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You are probably reinventing slums. However the UK used to be good at building well built council housing at scale. I think that is the solution. It has a great

You are probably reinventing slums. However the UK used to be good at building well built council housing at scale. I think that is the solution. It has a great legacy as long lasting but perhaps ugly brutalist housing (Goldfinger was mentioned in the article funnily enough)

thaumasiotes 3y ago
> You are probably reinventing slums. Well, obviously. Is living in a slum worse than nothing? Scott Sumner wrote a very good post about this: https://www.themoneyillusion.com/yurt-place-or-mine/ https://www.themoneyillusion.com/yurt-place-or-mine/ > A peasant village perched on a hillside in a third world country can be aesthetically beautiful, but a shantytown of former peasants on the edge of a large modern urban area (even if the peasants are now better off) is aesthetically ugly. > I was reminded of this while watching a recent video of Ulaanbaatar, which is attracting mass migration from the Mongolian countryside. There are few more picturesque scenes of rural poverty that a bunch of yurts set up on Mongolia’s vast plains, under a cerulean blue sky: > [photograph] > Fortunately, a mining boom has made Mongolia rich, and the peasants are flocking to the cities, and put up their yurts in shanty towns on the edge of Ulaanbaatar—which now has a majority of Mongolia’s population. > The lady who narrated the show was a Westerner. And she couldn’t quite get past the idea that this urbanization didn’t look very attractive: >> It’s so funny because in the countryside it seems natural and it seems clean and it seems lovely, and here this is just poverty-struck, and so not natural. > It’s easy for Westerners and/or upper class people to think they know what’s best for the poor. But unless they’ve actually lived that life, they may end up substituting aesthetic judgments for utilitarian criteria. The Mongolians had to decide whether their country was going to be a place of yurts, or a place full of large open pit mines and cities with high-rise apartment buildings. They chose the latter. The Mongolian she interviewed pointed out that Mongolians wanted to live in these modern apartment buildings because “they don’t have to make fire anymore, they don’t have to carry water anymore.” The Mongols in the slums outside Ulaanbaatar are richer than the Mongols living a traditional lifestyle off on the steppe, but they are aesthetically offensive to people with power, who would prefer them to be more picturesque and impoverished. Is the situation in London different?
- cturner 3y ago
  If you alienate the people that generate wealth, they will eventually move away. Overwhelmingly, such people do not want to live in a city with slums.
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    > Overwhelmingly, such people do not want to live in a city with slums. They'll vote that way, but they won't take any action more concrete than that. Look at San Francisco. Its center is surrounded by slums. Its outlying region to the east, Oakland, was traditionally one big slum. And the reason Oakland became a little less slumlike is that San Francisco was attracting too many residents.
    - porkbeer 3y ago
      Last I checked population is rapidly falling there.
- cube00 3y ago
  > Well, obviously. Is living in a slum worse than nothing? It's easier to move people on when it gets "inconvenient" if there are no structures.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  I think something between slums and housing would be better. Something like pods in Tokyo, which can provide shelter, security, sleep and that all important mailing address. The pods could be installed in otherwise useless properties. Of course building to high safety/fire standards. Bigger pods or a “vlan” of pods for families.

thaumasiotes 3y ago

> You are probably reinventing slums. Well, obviously. Is living in a slum worse than nothing? Scott Sumner wrote a very good post about this: https://www.themoneyillusion.com/yurt-place-or-mine/ https://www.themoneyillusion.com/yurt-place-or-mine/ > A peasant village perched on a hillside in a third world country can be aesthetically beautiful, but a shantytown of former peasants on the edge of a large modern urban area (even if the peasants are now better off) is aesthetically ugly. > I was reminded of this while watching a recent video of Ulaanbaatar, which is attracting mass migration from the Mongolian countryside. There are few more picturesque scenes of rural poverty that a bunch of yurts set up on Mongolia’s vast plains, under a cerulean blue sky: > [photograph] > Fortunately, a mining boom has made Mongolia rich, and the peasants are flocking to the cities, and put up their yurts in shanty towns on the edge of Ulaanbaatar—which now has a majority of Mongolia’s population. > The lady who narrated the show was a Westerner. And she couldn’t quite get past the idea that this urbanization didn’t look very attractive: >> It’s so funny because in the countryside it seems natural and it seems clean and it seems lovely, and here this is just poverty-struck, and so not natural. > It’s easy for Westerners and/or upper class people to think they know what’s best for the poor. But unless they’ve actually lived that life, they may end up substituting aesthetic judgments for utilitarian criteria. The Mongolians had to decide whether their country was going to be a place of yurts, or a place full of large open pit mines and cities with high-rise apartment buildings. They chose the latter. The Mongolian she interviewed pointed out that Mongolians wanted to live in these modern apartment buildings because “they don’t have to make fire anymore, they don’t have to carry water anymore.” The Mongols in the slums outside Ulaanbaatar are richer than the Mongols living a traditional lifestyle off on the steppe, but they are aesthetically offensive to people with power, who would prefer them to be more picturesque and impoverished. Is the situation in London different?

cturner 3y ago
If you alienate the people that generate wealth, they will eventually move away. Overwhelmingly, such people do not want to live in a city with slums.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > Overwhelmingly, such people do not want to live in a city with slums. They'll vote that way, but they won't take any action more concrete than that. Look at San Francisco. Its center is surrounded by slums. Its outlying region to the east, Oakland, was traditionally one big slum. And the reason Oakland became a little less slumlike is that San Francisco was attracting too many residents.
  - porkbeer 3y ago
    Last I checked population is rapidly falling there.
cube00 3y ago
> Well, obviously. Is living in a slum worse than nothing? It's easier to move people on when it gets "inconvenient" if there are no structures.
quickthrower2 3y ago
I think something between slums and housing would be better. Something like pods in Tokyo, which can provide shelter, security, sleep and that all important mailing address. The pods could be installed in otherwise useless properties. Of course building to high safety/fire standards. Bigger pods or a “vlan” of pods for families.