Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

strongtowns.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 564 posts

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#41

Post by somnic »

crooked-v wrote: post #19
schnitzelstoat wrote: post #13

Everybody wants walkable cities, but nobody wants to live in tiny-ass flats. I'm a European and if you look at the size of housing here (perhaps excluding the few cities that have low population density) it's tiny in comparison to most of the USA (except for NYC). So as always there are pro's and con's - would you want to live in a city like NYC? Would you like to raise a family in those conditions?

NYC apartments are tiny because NYC just doesn't have enough housing in general, so everything that's allowed to be subdivided gets subdivided (and some things that aren't allowed get subdivided too).

Partly, but also smaller living space is in fact part of the tradeoff that you make when building stuff close together. It's a worthwhile tradeoff in my opinion, but I'm also not saying that single-family car-centric suburbs should be illegal for people who prefer it, unlike how building denser housing is illegal in many expensive cities.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#42

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

brabel wrote: post #20
makeitdouble wrote: post #2

> Places like this are expensive because places like this are scarce, and scarce things almost always become expensive. > The answer to this isn't to lower our standards for design or to be dismissive of the things that are really lovable about these places. The answer is simply to allow a lot more Milwaukee Avenues to exist. And the same goes for the likes of all of today's beloved, "charming" historic districts. It…

I don't think that's as simple as the article tries to make it out to be. As poorer people start moving into a neighborhood, the richer people will flee away en masse. It seems to me that rich people will pay any amount of money just to make sure they're living where other rich people are, even if that means moving somewhere less convenient. As the poorer people start taking over a hood due to prices going down for w…

This is function of house prices, not of natural segregation.

When I was growing up in London the streets around me were fairly mixed. You could find public school educated lawyers, minor celebrities, and even a few financial types living close to factory and shop workers.

As public housing was sold off and property prices were goosed towards the stratosphere the inevitable result was separation, because the poors were economically cleansed into poverty ghettos.

Now houses on the street I grew up on - built as cheap and dense worker housing - sell for around £1m.

I think the arrow of expense points in both directions. Building more nice neighbourhoods would lower prices. But one of the reasons nice neighbourhoods aren't built is because it's so easy to make money by building cheap trash housing and selling it to people who can barely afford it.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#43

Post by stavros »

jseban wrote: post #40
stavros wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, the supermarket is 3' away by foot and I've never even thought "oh man, I should take the car and go to the larger supermarket that's 15' away". It's just not inconvenient at all. I wonder if the difference in opinion is from a lack of exercise? I don't mind carrying 20kg of stuff back home in bags, I'm used to it and it's good to get at least some exercise.

Haha carrying 20kg of stuff back home in bags, that's ridiculous! Yeah do that after a long day of work, and also you can forget ever having any energy left for doing any sport because now your only sport ever is carrying groceries. What a poor life

This is the way I live, you think I've never shopped after work? If I couldn't carry 20kg for 200m, I'd have more of a problem with how I live than where.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#44

Post by matkoniecz »

jseban wrote: post #12
fsloth wrote: post #8

Fantastic cultural divide. This is one of the reasons why I read HN. Most of Europe is more or less walkable - one reason is that the largest urban centers predate cars, but intentional design AF (anno ford) is also a factor. I can bike or walk everywhere, and the only reason I have a car is that it makes grocery shopping much, much easier. I am not very green or anything, I just like to keep things simple. You can c…

> I can bike or walk everywhere, and the only reason I have a car is that it makes grocery shopping much, much easier. Yes, you still want a car for such things, sure it's quaint and nice to have a "walkable" neighborhood, if you're a tourist, but if you live there and have to schlep around by foot with your groceries every day, in all weathers, it's just annoying. I want my neighborhood to be functional and efficien…

> but if you live there and have to schlep around by foot with your groceries every day, in all weathers, it's just annoying

Even with quite large family walking for 10 minutes with groceries seems to be not problematic.

Unless you live on South Pole or something.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#45

Post by jseban »

crooked-v wrote: post #37
jseban wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in such a properly built out environment, and I just think it's a complete waste of time and effort to insist on such inefficient and inconvenient modes of transportation, and I hate wasting time and effort on recurring daily chores, I just want it to be as efficient as possible. You rely on cars/trucks indirectly anyway, that bring the groceries to your closest store, and deliver your packages so what's th…

> inefficient and inconvenient Just the other day I was about to start cooking but realized I was out of butter, so I walked about 5 minutes to a nearby store, got some, and walked back. It would have literally taken me more time and effort to drive to a store nearby with parking than just walking. The same holds for most household basics (paper towels, garbage bags, etc), for which I have about a dozen options withi…

Yeah but now you are optimising for the minority case at the expense of making the most common case worse.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#46

Post by Sharlin »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #13

Everybody wants walkable cities, but nobody wants to live in tiny-ass flats. I'm a European and if you look at the size of housing here (perhaps excluding the few cities that have low population density) it's tiny in comparison to most of the USA (except for NYC). So as always there are pro's and con's - would you want to live in a city like NYC? Would you like to raise a family in those conditions?

The US is not a good comparison because the house sizes are just ridiculous – and those huge houses are just as out of reach for most "common" people and are rapidly getting even more out of reach because they never were sustainable at all! But there’s a spectrum between 40m2 highrise flats and 800m2 single-family McMansions.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#47

Post by pja »

pronlover723 wrote: post #15

I'm pretty addicted to "Not Just Bikes" youtube channel which seems to be either directly or indirectly related to stongtowns https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes It's frustrating. Even though I'm currently in SF, SF still doesn't feel remotely as nice as many other places outside the US. Public transportation is slow and although the muni is okay the busses are kinda gross compared to good non-US cities. There are…

Does zoning prevent the walkable neighbourhoods from acquiring a full range of amenities?

Or maybe the planning restrictions prevent the kind of organic infill development that leads to these places acquiring their own local character?

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#48

Post by crooked-v »

stavros wrote: post #33
rekado wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never owned a car in my life, never got a drivers license. I live in a walkable city (Berlin, close to the border). When I need to haul things around the city I take the cargo bike. For decades I simply carried groceries in a big backpack and walked to the markets on foot (they are all within a 10 minute radius from where I live). I'd call the layout of my neighborhood functional and efficient. Adverse weather h…

Same here, the supermarket is 3' away by foot and I've never even thought "oh man, I should take the car and go to the larger supermarket that's 15' away". It's just not inconvenient at all. I wonder if the difference in opinion is from a lack of exercise? I don't mind carrying 20kg of stuff back home in bags, I'm used to it and it's good to get at least some exercise.

20 kg seems like a lot for walkable grocery shopping unless you're intentionally getting a bunch of bulk staples all at once.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#49

Post by matkoniecz »

jseban wrote: post #30
rekado wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never owned a car in my life, never got a drivers license. I live in a walkable city (Berlin, close to the border). When I need to haul things around the city I take the cargo bike. For decades I simply carried groceries in a big backpack and walked to the markets on foot (they are all within a 10 minute radius from where I live). I'd call the layout of my neighborhood functional and efficient. Adverse weather h…

Yeah and if you stopped doing that and instead used a car to buy your groceries or ordered them delivered to your doorstep, you would have more free time and more energy. People want free time and energy. Just because it "works" for you to walk in the cold rain carrying groceries in a backback, doesn't make it the best solution. If there are better solutions, why insist on doing it the worst possible way?

Walking for 10 minutes with an umbrella to the shop takes about the same effort as packing all this things into car and later unloading it and driving.

Or even less if shop is 300m away.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#50

Post by sammorrowdrums »

jseban wrote: post #12
fsloth wrote: post #8

Fantastic cultural divide. This is one of the reasons why I read HN. Most of Europe is more or less walkable - one reason is that the largest urban centers predate cars, but intentional design AF (anno ford) is also a factor. I can bike or walk everywhere, and the only reason I have a car is that it makes grocery shopping much, much easier. I am not very green or anything, I just like to keep things simple. You can c…

> I can bike or walk everywhere, and the only reason I have a car is that it makes grocery shopping much, much easier. Yes, you still want a car for such things, sure it's quaint and nice to have a "walkable" neighborhood, if you're a tourist, but if you live there and have to schlep around by foot with your groceries every day, in all weathers, it's just annoying. I want my neighborhood to be functional and efficien…

I live in the Netherlands. We bike rather than just walk everywhere, and generally people do more frequent small shops rather than big weekly shop. It takes some imagination and a lot of urban planning work, but quality of life improves dramatically, it’s life-changing.

Much Urban planning was involved in making it better for cycling though, and it wasn’t always great for it. Off-road cycle paths being a mainstay for the country with separate lights is the biggest differentiator, and took a lot work to get there, but now you can safely cycle the entire country!

Even Cambridge in England where I used to live (and is famous for thousands of cycling students and locals) Is laughably bad compared.

Northern Ireland where my family live has also transformed large parts with Greenways projects and it has been transformational, I ran along them, walked along them to shops and cycled a long way and it was amazing I thought.

https://nigreenways.com/

Post reply on HN