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

121–130 of 564 posts

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#121

Post by crooked-v »

jdblair wrote: post #16
YmiYugy wrote: post #3

I don’t get why there are so few walkable places. The demand is there and willing to pay a premium, and the small lots and narrow streets should make it fairly inexpensive to build.

Zoning is the biggest impediment. Most US cities have parking requirements, rules for setbacks, and limits on number units in a building. There is a strong incentive against changing the rules to allow more construction because scarcity increases the value of existing units.

Also, residential-only zoning that prevents the kind of small businesses that give people any reason to actually walk around walkable neighborhoods.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#122

Post by jseban »

softcell wrote: post #103
jseban wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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. From my personal experience, I've found that doing physical exercise (paradoxically enough) seems to give me more energy . On those days where I've sat still all day I'm much more likely to feel like doing nothing…

Yeah but people should be free to use whatever form of physical exercise that they want. Should we never do any sports anymore and instead just force everyone to do inefficient transportation? That's just making life so much more poor.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#123

Post by timeon »

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…

> I don't think that's as simple as the article tries to make it out to be.

Well I also don't think that's as simple as you are trying to make it.

What you wrote is true sometimes. But it is not the rule. Social mix is broad topic in urbanism. There are many developments with some social housing included. And market housing there is not inhabited by poor people just because some poor live in the neighborhood.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#124

Post by Gwypaas »

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…

Don't forget the 31.42% payroll tax that's hidden from your salary but a tax right on it.

A salary of 50k SEK costs the employer 65.7k SEK on their books, which is what actually matters. The actual marginal taxrate flowing from your employers books at that level is somewhere up at 75%-80%, not even counting sales tax when you use the money.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#125

Post by jseban »

crooked-v wrote: post #96
jseban wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three days of ingredients is a lot, with your toilet paper and laundry detergent and everything, this breaks down immediately if you're only two people. So if you are a couple then both of you have to go shopping, that's twice the time you spend. Not to mention if you are a family

Three days of food ingredients for two people isn't actually a lot, assuming you already have bulk staples (flour, sugar, rice, etc) in your pantry. I'm already including all the other incidentals outside of bulk staples: add occasional toilet paper rolls, paper towels, olive oil and vinegar, minor snacks, etc, and you get the one large grocery bag on average per trip. Maybe two if you're eating things that are bulky…

So you mean it works if you assume that all the heavy stuff you "already have" somehow. Ok, not exactly convinced..

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#126

Post by the__alchemist »

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…

Related: Most European cities are comparably beautiful compared to North American ones. Pick a random European city, and it's probably more aesthetically interesting than any in NA. I'm curious why this is the case (Older / less centrally-planned? A subjective difference in tastes?)

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#127

Post by bondarchuk »

jseban wrote: post #125
crooked-v wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three days of food ingredients for two people isn't actually a lot, assuming you already have bulk staples (flour, sugar, rice, etc) in your pantry. I'm already including all the other incidentals outside of bulk staples: add occasional toilet paper rolls, paper towels, olive oil and vinegar, minor snacks, etc, and you get the one large grocery bag on average per trip. Maybe two if you're eating things that are bulky…

So you mean it works if you assume that all the heavy stuff you "already have" somehow. Ok, not exactly convinced..

Dude, you have 15 comments in this thread arguing against other people's preferred way of grocery shopping. Let it go.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#128

Post by stavros »

riversflow wrote: post #118
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.

>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 li…

I think I'm the opposite, I prefer smaller shops because I find the big supermarkets extremely tiring. I think it's because of how hard your brain needs to work in them, you need to be making "do I need this?" snap decisions very quickly as you roll through the aisles.

Our neighborhood supermarkets are the size of, say, a basketball court, so they're not as tiring.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#129

Post by jseban »

FriedrichN wrote: post #111
jseban wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Society is about efficiency. Social interactions are voluntarily and can be organised around any random activity such as games, sports, hobbies etc. It's really inflexible and incredibly limiting to force inefficiency of transport, because that increases social interactions.

People had the same argument when banks went online, all the retired people want to still go and pay their bills at the bank, because they get to go outside, meet people etc.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#130

Post by ivanhoe »

matkoniecz wrote: post #80
scandox wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think the double question mark is a tad disingenuous there. Everyone will have their own peculiar circumstances. We, for example, are a family of 4 and our shop for ten days is I would guess 30/40 kilograms. The grocery is 2.5 kilometers away and the journey includes one very dangerous roundabout. So I think a car is reasonable.

> The grocery is 2.5 kilometers away and the journey includes one very dangerous roundabout. Well, if city is so poorly designed that it requires cars, then you will need a car. For comparison, I have small supermarket 250m away (on the ground floor of an apartment block) - and I do not need to cross road to get there. And withing 250m there are several other shops like bakeries, pharmacies, haidresser, convenience s…

>Well, if city is so poorly designed that it requires cars, then you will need a car.

It also very much depends on the geography of the area, some cities simply sit on steep hill slopes and bikes are just not an option unless you're young and super-athletic. Most of "bike-cities" are in completely flat areas and it's not a coincidence.

Post reply on HN