4 ms·

I'm the person that wants more dense and walkable cities, so I'm really curious to learn more about why that will ALWAYS lead to more misery down the road. Hone

by apsurd 3y ago

I'm the person that wants more dense and walkable cities, so I'm really curious to learn more about why that will ALWAYS lead to more misery down the road. Honest question, do you have any stuff I can read or terms I can search on?

vuln 3y ago
There is plenty of history showing the long term effects and outcome of dense housing run by the Government. Dense housing ran by private companies will always be a race to capture the most amount of profit. While Government ran dense housing will be affected by an ever decreasing budget and ever increasing cost. OP is right. We need to invest in “fly over” states. There is an abundance of land and opportunity to achieve the American dream. Humans living in a tiny cube and commuting in a tiny cylinder (bus, subway) to a tiny office cube ad nauseam is the worst.
- apsurd 3y ago
  Thanks, so it's specifically govt run affordable housing. I read OP as the more general "dense cities = BAD" but seems like it's more specifically "govt run plans for dense housing". I can understand that. Also, yes also agree about more jobs and opportunities more distributed across the land. That sounds good. I think about my position as favoring walkable dense metros in the more organic manner - people like people - we WANT to be close to one another. And the infrastructure to make that possible, comfortable, affordable, and sustainable.. is great! The exchange of ideas and tolerance leading to innovation, is a function of dense metros. Is that not just fundamentally...true?
  - kiba 3y ago
    Government planned housing being bad is just a feature of your specific local context, not an inevitability to all government subsidized/built housing. Governments are human organizations, and it's not a surprise that some organizations are better ran than other.
  - always2slow 3y ago
    This is anecdotal I guess but I know I'm not alone.. as someone who has been forced to live in more dense housing with each move the older I get.. (grew up in a house,shared walls, more shared walls, and now an apartment with shared walls and people above me). Misery vastly increases with density, at least for me. People are loud, inconsiderate and fucking gross. There's trash and broken shit everywhere, people idle their cars and cause noise pollution from the exhaust reverberating on the buildings or their stereos, no one owns the communal areas so they get trashed because nobody gives a shit. Common areas smell horrible, or are overpoweringly scented with air freshener. Living in dense housing as driven me absolutely mad, and I have more buying power than I've ever enjoyed in my life it's ridiculous so it's not like I'm forced to live in dense housing and poverty. So when I read shit like 'people like people - we WANT to be close to one another' I get triggered as fuck, I'm not sure I know any adult that would prefer to live in a house over an apartment. Also... There's almost zero cultural tolerance, people silo into their cultural bubbles and refuse to integrate.
    - apsurd 3y ago
      I agree with every one of your points. I mean to say "people want to be close to one another" as a philosophy along a spectrum. People crave belonging, connection, intimacy, stimulus, novelty. In a grand sense we really do choose to congregate. That said, yes for sure there's much suck about the filth, obliviousness, and inconsideration of "other people". I like people, but I do not live on top of people. I want the ability to walk or bike to my stimulus. And then retreat back to solitude. Completely get you! In simple terms, I just think it has to occur silly to people, that 8 billion humans are gonna have their 2 acres of land and that that is somehow _actually_ ideal beyond "I want what I want the way I want it". Quite literally the concept of Civilization is honoring a WE more than an I.
- tomtheelder 3y ago
  Neither the article nor the comment you are referring to were talking about government housing. And you’re entitled to not want to live in a dense urban environment, but you might need to open your mind to the idea that not everyone feels the way you do.
  - cyberax 3y ago
    > And you’re entitled to not want to live in a dense urban environment, but you might need to open your mind to the idea that not everyone feels the way you do. You're entitled to move away from a toxic river that catches fire. But you might need to open your mind to the idea that not everyone feels the way you do. Perhaps some people like to work at the factory that produces the toxic slime. Urban density is pollution. Its effects are not limited to cities. By making it easier for companies to open offices in dense urban cores, it ensures that smaller cities are starved of jobs and die. So people are forced to move to ever-densifying areas, driving up the price. This in turn makes it even easier for companies to hire people living near dense urban cores. Rinse, wash, repeat.
    - Sabinus 3y ago
      Do you think there are economic efficiencies in gathering a large workforce in one location? Do you think suburbia is an efficient and effective use of land?
      - cyberax 3y ago
        > Do you think there are economic efficiencies in gathering a large workforce in one location? Oh, absolutely. It's more efficient for companies to hire workforce in dense cities and offload the externalities (increasing cost of living) onto the public. Just like with pollution: if you dump toxic sludge into rivers, your factory can make widgets cheaper, than a factory that has to take care of its waste. > Do you think suburbia is an efficient and effective use of land? I don't think _efficiency_ should be the reason for cities. A polluting factory is also more efficient than a clean factory. Yet we somehow don't appreciate that efficiency anymore. Moreover, the amount of urban areas is around 2% of the total land area in the US. De-aggregating the cities will only result in its increase by maybe 20%.
- michaelmrose 3y ago
  There are three problems you have to deal with. Remote Work You need pervasive remote jobs to move any meaningful number of people away from the companies that presently fund their lifestyle. Government and Desirability Flyover states are run by gross people whose theories on how our country ought to be run that are misaligned with the people you wish would move there. This is going to cause in not many years a crisis situation with doctors choosing to move to more desirable locations and small cities lack a lot of the amenities and interest of living in the big city. People are already choosing not to live there despite decrease costs. Small cities are BORING.
- Retric 3y ago
  Many examples of dense government built/run housing work fine. The common problems are not a function of housing but the people living in that housing. In cities where the government owns over half of all housing stock tenants end up representing the general population well and the system works fine with generally low prices and overhead. The temptation is to only build government housing for the poor, but that’s a well known recipe for failure. The US has instead shifted to government spreading out poor population via subsidies but that’s doesn’t fix any of the core issues.
popularonion 3y ago
Fertility rates in cities are far below replacement and falling every year. In every country, religious or secular, liberal or conservative, socialized healthcare/education or no. So they are proving simply not capable of sustaining human life. This only works as long as rural people keep having lots of kids to feed into the city, but that isn’t really happening anymore either.
- SR2Z 3y ago
  This is insane - rural birthrates are higher, but birthrates are falling across the developed world in both urban and rural contexts. It's not because of density - it's because people with options other than raising children tend to pick them since kids require a lot of effort. SF and LA could easily be several times more dense than they currently are; that kind of increase would see the capacity of the entire state grow by double-digit percentages. So now I've gotta ask you: if cities suck for population growth, then where would those double-digit population gains come from? It's not rural America, that's for sure.
  - throwaway5959 3y ago
    For us it wasn’t about not being able to raise kids, it was seeing how garbage parents are with their massive consumption and a whole generation of iPad pacifier kids. This planet is fucked in a hundred years and I’m not bringing kids into that world.
- crooked-v 3y ago
  This isn't the 1800s. A clear majority of the population of the modern US lives in "the city".
  - fbdab103 3y ago
    In fact, if I am reading this 2020 Census report correctly[0], 40% of the US population lives in the 806 cities with a population >= 50,000. [0] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2020s-total-cities-and-towns.html https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2...
cyberax 3y ago
"Supply skepticism" is a good overview: https://furmancenter.org/research/publication/supply-skepticismnbsp-housing-supply-and-affordability https://furmancenter.org/research/publication/supply-skeptic... And it's written from the viewpoint of pro-density. Read the linked papers there, the best results of density increases are either extremely indirect ("migration chains") or insignificant (no sale price decreases, and single-digit percentage one-time decreases in rent). I'm writing an analysis of all densifications in the US and Canada. So far, I have not found a _single_ example of density increases leading to even slowing down of sale prices. Never mind their reduction. On the other hand, they ALWAYS lead to worsening commutes and shrinking square footage per capita.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Density increases actually make cities more popular, so the supply constraints remain or even worsen. They also generate wealth, meaning people earn more, and can bid up housing prices. I think people just like dense cities with good transit, so we should definitely do it, but let’s not pretend that SF would be affordable if only it had HK’s density (it would be as affordable as HK, which means not very).
- Aloisius 3y ago
  Greenaway-McGrevy (2023) showed an increased supply of housing in Auckland reduced rents in 3-bedroom homes by 26-33% below a control. Mense (2023) showed a 1% yearly increase in housing supply in Germany results in an average local municipality rent to fall by 0.2%. Asquith et al. (2023) found in NYC, the average new building lowers nearby rents within 250 meters of the new building by 5% to 7% relative to the trend rent growth otherwise would have followed. Li (2022), looked at new market rate buildings of 7+ stories and found that for every 10% increase to the housing stock that new high rises add within a 500-ft ring, residential rents for the buildings within that ring decrease by 1 percent. Pennington (2021) found rents within 500 meters of a new project fell by 1.2 to 2.3% in San Francisco.
  - cyberax 3y ago
    > Greenaway-McGrevy (2023) showed an increased supply of housing in Auckland reduced rents in 3-bedroom homes by 26-33% below a control. I have not read this one yet. Sounds suspicious, though. The rest are basically what I told: one-time single-digit percentage decreases in rents. This one is also funny: > Asquith et al. (2023) found in NYC, the average new building lowers nearby rents within 250 meters of the new building by 5% to 7% relative to the trend rent growth otherwise would have followed. Rents still _increased_, but slightly slower.

by apsurd 3y ago

vuln 3y ago

There is plenty of history showing the long term effects and outcome of dense housing run by the Government. Dense housing ran by private companies will always be a race to capture the most amount of profit. While Government ran dense housing will be affected by an ever decreasing budget and ever increasing cost. OP is right. We need to invest in “fly over” states. There is an abundance of land and opportunity to achieve the American dream. Humans living in a tiny cube and commuting in a tiny cylinder (bus, subway) to a tiny office cube ad nauseam is the worst.

apsurd 3y ago
Thanks, so it's specifically govt run affordable housing. I read OP as the more general "dense cities = BAD" but seems like it's more specifically "govt run plans for dense housing". I can understand that. Also, yes also agree about more jobs and opportunities more distributed across the land. That sounds good. I think about my position as favoring walkable dense metros in the more organic manner - people like people - we WANT to be close to one another. And the infrastructure to make that possible, comfortable, affordable, and sustainable.. is great! The exchange of ideas and tolerance leading to innovation, is a function of dense metros. Is that not just fundamentally...true?
- kiba 3y ago
  Government planned housing being bad is just a feature of your specific local context, not an inevitability to all government subsidized/built housing. Governments are human organizations, and it's not a surprise that some organizations are better ran than other.
- always2slow 3y ago
  This is anecdotal I guess but I know I'm not alone.. as someone who has been forced to live in more dense housing with each move the older I get.. (grew up in a house,shared walls, more shared walls, and now an apartment with shared walls and people above me). Misery vastly increases with density, at least for me. People are loud, inconsiderate and fucking gross. There's trash and broken shit everywhere, people idle their cars and cause noise pollution from the exhaust reverberating on the buildings or their stereos, no one owns the communal areas so they get trashed because nobody gives a shit. Common areas smell horrible, or are overpoweringly scented with air freshener. Living in dense housing as driven me absolutely mad, and I have more buying power than I've ever enjoyed in my life it's ridiculous so it's not like I'm forced to live in dense housing and poverty. So when I read shit like 'people like people - we WANT to be close to one another' I get triggered as fuck, I'm not sure I know any adult that would prefer to live in a house over an apartment. Also... There's almost zero cultural tolerance, people silo into their cultural bubbles and refuse to integrate.
  - apsurd 3y ago
    I agree with every one of your points. I mean to say "people want to be close to one another" as a philosophy along a spectrum. People crave belonging, connection, intimacy, stimulus, novelty. In a grand sense we really do choose to congregate. That said, yes for sure there's much suck about the filth, obliviousness, and inconsideration of "other people". I like people, but I do not live on top of people. I want the ability to walk or bike to my stimulus. And then retreat back to solitude. Completely get you! In simple terms, I just think it has to occur silly to people, that 8 billion humans are gonna have their 2 acres of land and that that is somehow _actually_ ideal beyond "I want what I want the way I want it". Quite literally the concept of Civilization is honoring a WE more than an I.
tomtheelder 3y ago
Neither the article nor the comment you are referring to were talking about government housing. And you’re entitled to not want to live in a dense urban environment, but you might need to open your mind to the idea that not everyone feels the way you do.
- cyberax 3y ago
  > And you’re entitled to not want to live in a dense urban environment, but you might need to open your mind to the idea that not everyone feels the way you do. You're entitled to move away from a toxic river that catches fire. But you might need to open your mind to the idea that not everyone feels the way you do. Perhaps some people like to work at the factory that produces the toxic slime. Urban density is pollution. Its effects are not limited to cities. By making it easier for companies to open offices in dense urban cores, it ensures that smaller cities are starved of jobs and die. So people are forced to move to ever-densifying areas, driving up the price. This in turn makes it even easier for companies to hire people living near dense urban cores. Rinse, wash, repeat.
  - Sabinus 3y ago
    Do you think there are economic efficiencies in gathering a large workforce in one location? Do you think suburbia is an efficient and effective use of land?
    - cyberax 3y ago
      > Do you think there are economic efficiencies in gathering a large workforce in one location? Oh, absolutely. It's more efficient for companies to hire workforce in dense cities and offload the externalities (increasing cost of living) onto the public. Just like with pollution: if you dump toxic sludge into rivers, your factory can make widgets cheaper, than a factory that has to take care of its waste. > Do you think suburbia is an efficient and effective use of land? I don't think _efficiency_ should be the reason for cities. A polluting factory is also more efficient than a clean factory. Yet we somehow don't appreciate that efficiency anymore. Moreover, the amount of urban areas is around 2% of the total land area in the US. De-aggregating the cities will only result in its increase by maybe 20%.
michaelmrose 3y ago
There are three problems you have to deal with. Remote Work You need pervasive remote jobs to move any meaningful number of people away from the companies that presently fund their lifestyle. Government and Desirability Flyover states are run by gross people whose theories on how our country ought to be run that are misaligned with the people you wish would move there. This is going to cause in not many years a crisis situation with doctors choosing to move to more desirable locations and small cities lack a lot of the amenities and interest of living in the big city. People are already choosing not to live there despite decrease costs. Small cities are BORING.
Retric 3y ago
Many examples of dense government built/run housing work fine. The common problems are not a function of housing but the people living in that housing. In cities where the government owns over half of all housing stock tenants end up representing the general population well and the system works fine with generally low prices and overhead. The temptation is to only build government housing for the poor, but that’s a well known recipe for failure. The US has instead shifted to government spreading out poor population via subsidies but that’s doesn’t fix any of the core issues.

popularonion 3y ago

Fertility rates in cities are far below replacement and falling every year. In every country, religious or secular, liberal or conservative, socialized healthcare/education or no. So they are proving simply not capable of sustaining human life. This only works as long as rural people keep having lots of kids to feed into the city, but that isn’t really happening anymore either.

SR2Z 3y ago
This is insane - rural birthrates are higher, but birthrates are falling across the developed world in both urban and rural contexts. It's not because of density - it's because people with options other than raising children tend to pick them since kids require a lot of effort. SF and LA could easily be several times more dense than they currently are; that kind of increase would see the capacity of the entire state grow by double-digit percentages. So now I've gotta ask you: if cities suck for population growth, then where would those double-digit population gains come from? It's not rural America, that's for sure.
- throwaway5959 3y ago
  For us it wasn’t about not being able to raise kids, it was seeing how garbage parents are with their massive consumption and a whole generation of iPad pacifier kids. This planet is fucked in a hundred years and I’m not bringing kids into that world.
crooked-v 3y ago
This isn't the 1800s. A clear majority of the population of the modern US lives in "the city".
- fbdab103 3y ago
  In fact, if I am reading this 2020 Census report correctly[0], 40% of the US population lives in the 806 cities with a population >= 50,000. [0] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2020s-total-cities-and-towns.html https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2...

cyberax 3y ago

"Supply skepticism" is a good overview: https://furmancenter.org/research/publication/supply-skepticismnbsp-housing-supply-and-affordability https://furmancenter.org/research/publication/supply-skeptic... And it's written from the viewpoint of pro-density. Read the linked papers there, the best results of density increases are either extremely indirect ("migration chains") or insignificant (no sale price decreases, and single-digit percentage one-time decreases in rent). I'm writing an analysis of all densifications in the US and Canada. So far, I have not found a _single_ example of density increases leading to even slowing down of sale prices. Never mind their reduction. On the other hand, they ALWAYS lead to worsening commutes and shrinking square footage per capita.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
Density increases actually make cities more popular, so the supply constraints remain or even worsen. They also generate wealth, meaning people earn more, and can bid up housing prices. I think people just like dense cities with good transit, so we should definitely do it, but let’s not pretend that SF would be affordable if only it had HK’s density (it would be as affordable as HK, which means not very).
Aloisius 3y ago
Greenaway-McGrevy (2023) showed an increased supply of housing in Auckland reduced rents in 3-bedroom homes by 26-33% below a control. Mense (2023) showed a 1% yearly increase in housing supply in Germany results in an average local municipality rent to fall by 0.2%. Asquith et al. (2023) found in NYC, the average new building lowers nearby rents within 250 meters of the new building by 5% to 7% relative to the trend rent growth otherwise would have followed. Li (2022), looked at new market rate buildings of 7+ stories and found that for every 10% increase to the housing stock that new high rises add within a 500-ft ring, residential rents for the buildings within that ring decrease by 1 percent. Pennington (2021) found rents within 500 meters of a new project fell by 1.2 to 2.3% in San Francisco.
- cyberax 3y ago
  > Greenaway-McGrevy (2023) showed an increased supply of housing in Auckland reduced rents in 3-bedroom homes by 26-33% below a control. I have not read this one yet. Sounds suspicious, though. The rest are basically what I told: one-time single-digit percentage decreases in rents. This one is also funny: > Asquith et al. (2023) found in NYC, the average new building lowers nearby rents within 250 meters of the new building by 5% to 7% relative to the trend rent growth otherwise would have followed. Rents still _increased_, but slightly slower.