5 ms·

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.
  - willio58 3y ago
    No reason to feel bad! I like taking opportunities like this to respond with facts I've learned through heavy research in this area in the past few years. I also don't want _anyone_ to feel like cattle. When I talk about apartments I want to be clear, I'm not talking about shacks with thin walls, 50 stories, and no greenspace. The ideal apartment has almost all the benefits of living in a suburb (good amount of space for yourself and others, greenery, privacy, sturdiness and soundproofing, cleanliness etc.) with the added benefit of allowing you to potentially not own a car, and without the extreme requirement of subsidies from any level of government. These ideas are growing in popularity, in part led by content creators like Not Just Bikes, City Beautiful, Climate Town, and thought leaders like those at Strong Towns. If you have a chance, please check any of those out. I think you'll find what I found after learning about this stuff which is that no way of living is inherently evil, but some ways of living such as suburban sprawl are just more expensive in many ways. We just haven't done a good job at making those costs clear to those who live in suburbs, because governments absorb the cost and collect increased taxes from all to make up the difference. And as is so common worldwide, people tend to hate taxes, so that isn't even enough and it leads to cities with budgets that will never be healthy and simply cannot provide the services everyone wants such as regular cleaning, better education, solid public transportation, etc.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- imiric 3y ago
  > Suburbs are _heavily_ subsidized. They require a ton of money from taxpayers to sustain their existence. That's highly relative. Urban areas have high maintenance costs as well, precisely because of the higher density. The infrastructure requires more maintenance, higher sanitation costs, law enforcement, etc. Not to mention that cramming hundreds of people per km², surrounded by concrete and no vegetation, in small and dimly lit apartments, is awful for mental health. I know where I would prefer to live during the next pandemic. > It's better for the environment How is it better for the environment, exactly? Cities destroy the environment just by existing, and they hardly have enough green areas to sustain wild life. > physical and social health (ever wonder why Europeans live longer?) This has nothing to do with the urban lifestyle. Europeans live longer on average because of less socioeconomic inequality, healthier diets, and better healthcare systems.
  - willio58 3y ago
    > Urban areas have high maintenance costs as well, precisely because of the higher density. Urban areas cost more in total, but less per capita. If you don't take that per capita measurement into account, it's pointless to claim things like this. Here's a good infographic on this: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-public-more-than-twice-as-much-as-compact-development https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ... See specifically the massive (4-10x) increase in costs for things like roads, sidewalks, water, sewers, transportation, etc. when we talk about suburban environments. > Cities destroy the environment just by existing, and they hardly have enough green areas to sustain wild life. Do you have a source for this? Living closer to the things you need in life such as energy, food, water, friends, family obviously leads to less waste of energy in getting to those things or having them come to you. Around wildlife, guess where they could and used to live before suburban sprawl? Right where the suburbs popped up. Your solution to increasing wildlife is continuing suburban sprawl? I highly recommend you research and provide sources before making claims like that.
    - imiric 3y ago
      Thanks for the link. I stand corrected regarding the cost difference. Though I still think the urban lifestyle comes at the expense of quality of life. It's wrong to optimize for lower cost, which often means that other factors important for wellbeing are neglected. Being surrounded by concrete instead of nature has a detrimental effect to our psychological and physical health, with urban runoff being one problem[1]. The amount of air and noise pollution is usually higher in cities than in rural areas[2]. All urban conveniences aren't enough to make this worthwhile, though this is a personal stance, and others may disagree. And, yes, the suburban sprawl is also damaging to the environment. But we know much more today about sustainable infrastructure than we did in the 1950s. The same is true for cities, but it's a much larger effort to bring cities in balance with nature than rural areas. It's not just a matter of planting trees, and electrifying transportation. These are decade-long projects with enormous cost[3], and governments tend to drag their feet. In contrast, the environmental impact of suburbs can be lowered by relatively minor personal changes[4], which is much more manageable. I'm not claiming to be an expert in any of this, and ultimately my position is driven by a dislike of cities in general. But thanks for clarifying some of my misconceptions. This research was eye opening. [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-022-00853-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-022-00853-4 [2]: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/ss/ss6613a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/ss/ss6613a1.htm [3]: https://unhabitat.org/news/27-apr-2020/the-cost-of-making-a-city-sustainable-measuring-the-financial-cost-of-meeting-sdg https://unhabitat.org/news/27-apr-2020/the-cost-of-making-a-... [4]: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/04/how-to-be-more-sustainable-in-suburbia/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/04/how-to-be-more-sustai...
- jjav 3y ago
  > more distance to cover for things like sewers, I don't know which one becomes more expensive per capita, but "more distance" is very simplistic metric. Think of how much money and time and coordination it requires to dig a 200ft trench somewhere in Manhattan. Street closures, permits with multiple organizations, coordinate with tons of utilities and other underground facilities, engineering surveys if you're digging near high rises, etc. Meanwhile in the suburbs one guy in a pickup shows up with a digger and gets it done before lunch. Density also bring in enormous complexity, so it's not that simple. > You can walk your dog in a suburb, but if you need groceries you'll be driving. I live in a suburb and I walk to one of three nearby (< 10 min walk) grocery stores.
  - manuelabeledo 3y ago
    > I live in a suburb and I walk to one of three nearby (< 10 min walk) grocery stores. That is an outlier, though. Not only are suburbs less dense and, obviously, services are not as close, but county and/or city regulations across the US are notoriously anti mixed use developments, which make things even worse.
    - jjav 3y ago
      > That is an outlier, though. Can you point me at data? This is always stated as truth but I always question it and have not seen anything conclusive yet. Personally I've never lived in a suburb where I couldn't walk to supermarkets and other stores (and I've nearly always lived in suburbs). I think the outlier is the suburb from where one can't walk anywhere. Would love to see comprehensive data on this.
      - manuelabeledo 3y ago
        > Can you point me at data? The National walkability index guide [0] gives suburbs a "below average" walkability score. Informally, there's also a website called Walkscore [1], where users rate walkability in many cities and towns across the US. Even most cities rank lower than 60 out of 100, and suburbs, given the almost nation-wide aversion to mixed use buildings, do not rank higher. Coming from Europe, it was a huge shock when I knew that I would have to walk 15 minutes to reach the closest grocery store. That, and the fact that in the US, sidewalks seem to disappear at random intervals for whatever reason. [0] https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2021-06/documents/national_walkability_index_methodology_and_user_guide_june2021.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2021-06/documents/na... [1] https://www.walkscore.com https://www.walkscore.com
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
Try living in a damp victorian house in Bimingham, with unfixable mould problems, where the floor has 6 carpets from 6 generations stacked on top of each-other and the bathroom is all weired because originally toilet was designed to be outside. That's like half of UK housing. The people who would rather live in an old 50 sqm house than a modern apartment must be abusing some serious substances

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.
- willio58 3y ago
  No reason to feel bad! I like taking opportunities like this to respond with facts I've learned through heavy research in this area in the past few years. I also don't want _anyone_ to feel like cattle. When I talk about apartments I want to be clear, I'm not talking about shacks with thin walls, 50 stories, and no greenspace. The ideal apartment has almost all the benefits of living in a suburb (good amount of space for yourself and others, greenery, privacy, sturdiness and soundproofing, cleanliness etc.) with the added benefit of allowing you to potentially not own a car, and without the extreme requirement of subsidies from any level of government. These ideas are growing in popularity, in part led by content creators like Not Just Bikes, City Beautiful, Climate Town, and thought leaders like those at Strong Towns. If you have a chance, please check any of those out. I think you'll find what I found after learning about this stuff which is that no way of living is inherently evil, but some ways of living such as suburban sprawl are just more expensive in many ways. We just haven't done a good job at making those costs clear to those who live in suburbs, because governments absorb the cost and collect increased taxes from all to make up the difference. And as is so common worldwide, people tend to hate taxes, so that isn't even enough and it leads to cities with budgets that will never be healthy and simply cannot provide the services everyone wants such as regular cleaning, better education, solid public transportation, etc.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
imiric 3y ago
> Suburbs are _heavily_ subsidized. They require a ton of money from taxpayers to sustain their existence. That's highly relative. Urban areas have high maintenance costs as well, precisely because of the higher density. The infrastructure requires more maintenance, higher sanitation costs, law enforcement, etc. Not to mention that cramming hundreds of people per km², surrounded by concrete and no vegetation, in small and dimly lit apartments, is awful for mental health. I know where I would prefer to live during the next pandemic. > It's better for the environment How is it better for the environment, exactly? Cities destroy the environment just by existing, and they hardly have enough green areas to sustain wild life. > physical and social health (ever wonder why Europeans live longer?) This has nothing to do with the urban lifestyle. Europeans live longer on average because of less socioeconomic inequality, healthier diets, and better healthcare systems.
- willio58 3y ago
  > Urban areas have high maintenance costs as well, precisely because of the higher density. Urban areas cost more in total, but less per capita. If you don't take that per capita measurement into account, it's pointless to claim things like this. Here's a good infographic on this: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-public-more-than-twice-as-much-as-compact-development https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ... See specifically the massive (4-10x) increase in costs for things like roads, sidewalks, water, sewers, transportation, etc. when we talk about suburban environments. > Cities destroy the environment just by existing, and they hardly have enough green areas to sustain wild life. Do you have a source for this? Living closer to the things you need in life such as energy, food, water, friends, family obviously leads to less waste of energy in getting to those things or having them come to you. Around wildlife, guess where they could and used to live before suburban sprawl? Right where the suburbs popped up. Your solution to increasing wildlife is continuing suburban sprawl? I highly recommend you research and provide sources before making claims like that.
  - imiric 3y ago
    Thanks for the link. I stand corrected regarding the cost difference. Though I still think the urban lifestyle comes at the expense of quality of life. It's wrong to optimize for lower cost, which often means that other factors important for wellbeing are neglected. Being surrounded by concrete instead of nature has a detrimental effect to our psychological and physical health, with urban runoff being one problem[1]. The amount of air and noise pollution is usually higher in cities than in rural areas[2]. All urban conveniences aren't enough to make this worthwhile, though this is a personal stance, and others may disagree. And, yes, the suburban sprawl is also damaging to the environment. But we know much more today about sustainable infrastructure than we did in the 1950s. The same is true for cities, but it's a much larger effort to bring cities in balance with nature than rural areas. It's not just a matter of planting trees, and electrifying transportation. These are decade-long projects with enormous cost[3], and governments tend to drag their feet. In contrast, the environmental impact of suburbs can be lowered by relatively minor personal changes[4], which is much more manageable. I'm not claiming to be an expert in any of this, and ultimately my position is driven by a dislike of cities in general. But thanks for clarifying some of my misconceptions. This research was eye opening. [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-022-00853-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-022-00853-4 [2]: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/ss/ss6613a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/ss/ss6613a1.htm [3]: https://unhabitat.org/news/27-apr-2020/the-cost-of-making-a-city-sustainable-measuring-the-financial-cost-of-meeting-sdg https://unhabitat.org/news/27-apr-2020/the-cost-of-making-a-... [4]: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/04/how-to-be-more-sustainable-in-suburbia/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/04/how-to-be-more-sustai...
jjav 3y ago
> more distance to cover for things like sewers, I don't know which one becomes more expensive per capita, but "more distance" is very simplistic metric. Think of how much money and time and coordination it requires to dig a 200ft trench somewhere in Manhattan. Street closures, permits with multiple organizations, coordinate with tons of utilities and other underground facilities, engineering surveys if you're digging near high rises, etc. Meanwhile in the suburbs one guy in a pickup shows up with a digger and gets it done before lunch. Density also bring in enormous complexity, so it's not that simple. > You can walk your dog in a suburb, but if you need groceries you'll be driving. I live in a suburb and I walk to one of three nearby (< 10 min walk) grocery stores.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago
  > I live in a suburb and I walk to one of three nearby (< 10 min walk) grocery stores. That is an outlier, though. Not only are suburbs less dense and, obviously, services are not as close, but county and/or city regulations across the US are notoriously anti mixed use developments, which make things even worse.
  - jjav 3y ago
    > That is an outlier, though. Can you point me at data? This is always stated as truth but I always question it and have not seen anything conclusive yet. Personally I've never lived in a suburb where I couldn't walk to supermarkets and other stores (and I've nearly always lived in suburbs). I think the outlier is the suburb from where one can't walk anywhere. Would love to see comprehensive data on this.
    - manuelabeledo 3y ago
      > Can you point me at data? The National walkability index guide [0] gives suburbs a "below average" walkability score. Informally, there's also a website called Walkscore [1], where users rate walkability in many cities and towns across the US. Even most cities rank lower than 60 out of 100, and suburbs, given the almost nation-wide aversion to mixed use buildings, do not rank higher. Coming from Europe, it was a huge shock when I knew that I would have to walk 15 minutes to reach the closest grocery store. That, and the fact that in the US, sidewalks seem to disappear at random intervals for whatever reason. [0] https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2021-06/documents/national_walkability_index_methodology_and_user_guide_june2021.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2021-06/documents/na... [1] https://www.walkscore.com https://www.walkscore.com

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

Try living in a damp victorian house in Bimingham, with unfixable mould problems, where the floor has 6 carpets from 6 generations stacked on top of each-other and the bathroom is all weired because originally toilet was designed to be outside. That's like half of UK housing. The people who would rather live in an old 50 sqm house than a modern apartment must be abusing some serious substances