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Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

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Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#221

Post by sime2009 »

ivanhoe wrote: post #136
rekado wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, you misunderstand. Involving a car would most definitely not make it a better solution. I have no interest whatsoever to involve cars in my life. Having to share the roads with them is bad enough. (The arrogance of space is ridiculous.) Deliveries: these cost little because people aren't paid properly. If I wanted to pay them properly, I wouldn't be able to use their services much. So instead of normalizing explo…

> and with different supermarkets in almost every direction, within 10mins on foot they most definitely can be avoided. You do realize that this is just your privilege? Most of people don't have everything in the walking reach, some would have to bike up a hill for a few kilometers to get to a shop, etc? Don't get me wrong, it's great that you can, but it's just a lucky consequence of where you live, not something th…

I live in the Netherlands. Being able to walk to the supermarket in 10mins is very common. What you call privilege, we just call urban planning.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#222

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

jseban wrote: post #211
rini17 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How comes in eastern Europe where fertility is low, immigration is practically non-existent and wages much lower than Sweden, the property prices keep rising too?

From what I hear, salaries in some eastern european countries, like Romania, are higher than western europe, in local purchasing power.

Wages there are high for skilled workers who can sell their work on the global market, like tech workers, but people are tired of the herd stupidity of the population, political corruption, the incompetente of government institutions, underfunded healthcare, useless police, etc. so they pack up and leave even though they'll take a hit on lifestyle frivolities.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#223

Post by kubb »

jowsie wrote: post #200
eaxix wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The role of investors in the economy is ultimately to finance new development. It's easy to see how this works when an investor is the first owner. If it weren't for the initial investor with the required capital and/or credit to make the purchase, the housing likely wouldn't have been built in the first place. Now you may ask, what is the role of investors who buy up older properties? They provide valuable liquidity…

This simply isn't true in the UK. You can't drive 5 miles without seeing some giant new sprawl of new build housing, yet rent is increasing year on year.

Not just the UK, but virtually everywhere in the developed world.

New apartments are being built because it's more and more profitable to do so. It's more profitable, because the property prices are increasing. The property prices are increasing because rent is increasing. It takes tremendous mental gymnastics not to realise it.

The way to lower the rent is to make renting less profitable (eg. by taxing it higher), limit any homeowner support (eg. tax breaks on mortgage) only to the first residential property and control the mortgage amount that can be provided by banks.

Ideally someone who's buying property to live in should be paying 20%+ less than someone who's buying it to rent.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#224

Post by llampx »

CapitainEvident wrote: post #143
nivenkos wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you're on a US salary as a contractor? There's no way I could afford more than 2 bedrooms in the city as a senior engineer, and even that's a push.

I’m not in Amsterdam, but my mate works in Amsterdam and lives on a single engineer Dutch salary in a beautiful 2 bed with a separate dinning/kitchen/lounge near Sarphatipark, 10 minutes walk from Museumplein, walking distance from the Rembrandt Museum and to work.

Did he buy or rent the apartment recently and from his own savings+income? Many such stories involve an old rental contract, a family-owned apartment or sizeable inheritance.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#225

Post by circlefavshape »

GingerMidas wrote: post #31
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…

Did the change in weather not upset you? LA's winters are mild at worst, I think that'd be the biggest hurdle for me.

Winter in Ireland are wet and dark, but they're not actually all that cold compared to anywhere in the northern US

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#226

Post by spodek »

The article applies to farmers markets too. By any measure, farmers markets are better than supermarkets and takeout. Cheaper, faster, more convenient (if there's one nearby), more friendly, cleaner, healthier, but talk about their benefits and prepare to be called privileged and lectured on single moms in food deserts who only have time for McDonald's.

Do they think people at farmers markets want to wall them off and keep poor people away? A moment's thought and they'd realize everyone involved is trying to fill in food deserts, reduce big agriculture subsidies, that McDonald's is causing poverty in time and money, but their defensiveness and I'm-so-smart-ness blinds them.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#227

Post by kharak »

jseban wrote: post #173
kharak wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not automatically inefficient. In Zurich, I have around 5 supermarkets near by, walkable in about 5-10 minutes. Don't even need a bike. Taking the car would increase my travel time, not decrease it. So my walkable city is more time efficient and has health benefits for using your own body instead of a machine to do the traveling. It's better if we measure for time efficiency and health. And it shows. Looking ar…

No because you only have to take the car once a week, and you have to walk 3 times per week. If you want to force physical exercise by inefficiency like that, what exactly are the machines that should be forbidden and which should be allowed? You can do a million things from scratch which gives you physical exercise, we all rely on using machines that saves us from this poor life, why put the walking/cycling on a ped…

Just no. It is more efficient for me. Really don't care that you don't want to accept that. So take your efficiency argument and scrap it. You want cars and want everything to be optimized for it. That is your actual point and we both know it.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#228

Post by MagnumOpus »

crooked-v wrote: post #18
jseban wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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…

If you're living somewhere urban that's built out properly you have (or ought to have) doorstep grocery delivery costing $1-$5.

In the UK at least, there are at least 5 competitive services offering that in every city, including most major supermarket chains, so there is no need to shlep, ever. I only go to the supermarket for fresh bread/milk occasionally in between deliveries.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#230

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

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…

Finland is beautiful, one reason for that is very low population density (1/2 of US and 1/10 of other european countries).
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