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Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

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Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#51

Post by FriedrichN »

CalRobert wrote: post #21

The planet boils because Americans are afraid of living in places as beautiful as the ones they vacation in. If you're an American who'd like to escape, check out the Dutch American Friendship Treaty, or Portugal's new visa for remote work. PT's NHR tax program makes it very popular for FIRE too. It's not Amsterdam but moving to Dublin from LA did wonders for my happiness. The next goal is living somewhere my kid can…

Not to burst your Amsterdam bubble, but you basically have to be a millionaire to be able to buy a house there right now. House prices have been rising like crazy in the Netherlands and Amsterdam in particular. Amsterdam is now for the elite, basically the point the article is complaining about.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#52

Post by stavros »

crooked-v wrote: post #48
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.

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

It's not every time, but when we need water I get two sixpacks (for balance) and those are 18kg alone.

Not that there's anything wrong with tap water, but eeeh.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#53

Post by makeitdouble »

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 a real dynamic seen times and times. The catch is, poor people's houses are not owned by poor people. "Rich" people don't need to live there to own the land and dictate prices up to a point. They'll flee away and rent the house basically, and they can afford to keep it at the highest price the market validates.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#54

Post by sammorrowdrums »

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

do you even lift?

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#55

Post by slifin »

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 a walkable urban location and have never drove, in order to shop without having to worry about carrying heavy milk etc

I just use a trolley capable of going up steps it cost me £35 and allows me to carry a lot more comfortably

Before that I used deliveries a lot, I notice people with cars don't think very hard about alternatives like they can't even imagine a world without their car

Which means there's parts of the city that are just inaccessible to the rest of us and permanently degrades the experience of walking in most other places

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#56

Post by bambax »

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…

> the only reason I have a car is that it makes grocery shopping much, much easier

How large is your family?? We are five (2 adults and 3 kids) and we do most grocery shopping by bike.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#57

Post by Kaibeezy »

It’s not just scarcity. People “need” a place to park three or four huge (subsidized) vehicles. Also, people like to brag. N-thousand square feet and an n-car garage provide an objective measure. It’s harder to one-up by saying you have a really nice trattoria three blocks over.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#58

Post by rekado »

jseban wrote: post #26
crooked-v wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're living somewhere urban that's built out properly (e.g. not a residential-only section of suburbia pretending to be a proper neighborhood) your schlepping shouldn't be any longer than a 15-minute walk either way, at which point instead of doing the periodic bulk shopping that cars incentivize, you just pick up a limited amount of stuff as you need it every day or every other day. A lot of U.S. cities have go…

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…

Hmm, I find it very hard to relate to this perspective.

Perhaps this is a cultural difference: I don't value efficiency in my life nearly as much as you seem to do. I don't go out of my way to waste time, but I'm perfectly happy to walk through the quiet roads while carrying groceries, thinking about what I've recently read, wondering about things I happen to see on my walk ---such as the Jugendstil reliefs on facades, a very inefficient type of decoration---, trying to identify trees and shrubs, etc.

I also really don't mind taking the time to write this comment, even though there's nothing efficient about communicating like this.

My work and art likewise are not efficient --- elegant perhaps, pretty even; but no artifact I leave behind is primarily efficient (unless it's code that was meant to be efficient only, the worst kind of code).

I used so many words to inefficiently say: I feel that efficiency is rather overrated. I won't ever give up being slow and being at ease with living slowly --- with plenty of opportunity for life to happen by accident.

PS: most of the public transportation stops are 10 mins away from where I live. Even the train. It's 10 mins away by bus ;)

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#59

Post by crooked-v »

jseban wrote: post #45
crooked-v wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The most common case is that I'm picking up about three days' worth of ingredients at a time, in which case I walk either five or eight minutes (depending on which shop has the better stuff for my list) and carry home one large grocery bag. Since I don't need to worry about parking or traffic, I can fit this into my schedule whenever and usually do so when I'm already on my way home from somewhere else.

The actual minority case is that I'm picking up something in bulk (replacing pantry stock, getting supplies for a party, etc), in which case I might switch to using my car, depending on how heavy or unwieldy it is for a half-mile walk.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#60

Post by jseban »

stavros wrote: post #43
jseban wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes but it's an incredibly strenuous and unnecessarily hard way of life, if that's what you want, fine, but society at large has as a core value to eliminate unnecessary, hard, repetitive tasks so that's not going to be a good way to structure neighborhoods.
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