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Why not both? Green spaces and buildings are necessities insofar as they provide important amenities for mental health, pollution/heat island management, and pl
by darthoctopus 3y ago
Why not both? Green spaces and buildings are necessities insofar as they provide important amenities for mental health, pollution/heat island management, and placemaking, and in this sense they are critical infrastructure. But many cities, even big ones, operate at scale without investing in important infrastructure, such as public transport, traffic engineering, third places, and affordable housing; it is unsurprising that the operators of such cities should see green spaces as luxuries in a similar fashion.
- graphe 3y agoYou can't have something be a necessity and a luxury. An iPhone is one or the other, but not both.
- ponector 3y agoIphone is a luxury. The same way as a personal car is. Or automatic coffee machine for at home use.
- davkan 3y agoIs coffee itself a luxury? Cause automatic coffee makers are just as cheap as any other method of making coffee these days.
- ponector 3y agoAluminum moka is cheaper than machine. To pour boiling water into the cup with ground coffee is even cheaper. And we are not talking about beans itself, which are all sorts of quality.
- davkan 3y agoI would have guessed you could get a coffee maker for $10 anywhere but it seems they cost $20 nowadays. Still even a $10 mocha pot would be a luxury by that definition when you can make folgers cowboy coffee and drink it out of the single pan that you use for everything.
- mytailorisrich 3y agoSomething can be neither luxury nor necessity. Coffee is one example.
- graphe 3y agoCoffee is a luxury. It is a very carbon and labor intensive product of growing fruits in tropical areas, only using the seeds, throwing away the pulp of the fruit, transportation, roasting grinding and then the semi boiling of the seeds before it reaches your cup. White sugar might be cheap in price but it's unnatural and has many processes which are also very intensive in labor.
- ponector 3y agoAnd then also think about carbon footprint of keeping animals in cruel tight cages and force then to eat only coffee fruits to gather coffee beans in their poo and sell for 100$ per kilo.
- _Algernon_ 3y agoIphone is a commodity. Think different.
- pc86 3y agoiPhones are only commodities to iPhones, which if you accept that definition means that everything is a commodity. An iPhone is not a commodity to most other phones.
- vdaea 3y agoA personal car is only a luxury as long as you feel good about mooching off your friends whenever you need one.
- ponector 3y agoWhy would you do this? You can use a bus. Or scooter. Or bycicle. Or walk. Or dismiss journey, maybe it is a luxury itself?
- ghaff 3y agoIn the US, in Manhattan, you can probably make do. And there are other cities where you can probably manage with some combination of Uber and short-/longer-term rentals. And just foreclose on certain types of activities for the most part. But I suspect for a lot of people out of school, "I don't need a car" means the same thing I did as an undergrad, namely lean on people who had one.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoYou can get by in a lot of cities, like Seattle, without a car if you don’t have kids. You don’t even need to bum rides. Even in LA, I wouldn’t have bought a car if it wasn’t for my wife getting pregnant.
- ghaff 3y agoIn Boston/Cambridge I could probably get by if I mostly didn't leave the city but I know lots of people outside the city and I do lots of activities that would be outside the city. Unlike Manhattan, the assumption is that you have a car as an adult if you aren't right out of school. There's one job I had (for about 1.5 years) that I could have managed without a car. I think you're generally OK if most of your activities work via transit and Uber. As you suggest, as well, kids and pets probably make things more difficult.
- jandrewrogers 3y agoIn several parts of Seattle you genuinely don't need a car, with few compromises. Virtually everything is walkable. Even many of the popular trailheads in the mountains have seasonal bus service. Just about the only time I use public transportation is when I take light rail to the airport. I know quite a few people that live this way. I do own a car but that is only ever used for traveling to another State or to get into more remote parts of the mountains. For anything else, using a car would be inconvenient.
- ghaff 3y agoWell, green spaces do involve tradeoffs. Someone living in Manhattan who is at least OK with the price of housing may wholeheartedly approve of Central Park (and all the smaller parks) while someone who might want to move there would rather some more apartment blocks were built in some of the space. Of course there are other ways of making space not all of which are totally voluntary to current residents/owners of property. Cities (including NYC) used to be much more cavalier with remaking areas in this manner.
- marcosdumay 3y agoA city doesn't have space restrictions. It has transportation restrictions. If you manage to make people travel around faster, you increase the housing supply by a much higher amount than you can by converting local land into housing. So, everybody would be better by increasing the reach and area for train tracks, even if you convert a reasonable amount of nearby area into parks, if also, while you are at it, you provide some way for local transit to integrate with the long-distance one. The dichotomy on the article is just plainly wrong. Transportation enables you to improve on both, and without transportation you will have neither.
- ghaff 3y agoGeography also matters of course. And many many companies are not actually located in a city. Better commuter rail/light rail is desirable. On the other hand, a commute is still a commute. I'm actually quite convenient to a commuter rail station that ties into the city's subway quite well. But I pretty much hate commuting into the city on the few days I have to do it because it still takes a big chunk out of my day.
- kiba 3y agoBetter commuter rail/light rail is desirable. On the other hand, a commute is still a commute. I'm actually quite convenient to a commuter rail station that ties into the city's subway quite well. But I pretty much hate commuting into the city on the few days I have to do it because it still takes a big chunk out of my day. If the speed isn't actually fast, then transportation needs to be improved.