5 ms·

That's just another example why we can't remain urbanized in the modern era. In the past there was no choice, now we can choose and meanwhile tech evolution hav

by kkfx 2y ago

That's just another example why we can't remain urbanized in the modern era. In the past there was no choice, now we can choose and meanwhile tech evolution have pushed the needs of so much infra that being dense instead of costing LESS than being spread it cost more. Nowadays a MODERN a big apartments complex cost more than an equivalent of single families homes per unit (HVAC, seismic, fire-safety, ... costs) and while single family homes can evolve (a single owner, a single family to relocate for rebuilding when (not if) needed, a bit of ground to actually work around without creating traffic nightmares and so on) big condos, towers etc practically can't. It's time to recalculate the narrative "being dense cost less". The reality is that cost much more and can only substantially evolve being totally rebuild, so practically can't substantially evolve. Big dense cities are needed only for finance capitalism, but we can't sustain them, nor humanly, nor technically nor environmentally.

D13Fd 2y ago
Density is far more efficient on a per-person basis though, in terms of energy and land usage.
- kkfx 2y ago
  Try to elaborate: land use, as long as the soil is not sealed (so humus remain alive) it's not a "cost" nor an issue except for some hyper-dense countries. The Nederland and Belgium are very dense as a nation, yet most live in single-family homes, Spain or Italy are LESS dense and most live in condos, France and Ireland are far less dense and most live in single family homes so well, there is room for homes in most of the countries. In efficiency terms I was living in a big dense city, now I'm living on mountains, you can state "hey just to buy bread you grab the car and made a ~10km trip instead of going by feet for 1km round trip", true. But the 1km round trip was a daily one, the ~10km one is a weekly one because hey, the freezer works beautifully well for bread. Similarly I buy in much bigger quantity now, so with much less packaging and stock at home. I spend less, eat better (much less ready-made and ultra-processed foods/carbonated beverage) and produce less waste. Oh, and the trips are in a BEV recharged mostly from my p.v. thanks to remote works. I simply discovered I need to move FAR LESS here than in a big city, yes individual trips are much longer, but the overall distance is not much bigger. Also modern life works better, online retail having room for delivery van works better here than in a big city downtown. They run more, but with much less stop and go and parking issues not counting the fact that a new fully electric home is easy (technically) to be made while converting an old building is next to impossible or at least cost MUCH more for much less results. Try to compute the TCO not of a new city entirely designed today vs a new spread area entirely designed today but over 50 and 100 years with all the evolution we have. If you just look at the past, yes in the past being spread means wasting much oil to move, we need the office for anything, so we have to move, homes was far simpler so a condo was cheap than a set of single family homes, but things changes. We do not need the office anymore, we can centrally schedule a vast efficient spread logistic and so on. Now being spread meaning consuming far less, while in cities we still consume much more. We can't evolve cities without rebuilding them and that's why they keep consuming more and wasting immense amount of resources trying to evolve just a bit.
  - mcmcmc 2y ago
    Sorry you’re saying land use is not a cost? It absolutely has an opportunity cost and is the primary constraint for your vision. There straight up is not enough land for everyone to have their own little rural estate while also leaving enough agricultural land for everyone to eat. Additionally, most of the available land that isn’t already taken is either undesirable due to climate, remoteness, etc or is protected for some other reason. Without significant wealth, for most people the dream of living in a mountain getaway off the grid is beyond reach.
- analognoise 2y ago
  People in highly dense places don’t have as many children either. I don’t think we should optimize for density and efficiency above all else.
_visgean 2y ago
Even though things are more complex in large cities it still generates so much money that it is cheaper per capita then building in low density neighbourhood. > Nowadays a MODERN a big apartments complex cost more than an equivalent of single families homes per unit (HVAC, seismic, fire-safety, ... costs) Isnt that because of the price of land?
- bluGill 2y ago
  >> Nowadays a MODERN a big apartments complex cost more than an equivalent of single families homes per unit (HVAC, seismic, fire-safety, ... costs) >Isnt that because of the price of land? Citation needed first of all. From what I can tell, a high rise apartment building - that is more than 10 floors costs substantially more to build per floor area than a single family house. This is because to go that high you need stronger building materials than a single family house and that adds cost. However a shorter building - is a similar price per floor area (at 3 floors slightly less, but more than that elevators start adding cost but still only slightly more). You can use similar building materials for the most part. However the apartment still wins because people who live in them share common areas - one shared laundry room is enough for several apartments, often there is a community room, exercise room, and pool - expensive spaces/equipment not used much by most individuals but as shared spaces the cost is shared and so cheaper per apartment.
  - kkfx 2y ago
    So you design a small condo, where still you can't evolve, because it's extremely hard to reach and agreement to rebuild at a certain point in future, you put something in common, something much more costly than individuals machines, who need external services for anything, with much more stringent norms (let's just say common laundry machines requirement for high temperature wash for sanitary reasons, while individuals one do not), still being unable to implement the new deal without making new buildings for what? To spare a little bit in capex significantly enlarging the opex? No thanks. I do not have studies to cite because there are none on that subject both pro and against urban, only PRs stating that's certain something not giving any reproducible proof and it's extremely complex to measure real costs because we should build real similar communities living a significant amount of time to compare, it's not just an initial bill of materials comparison but a whole different economic model. What I can say is that in EU some countries have most people in single family homes, some others the opposite, some very dense, like the Nederland 425.4 humans/km² with 81.3% in homes, still being a significant producer of meat and cheese, Belgium 381.79 humans/km² and 77.6% in homes, France 117.52 humans/km² and 62% in homes, Ireland 71.47 humans/km² and 89.4% while on the other side Italy with 200 humans/km² and 42.9% in homes, Spain with only 34.3% in homes that's to say except few very small, very populated countries there is room for both model, it's not a matter of density nor of mean richness, nor of industrial vs something else development and so on, it's a choice. This variety is not technically a proof but it's enough to say that both models are perfectly possible and mean Gini index, mean happiness level, financial stability and so on suggest that being less dense pay back better. I'm European I do not know much about the real USA situation but I have been in the USA some times and... Did you see SF recently? All "the city" essentially in a decadent state, all "wealthy" spread around, mostly in single family homes, some in very small condos who honestly seems to have no reasons to exists seen their prices compared to those of the homes and the relative opex and resale value. NY? I've just seen a very small part of NY, but that's enough to say "I have no damn reason to be here". Of course I know USA suburbs failure but that's not due to the density or the fact they are made of single family homes, that's due to the fact they are built to IMPOSE commuting for the sake of automotive industry. They are residential ONLY. Here (France Alps behind the Riviera) anything is "a suburb" since there is no big city and actually no city at all but anything is intermixed. I'm in a residential are, but a 3km (1.9 miles) I have a supermarket, about the same distance a golf, a blacksmith and a window installer main office and few shops all being single family homes scattered around and small sheds or little buildings. This is essentially the "strong town" real world modern model, their own was the old far west model, witch was working indeed, but was a spread one of small villages dispersed in nature.
quesera 2y ago
I'm curious about your premise, but absolutely nothing of what you posted here is at all persuasive. Can you link to a different explanation?
- kkfx 2y ago
  I have a more broad explanation https://kfx.fr/articles/2024-04-26-onnewdealexp-contrapolis/ https://kfx.fr/articles/2024-04-26-onnewdealexp-contrapolis/ and I can add some like https://watson.brown.edu/stoneinequality/events/2022/icebergs-ultrathins-and-real-estate-state-how-finance-capitalism-remaking-cities https://watson.brown.edu/stoneinequality/events/2022/iceberg... while others are cited in the first article. But in more practical terms: try to find a project of a MODERN condo, meaning one build with all current "energy regulations" of the western countries, let's say build in the last 10 years or so. Try to elicit the bill of materials, than try to do the same for single family homes of similar "luxury" of the apartments and simply multiply the single home bill of material times the number of apartments. In infra terms try to visualize how much infra a modern city demand, including highways and so on vs simple roads on a spread area. You'll find that some elements do cost much (like roofs) but overall single family homes cost less in mere raw materials. If we add the need of renewables and the lack of the mere ability to build a nation-wide smart-grid, while we can build smart-microgrid in homes, and we actually have them in all modern p.v. systems with storage/self consumption, you'll easily visualize that we can't create a "green new deal city" without falling in projects like Neom, Arkadag, Prospera, Innopolis and others modern Fordlandia distopic and disfunctional like the original one. Then you can add evolution, the fact we do not really know how climate change will reshape us humans, with migrations, wars and so on. Those who know try pushing air mobility https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-report.pdf https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... not because it's cool nor cheap alone (so far such drones consume the equivalent of a tank vs a car) but because they do not need roads, and roads alone cost too much and can evolve too slowly. We try to push water transports for similar reasons. We know large infra can't be maintained and evolved for long. However finance capitalism needs dense cities where humans inside own nothing and have to obey simply to eat and sleep.
  - quesera 2y ago

by kkfx 2y ago

D13Fd 2y ago

Density is far more efficient on a per-person basis though, in terms of energy and land usage.

kkfx 2y ago
Try to elaborate: land use, as long as the soil is not sealed (so humus remain alive) it's not a "cost" nor an issue except for some hyper-dense countries. The Nederland and Belgium are very dense as a nation, yet most live in single-family homes, Spain or Italy are LESS dense and most live in condos, France and Ireland are far less dense and most live in single family homes so well, there is room for homes in most of the countries. In efficiency terms I was living in a big dense city, now I'm living on mountains, you can state "hey just to buy bread you grab the car and made a ~10km trip instead of going by feet for 1km round trip", true. But the 1km round trip was a daily one, the ~10km one is a weekly one because hey, the freezer works beautifully well for bread. Similarly I buy in much bigger quantity now, so with much less packaging and stock at home. I spend less, eat better (much less ready-made and ultra-processed foods/carbonated beverage) and produce less waste. Oh, and the trips are in a BEV recharged mostly from my p.v. thanks to remote works. I simply discovered I need to move FAR LESS here than in a big city, yes individual trips are much longer, but the overall distance is not much bigger. Also modern life works better, online retail having room for delivery van works better here than in a big city downtown. They run more, but with much less stop and go and parking issues not counting the fact that a new fully electric home is easy (technically) to be made while converting an old building is next to impossible or at least cost MUCH more for much less results. Try to compute the TCO not of a new city entirely designed today vs a new spread area entirely designed today but over 50 and 100 years with all the evolution we have. If you just look at the past, yes in the past being spread means wasting much oil to move, we need the office for anything, so we have to move, homes was far simpler so a condo was cheap than a set of single family homes, but things changes. We do not need the office anymore, we can centrally schedule a vast efficient spread logistic and so on. Now being spread meaning consuming far less, while in cities we still consume much more. We can't evolve cities without rebuilding them and that's why they keep consuming more and wasting immense amount of resources trying to evolve just a bit.
- mcmcmc 2y ago
  Sorry you’re saying land use is not a cost? It absolutely has an opportunity cost and is the primary constraint for your vision. There straight up is not enough land for everyone to have their own little rural estate while also leaving enough agricultural land for everyone to eat. Additionally, most of the available land that isn’t already taken is either undesirable due to climate, remoteness, etc or is protected for some other reason. Without significant wealth, for most people the dream of living in a mountain getaway off the grid is beyond reach.
analognoise 2y ago
People in highly dense places don’t have as many children either. I don’t think we should optimize for density and efficiency above all else.

_visgean 2y ago

Even though things are more complex in large cities it still generates so much money that it is cheaper per capita then building in low density neighbourhood. > Nowadays a MODERN a big apartments complex cost more than an equivalent of single families homes per unit (HVAC, seismic, fire-safety, ... costs) Isnt that because of the price of land?

bluGill 2y ago
>> Nowadays a MODERN a big apartments complex cost more than an equivalent of single families homes per unit (HVAC, seismic, fire-safety, ... costs) >Isnt that because of the price of land? Citation needed first of all. From what I can tell, a high rise apartment building - that is more than 10 floors costs substantially more to build per floor area than a single family house. This is because to go that high you need stronger building materials than a single family house and that adds cost. However a shorter building - is a similar price per floor area (at 3 floors slightly less, but more than that elevators start adding cost but still only slightly more). You can use similar building materials for the most part. However the apartment still wins because people who live in them share common areas - one shared laundry room is enough for several apartments, often there is a community room, exercise room, and pool - expensive spaces/equipment not used much by most individuals but as shared spaces the cost is shared and so cheaper per apartment.
- kkfx 2y ago
  So you design a small condo, where still you can't evolve, because it's extremely hard to reach and agreement to rebuild at a certain point in future, you put something in common, something much more costly than individuals machines, who need external services for anything, with much more stringent norms (let's just say common laundry machines requirement for high temperature wash for sanitary reasons, while individuals one do not), still being unable to implement the new deal without making new buildings for what? To spare a little bit in capex significantly enlarging the opex? No thanks. I do not have studies to cite because there are none on that subject both pro and against urban, only PRs stating that's certain something not giving any reproducible proof and it's extremely complex to measure real costs because we should build real similar communities living a significant amount of time to compare, it's not just an initial bill of materials comparison but a whole different economic model. What I can say is that in EU some countries have most people in single family homes, some others the opposite, some very dense, like the Nederland 425.4 humans/km² with 81.3% in homes, still being a significant producer of meat and cheese, Belgium 381.79 humans/km² and 77.6% in homes, France 117.52 humans/km² and 62% in homes, Ireland 71.47 humans/km² and 89.4% while on the other side Italy with 200 humans/km² and 42.9% in homes, Spain with only 34.3% in homes that's to say except few very small, very populated countries there is room for both model, it's not a matter of density nor of mean richness, nor of industrial vs something else development and so on, it's a choice. This variety is not technically a proof but it's enough to say that both models are perfectly possible and mean Gini index, mean happiness level, financial stability and so on suggest that being less dense pay back better. I'm European I do not know much about the real USA situation but I have been in the USA some times and... Did you see SF recently? All "the city" essentially in a decadent state, all "wealthy" spread around, mostly in single family homes, some in very small condos who honestly seems to have no reasons to exists seen their prices compared to those of the homes and the relative opex and resale value. NY? I've just seen a very small part of NY, but that's enough to say "I have no damn reason to be here". Of course I know USA suburbs failure but that's not due to the density or the fact they are made of single family homes, that's due to the fact they are built to IMPOSE commuting for the sake of automotive industry. They are residential ONLY. Here (France Alps behind the Riviera) anything is "a suburb" since there is no big city and actually no city at all but anything is intermixed. I'm in a residential are, but a 3km (1.9 miles) I have a supermarket, about the same distance a golf, a blacksmith and a window installer main office and few shops all being single family homes scattered around and small sheds or little buildings. This is essentially the "strong town" real world modern model, their own was the old far west model, witch was working indeed, but was a spread one of small villages dispersed in nature.

quesera 2y ago

I'm curious about your premise, but absolutely nothing of what you posted here is at all persuasive. Can you link to a different explanation?

kkfx 2y ago
I have a more broad explanation https://kfx.fr/articles/2024-04-26-onnewdealexp-contrapolis/ https://kfx.fr/articles/2024-04-26-onnewdealexp-contrapolis/ and I can add some like https://watson.brown.edu/stoneinequality/events/2022/icebergs-ultrathins-and-real-estate-state-how-finance-capitalism-remaking-cities https://watson.brown.edu/stoneinequality/events/2022/iceberg... while others are cited in the first article. But in more practical terms: try to find a project of a MODERN condo, meaning one build with all current "energy regulations" of the western countries, let's say build in the last 10 years or so. Try to elicit the bill of materials, than try to do the same for single family homes of similar "luxury" of the apartments and simply multiply the single home bill of material times the number of apartments. In infra terms try to visualize how much infra a modern city demand, including highways and so on vs simple roads on a spread area. You'll find that some elements do cost much (like roofs) but overall single family homes cost less in mere raw materials. If we add the need of renewables and the lack of the mere ability to build a nation-wide smart-grid, while we can build smart-microgrid in homes, and we actually have them in all modern p.v. systems with storage/self consumption, you'll easily visualize that we can't create a "green new deal city" without falling in projects like Neom, Arkadag, Prospera, Innopolis and others modern Fordlandia distopic and disfunctional like the original one. Then you can add evolution, the fact we do not really know how climate change will reshape us humans, with migrations, wars and so on. Those who know try pushing air mobility https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-report.pdf https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... not because it's cool nor cheap alone (so far such drones consume the equivalent of a tank vs a car) but because they do not need roads, and roads alone cost too much and can evolve too slowly. We try to push water transports for similar reasons. We know large infra can't be maintained and evolved for long. However finance capitalism needs dense cities where humans inside own nothing and have to obey simply to eat and sleep.
- quesera 2y ago