4 ms·

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

• quesera 2y ago
  I will read your links. But my first reaction to your above comment is that modern commercial/urban/residential builds are intended for longer lifespans, higher use, and lower maintenance than suburban-rural/SFH. Also the tools/technology available to the builders of each are very different. Materials selection is consequently also very different. And there are stricter zoning and permitting requirements (as well as different risks and goals that drive them) in cities than in rural areas, which definitely increases costs -- but the overarching intent is that a city build becomes part of the fabric and should serve (and be safe for) not only the builder/seller/owner but also the community. Cost is almost never the limiting factor for building though. So I'm not sure it makes sense to look at it through that lens.
  • kkfx 2y ago
    > my first reaction to your above comment is that modern commercial/urban/residential builds are intended for longer lifespans, higher use, and lower maintenance than suburban-rural/SFH. Yes, that's WAS the case. Was, because it's not anymore. In usage terms, just observe a thing: you have the office and the condo (stereotypically) and well, you use the condo for less than 12h/day, and so the office, the rest of the time you keep moving around. Is that a better usage than WFH not necessary from remote? Let's say a dentist can have his/her own cabinet at the ground floor while living at the first one in a small village. Isn't that building (witch is still small and easy to evolve) much more used than the same person who live in an apartment and commute to another one in a tower? If you really see "strong towns" explanations they tend to show "towns" who actually are old villages of small buildings, and yes they was working very well. But modern cities are not like that. Now imaging a small or medium or large condo built in the '60s, I do not know how they was built in the US but in southern EU at that time insulation was an unknown concept, fuel was VERY cheap, summers not much hot. Things change, people have changed the windows for 1-2 glaze to 3-glase low emissive ones, some have insulated the roof and so on, but the overall benefit was VERY limited and the cost high. Single family homes was not built differently of course, but insulating them, adding rooftop p.v., a water-water heat pump for the winter and minisplit for summer is far simpler and cheaper, also rebuild the home is doable. We can build durable homes, not the USA/JP cheap one, as we can build not durable big buildings, like most modern due to speculations, but we can't evolve the big one much and tech change fast as climate change fast so even a long lasting building is not a good thing, it can't evolve and we need to. > Cost is almost never the limiting factor for building though. So I'm not sure it makes sense to look at it through that lens. Really computing costs it's extremely time consuming and complex. But just try to imaging a different world in the current state of tech and climate. You can't get the numbers with such mental model, but you can get an idea. In making sense terms: with spread homes, let's be clear not too spread, there is a small and medium player economy, giants can be only certain industries, in a dense city there is room for the service economy by the giants. You will not use Just Eat nor Uber in a spread area, you'll not buy ready made foods delivered by Amazon robots and so on. Of course you will benefit from an autonomous lawn mower robot, a home floor cleaner robot, the industrial part remain, but the service part disappear.
• op00to 2y ago
  > You'll find that some elements do cost much (like roofs) but overall single family homes cost less in mere raw materials. Single family housing externalizes the costs of transportation, utilities, and overall environmental impact.
  • kkfx 2y ago
    > Single family housing externalizes the costs of transportation I've bought my car, I recharge it from my p.v. and the grid, so transportation costs are mine. Instead I do not makes some big companies profit moving me with subscription based collective transportation means, who are economically a nonsense. Collective, improperly named public, transport was born to move workers to/from the factory and for this purpose it's very efficient, it normally run at nearly-full capacity. But a broad one is uneatable, and that's why all of them are expensive and heavy subsidized. We, the people need to move from any place to any other anytime, surely there are certain "common patterns", like the one generated by the office to/from downtown, but serving such patterns and forcing the society to follow them, forcing cities and offices for instance, means having built a big machine to move just few hours a day efficiently, while the rest of the 24h it not move or it waste energy being nearly empty. Private cars are still needed because we still need to move, bringing stuff with us and so on. It's an IMMENSE waste of resources. Instead WFH for all eligible jobs we need to move FAR LESS, and those who WFH spread enable others who can't to live spread as well and locally move at a short distance for local services and others jobs. Those who lose are Black Rock, Uber, Century 21 and so on. Not the average Joe or the society at a whole. > utilities They do not. Being spread means having p.v. in a large slice of the inhabited earth where p.v. make sense, this means being interested in shifting loads, typically in hours that the grid is strained, shifting them on local microgrid in self-consumption. Right now I have aircon on for the whole home (it's a new one, so all electric and very insulated) and car recharging (1.6kW absorbed) plus the basic home loads for a total of 4.3kW while from the grid I absorb 0-10W. If you tell me that large energy reseller suffer loss because of that, because they suck less money from us, yes, that's true, and that's why in many countries they try to impose laws against self-consumption or metering production to tax it. But in SOCIAL terms living spread we ease the life of the grid. > overall environmental impact I think you agree that a new home consume much less than an old one. Now try to imaging how we can rebuild cities to makes them all electric respecting modern low energy needs vs how we can rebuild single family homes. Imaging the environmental TCO considering that single family homes can be made in wood with small light foundations instead of consuming large quantity of steel, cement and so on. Do you imaging in not so hot climate heating in the winter from geothermal heat pumps for a city? It would generate no less earthquakes than the oil fracking... For spread homes? It have negligible impact especially if we have local energy production so we can waste it reversing the cycle in summer even if we do not need to cool the home. Do you imaging the environmental impact of a large mass of concrete, glass and asphalt of a modern city in mere terms of thermal mass exposed to the Sun light instead of the thermal mass of spread homes made in wood with p.v. on the roof NOT integrated in it (meaning there is free air underneath and they shadow the underneath roof? Do you imaging the large alteration of water cycle a big city makes tapping any source for a vast area and rejecting an immense amount of water instead tapping and rejecting locally? Did you know the fakir's carpet of nails, why it doesn't sting? It's the same principle in toxicology or the one of the concentration: dilute enough cyanide and you can drink it without being harmed. Concentrate enough and you are dead. Similarly hit the earth with sparse big nails and the earth will suffer, hit with an immense amount of nails all spread and you'll made little damage. Really try to reason alone instead of assuming the PR you know are right. You'll came to similar conclusion.