgages/articles/this-is-why-homeownership-has-been-crucial-to-building-generational-wealth/ https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/mortgages/articles/this-is-w... https://www.npr.org/2023/01/04/1146960942/how-buying-a-home-became-a-key-way-to-build-wealth-in-america https://www.npr.org/2023/01/04/1146960942/how-buying-a-home-...
  • globular-toast 3y ago
    It's an interesting question. Generational wealth only matters if some are able to do it while others are not. In other words, the only thing that really matters is inequality. I'd rather totally get rid of generational wealth (ie. inheritance) and have everyone start from the same place (or perhaps an adjusted position to compensate for other factors). Spain has lower inequality than the UK and a lot lower than the US. Inequality in the US is rising, but inequality in Spain appears to be rising rapidly. This might be because those buildings are owned by private entities who are building generational wealth.
  • ajmurmann 3y ago
    Condos are an option to have high(er)-density and own. That said, I question if things we need for our fundamental needs are the vehicle we should chose to build inter-generational wealth. Getting prices of things we must have down, rather than up seems healthier.
• ajmurmann 3y ago
  I wonder how many of these building types would be legal in the US just due to fire codes that were created for a different area. In most of the US apartment buildings units must have access to two stairwells which in essence limits everything to a double-loaded hallway layout. That makes it harder to build units for families and makes it impossible to have more windows and a cross-breeze. More complete discussion: https://www.niskanencenter.org/how-to-build-more-family-sized-apartments/ https://www.niskanencenter.org/how-to-build-more-family-size...
  • mariojv 3y ago
    On the topic of fire codes, most Spanish apartment buildings also don't have smoke alarms, as far as I can tell. HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31246950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31246950 I'm not against safe building, but some friends of ours were actually denied the ability to be eligible to foster a child because their home didn't have 2 points of egress in every room. The US seems particularly stringent about anything fire-related.
• WalterBright 3y ago
  The site has invented a new way of scrolling, that doesn't work with my browser. Oh well.
• balfirevic 3y ago
  It's funny how everyone complains about other people being loud when living in flats. Does no one here like to bang on electric guitar or blast karaoke with friends until 3AM?
  • huytersd 3y ago
    I love to wood work late into the night. Even in a suburb my neighbors would have eaten me alive. I really enjoy my 20 acres.
    • ArtemZ 3y ago
      Urbanists hate people like you. Or basically most hobbists. Or large families.
    • manbitesdog 3y ago
      As a Spaniard who has lived in California for the last five years, this is what I miss most about being back in Spain. However, the ability to go without using a car unless I'm leaving the city—managing a month or more on just my bike and feet—definitely makes up for it.
  • cowboysauce 3y ago
    No? I think it's rude to be excessively loud so I don't, especially not at night. I don't see this as really any different than "Does no one here cut in line?".
    • balfirevic 3y ago
      That's not what I meant. I'm saying that many people dislike flats because their neighbours make noise, but not many people are saying they dislike flats because they themselves wish to make noise (which they can only politely do in a house).
• ionwake 3y ago
  Absolutely excellent and interesting site. Well done.
• sexy_seedbox 3y ago
  2021: > Techniques/technologies used: R, Rstudio, QGIS and Tippecanoe for data compiling and data analysis. D3.js and Javascript for data visualization. Mapbox for mapping buildings footprint. HTML, Javascript and Scrollama for scroll webpage https://sigmaawards.org/spain-lives-in-flats-why-we-have-built-our-cities-vertically/ https://sigmaawards.org/spain-lives-in-flats-why-we-have-bui...
• fennecfoxy 3y ago
  I wish that more inner city housing was high rise apartment buildings in the UK. When I first moved here it was super weird to see "okay in London there are small flats, because it's the big city, they don't build up because they complain it ruins the aesthetic/NIMBY/Grenfell tower fears". So I go out to a small town here for the first time. Large green fields surrounding this town, plenty of space. It's STILL ALL SMALL FLATS! I think the core issue is that there's such a long history here, everyone already owned all the land a long time ago. Getting a small slice enough for a flat is the most people can do. My friend grew up in London in a flat, went to inner city schools and coming from beautiful green NZ I just couldn't imagine what that must be like. His flat all surrounded by concrete and endless streets flat up against flat with no space in between. His schools all built up in the same way, often with a school field "down the road". I think in the UK it's too late to remedy, but outside of cities houses need more space. Inside cities they need to start building modern high rises.