I've noticed an increasing trend in West Coast cities where people complain that there's "just too many people". "Tell them to move elsewhere, we're full". It's as if the lessons of Malthusian limits were lost on us. For humanity to continue growing as a species we have to become more efficient with land use.
Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
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Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
#12I've noticed an increasing trend in West Coast cities where people complain that there's "just too many people". "Tell them to move elsewhere, we're full". It's as if the lessons of Malthusian limits were lost on us. For humanity to continue growing as a species we have to become more efficient with land use.
I mean if they really mean they don't want to build anything then let's talk. It's a policy that can work, it's worked great in Yosemite and the Grand Canyon for example.
But they'll have to stop building massive office buildings if so.
Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
#13I walked around downtown San Bruno recently and it's honestly pathetic how this city is squandering their potential. Even on el camino real itself a lot of the property is being wasted on auto repair shops and fast food places, 2-3 story buildings, etc. This place could be way, way better given its proximity to the airport and SF.
Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
#14I've noticed an increasing trend in West Coast cities where people complain that there's "just too many people". "Tell them to move elsewhere, we're full". It's as if the lessons of Malthusian limits were lost on us. For humanity to continue growing as a species we have to become more efficient with land use.
> For humanity to continue growing as a species
I'm pretty young.
Since my birth, the population has expanded by over 40%, and we've increased global temperature by approximately 1 degree Celsius.
The inevitable conclusion of forever-growth is, indeed, that everyone piles in to microscopic communal living spaces, that everything becomes factory farmed, that everything has to be as efficient as possible because we'll be (already are to a large extent) forced into doing it.
We can't go on like this.
Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
#15I've noticed an increasing trend in West Coast cities where people complain that there's "just too many people". "Tell them to move elsewhere, we're full". It's as if the lessons of Malthusian limits were lost on us. For humanity to continue growing as a species we have to become more efficient with land use.
The intuitions about Malthusian limits are basically correct within car culture. Further scalability is of course possible, but it requires lifestyle changes and a lot of expensive infrastructure building, sacrifices incumbents would rather not make.
Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
#16I've noticed an increasing trend in West Coast cities where people complain that there's "just too many people". "Tell them to move elsewhere, we're full". It's as if the lessons of Malthusian limits were lost on us. For humanity to continue growing as a species we have to become more efficient with land use.
> For humanity to continue growing as a species I'm pretty young. Since my birth, the population has expanded by over 40%, and we've increased global temperature by approximately 1 degree Celsius. The inevitable conclusion of forever-growth is, indeed, that everyone piles in to microscopic communal living spaces, that everything becomes factory farmed, that everything has to be as efficient as possible because we'll…
> We can't go on like this.
What is the stopping point? Why is now the stopping point?
> The inevitable conclusion of forever-growth is, indeed, that everyone piles in to microscopic communal living spaces
I mean, or we become more efficient _now_, buy ourselves centuries more time on the planet, and then figure out a different solution, maybe involving terraforming other planets or something.
Progress isn't linear and it's unfortunate that everyone views it as such.
Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
#17I've noticed an increasing trend in West Coast cities where people complain that there's "just too many people". "Tell them to move elsewhere, we're full". It's as if the lessons of Malthusian limits were lost on us. For humanity to continue growing as a species we have to become more efficient with land use.
While simultaneously snidely implying that these unwashed peasants will never understand our progressive ways while forcing them to live in environments that needs fossil fuel fueled AC and heating instead of somewhere like the coast which needs neither.
Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
#18It's being overdone. A solid wall of railroad flats (cheezy "luxury" condos) is going up for miles along the Caltrain tracks. Those wooden multistory buildings are the slums of tomorrow. It's about time for the next Bay Area recession. Some of those buildings will never be fully occupied. Remember 2008? 2001?
It's fair to suppose that in the far-off future, midrise high-density housing (the five-over-ones and texas donuts) built cheaply years ago would become some of the least desirable housing around. Unlike with detached housing, rehabilitating the structure is a package deal, so its quality will likely decline until the entire structure is demolished, likely in conjunction with a redevelopment of its lot.
The likely ossification of such midrises shows why incremental, small-scale increases of density, like allowing threeplexes on small lots, is so useful.
Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
#19> No neighborhood should be exempt from change.
> No neighborhood should be subjected to radical change.
Is there any dynamic evolutionary system that actually follows these rules? The tech industry is famous for lumbering behemoths that are constitutionally incapable of innovation and then get replaced wholesale by nimble startups. National borders change all at once, in wars or revolutions, rather than incrementally as demographics change. Human beings don't change much after early adulthood; instead they make new humans who replace them when they die. Evolution itself seems to have periods of equilibrium when resources are abundant and nearly every individual survives, followed by abrupt speciation when resources get tight, individuals die off, and populations get isolated from one another.
The only positive example I can think of is democracy, which is specifically designed to enable gradual change so that radical change doesn't happen, and yet still frequently gets party realignments, charismatic strongmen, and the occasional revolution.
I worry that this philosophy sounds great precisely because it's not how the world works. Human beings are really bad at noticing or reacting to gradual change; it tends to pile up until it becomes too big to ignore, and then rapidly reaches a tipping point and crisis where the newly strong force out the weak. This is undesirable, but also seems largely unavoidable.
Re: Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
#20I've noticed an increasing trend in West Coast cities where people complain that there's "just too many people". "Tell them to move elsewhere, we're full". It's as if the lessons of Malthusian limits were lost on us. For humanity to continue growing as a species we have to become more efficient with land use.
> For humanity to continue growing as a species I'm pretty young. Since my birth, the population has expanded by over 40%, and we've increased global temperature by approximately 1 degree Celsius. The inevitable conclusion of forever-growth is, indeed, that everyone piles in to microscopic communal living spaces, that everything becomes factory farmed, that everything has to be as efficient as possible because we'll…
"We can't go on like this."
There is a huge HUGE difference between "you must own 1/3 of an acre of land to live within an hour commute of your job" and "microscopic communal living spaces", if you haven't looked at a map recently we are much much closer to the prior than the latter.