Our self imposed scarcity of nice places • Hacker News Board

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#111

Post by FriedrichN » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 10:08 AM UTC

jseban wrote: post #88

FriedrichN wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walking with groceries in the rain won't kill you, I promise. It's a small inconvenience but in my opinion you get a lot back for it, everything just becomes more village like and friendly. Being in a car does not tend to make people more friendly. And just because there are nice places to hang out does not automatically mean there will be drugs and crime. That is not my experience at least.

Yeah but why do you want to turn back time to a village and make things less efficient, what's the point of pretending to be poor. Americans are the friendliest people in the world and they drive the most, the more people cycle and walk in the cold rain, the more depressed and unfriendly they become

This may be a controversial opinion, but not everything is about efficiency, especially when it comes to social interactions. But even if your life's aim is to impose rigorous efficiency on every aspect of your life, I doubt you'll be more time efficient if you do your groceries by car compared to living in walking distance of a supermarket.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#112

Post by crooked-v » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 10:10 AM UTC

jseban wrote: post #100

Jedd wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... schlep around by foot with your groceries every day, in all weathers, it's just annoying. You seem to be either contradicting your position, or not accepting other people's comments in good faith. Here you are arguing against carrying groceries every day, whereas I expect most people would - even in the proximity of markets and grocery stores - do perhaps 2 or 3 trips a week. In a comment below you fixed upon s…

How can you argue against the reality that it's better to use a car or delivery for 20 kg, than to carry it when walking. And since it's already delivered by a truck, why walk the last bit it's pointless. It's just a middle class virtue signalling competition oh look who can be the most neo-amish and eschew modern conveniences. I churn my own butter, because that's better for the environment! Everyone should make the…

> How can you argue against the reality that it's better to use a car or delivery for 20 kg, than to carry it when walking.

If you're really going to have trouble carrying 20 kg on your back for a couple of city blocks, you can use a folding rolling cart instead to do the same at the same speed and with negligible effort.

> And since it's already delivered by a truck, why walk the last bit it's pointless.

One truck carrying twenty tons of groceries is not the same as one car carrying a few cases of bottled water.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#113

Post by lbriner » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 10:10 AM UTC

Kaibeezy wrote: post #35

timthorn wrote: post #4

The UK Government set up a commission to look at how to improve the quality of places, which reported last year: https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/building-better-buildin...

The UK has an amazing abundance of models for excellent dense walkable villages and neighborhoods... and then builds endless swaths of American-style car-based single-family houses, with not a grocer, chemist, cafe or pub within walking distance. Only one motivation is powerful enough to propel such wave of single-use disposable crap over this green and pleasant land: shortest possible timeframe profit for landowners…

And let's not forget the elephant in the room. Money.

How much would it cost to add, say, a cycle lane to an existing road 1km long if it required more than just painting the pavement? £100K? More? How many Kms would be required to change even a small town over to be more pedestrian friendly? I just don't think the money is there.

Also, you have many places in the UK that to pedestrianise the centre would create genuine bad problems for drivers. Many small towns simply don't have more than one main route through them.

But then it does depress me when they create new build estates that they don't seem to take that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do it right from the beginning.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#114

Post by _vbnz » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 10:11 AM UTC

torben-friis wrote: post #85

nivenkos wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The walkability comes at the cost of tiny housing though. Like here in Stockholm even 60m2 is getting very pricy (~350-450k USD). The main issue is that there is just nowhere near enough housing to keep up with population increases, seemingly anywhere in the Western world. And housing has become a "store of value" against inflation for investors, driving up prices and becoming a retirement fund for landlords and home…

>The main issue is that there is just nowhere near enough housing to keep up with population increases, seemingly anywhere in the Western world. Not sure about Sweden but at least here (Spain) housing being bought for investment is much more of a problem than physical unavailability. And I don't mean it as a store of value: People (and companies) buy houses to rent them and have the rent payments pay for the mortgage…

I agree completely, at least here in Sweden it's harder to rent flats out, so this is less common (it might change next year though when the conservatives/nationalists win).

IMO I'd make renting restricted to government monopoly (like alcohol sales in Sweden, and the old first-hand contracts system), and property ownership restricted to your residence only, and then build much, much more whilst stopping mass immigration (it's crazy to invite 2+ million refugees when there isn't enough housing already!).

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#115

Post by lbriner » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 10:13 AM UTC

He doesn't talk about who is going to pay for everything. In a road with lots of private ownership, one person can improve their property but they can't force their neighbours to do it as well.

The only likely method is the deep pockets of the developer but why would they do this to only sell the properties to low-income families, which might be zero ROI when they might as well do the same in an up-and-coming city and sell for muchos dollars to the rich?

I love the idea but the main reason why most good ideas are not implemented is that they are much more difficult than it sounds, often for many reasons, not one.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#116

Post by sokoloff » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 10:14 AM UTC

torben-friis wrote: post #85

nivenkos wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The walkability comes at the cost of tiny housing though. Like here in Stockholm even 60m2 is getting very pricy (~350-450k USD). The main issue is that there is just nowhere near enough housing to keep up with population increases, seemingly anywhere in the Western world. And housing has become a "store of value" against inflation for investors, driving up prices and becoming a retirement fund for landlords and home…

>The main issue is that there is just nowhere near enough housing to keep up with population increases, seemingly anywhere in the Western world. Not sure about Sweden but at least here (Spain) housing being bought for investment is much more of a problem than physical unavailability. And I don't mean it as a store of value: People (and companies) buy houses to rent them and have the rent payments pay for the mortgage…

> Basic needs really shouldn't be investment material.

Companies providing and selling food, energy, and consumer staples are investment materials. I don’t get why housing should be a special carve-out and don’t see a workable answer to how to provide food for everyone while banning all investment in companies that grow or sell food.

These companies are invested in precisely because these are basic needs. The company gets the capital it needs to operate, consumers get a reliable supply of food, energy, and clothing, employees get steady jobs providing these staples, investors get a relatively safe store of value and some income. Who exactly loses in these investments in supply basic food, energy, and consumer staples?

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#117

Post by nivenkos » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 10:14 AM UTC

jseban wrote: post #60

stavros wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree it's a hassle, but at least it does help provide some exercise.

It's no wonder the US has such a high obesity and diabetes rate, with a sedentary society like that.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#118

Post by riversflow » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 10:14 AM UTC

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.

>I've never even thought "oh man, I should take the car and go to the larger supermarket that's 15' away".

This is funny and I think very cultural. I'm American and would walk 20 minutes to a large super market and carry 20kg back, up and down hills in San Francisco no less. I too enjoyed the exercise. I knew plenty of people who would shop at smaller stores, mostly people who grew up in cities, but I never really liked it. I grew up going to large super markets and find grocery shopping at them cathartic.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#119

Post by crooked-v » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 10:14 AM UTC

somnic wrote: post #41

crooked-v wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While that's true, there's a significant difference between "you can't give everybody a McMansion" and "everybody must live in spaces objectively describable as 'tiny'". My objection is to the latter.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#120

Post by cudgy » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 10:15 AM UTC

nivenkos wrote: post #92

ascar wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like here in Stockholm even 60m2 is getting very pricy (~350-450k USD). Isn't that still really cheap compared to NY or Silicon Valley? Rising housing prices has more to do with pressure to move to a select few cities rather than walkability or rising population. E.g. in Germany housing in Munich, Hamburg or Frankfurt costs multiples of housing in smaller eastern German cities.

Yeah, but the salaries are much, much lower. SF: ~$167k USD p.a. - https://www.builtinsf.com/salaries/dev-engineer/software-eng... Stockholm: 45k SEK per month = ~$63k USD p.a. - https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/stockholm-software-engine... Taxes are also much higher (especially if your employer has good health insurance coverage in the US, so the added benefits are less). Like I pay an average 40% rate on income p…

“Americans are incredibly lucky - far higher wages, and the freedom to manage your own finances (not forced to pay for irresponsible parents' lifestyle choices through extremely high taxes).”

USA is a huge nation with extreme variations in housing costs and salaries depending on location. Most workers get few benefits, no vacation time, and meager government benefits. Homeless people wander most areas especially urban due to these issues. Still think Americans are lucky?