Our self imposed scarcity of nice places • Hacker News Board

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#301

Post by dr_dshiv » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 1:07 PM UTC

globular-toast wrote: post #236

null_object wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walkability isn't uniform across Europe, Scandinavia or even within a single country: other people have mentioned Stockholm - which is still a walkable town, even though car-traffic is prioritized over cycles and pedestrians[0] - but other towns in Sweden are definitely not modelled for pedestrians. Nyköping is a town I need to visit regularly, and there pretty much all of the grocery and larger stores have been plac…

Motorised traffic, and cars in particular, are prioritised over non-motorised traffic everywhere I've been in the world, including Stockholm. The problem is cultural. You see, motorised traffic wins by default, unless there are strict rules to stop that happening. If you think about a street full of pedestrians, some will be quicker and stronger than others, but it's not OK for them to use their might to take priorit…

In the 1970s, the Netherlands experienced a mother-led political backlash to cars that was expressed in the “Stop Murdering Our Children” movement. Thousands protested and the government responded by deprioritizing cars. People think that Amsterdam is walkable because it is an old city. It is walkable because it’s people demanded it. So cool. This site has a bunch of news articles about the movement:

https://www.dutchreach.org/car-child-murder-protests-safer-n...

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#302

Post by neutronicus » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 1:08 PM UTC

jelly wrote: post #203

sokoloff wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>Companies providing and selling food, energy, and consumer staples are investment materials. >companies that grow or sell food. House builders would be the analogous party to that. The parent comment is describing landlords, specifically part-time landlords who buy up family homes and turn them into rental properties. Your analogy doesn't apply to those landlords.

The main service landlords provide is maintenance.

There's no direct food analogy but I don't think it's too stretched

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#303

Post by jseban » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 1:08 PM UTC

dr_dshiv wrote: post #295

null_object wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It would not really have been possible to build all this shopping in the city center, so there is the physical limitations. I think this is the main problem, that the cities outgrow themselves, and it is just so much cheaper and economical to build mega-malls instead of smaller centres for shopping and amenities. But this is a matter of chosen-lifestyle . This was really brought home to me talking to my mother-in-la…

There is unbelievable competition in Amsterdam right now for grocery delivery. The big markets all offer it, then there are specialized delivery apps like Picnic (cheap), Crisp (quality) and Peter Pot (all reusable packaging). Then, in the past year, the VC funded fast delivery apps showed up: Gorrilas, Flink, Zapp and Getir. Driving to buy groceries may be necessary today, but maybe not tomorrow.

Yeah same in other big cities, it just shows how incredibly impractical it is to do grocery shopping without a car, and what big demand there is to get rid of this annoying chore. I think it's great! The solution is not walking and cycling, that's for sure.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#304

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 1:09 PM UTC

MisterTea wrote: post #269

zachkatz wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> artificially beautified What's the difference between artificially beautifying and genuinely beautifying?

Genuine beautifying comes from the community.

[deleted]

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#305

Post by CapitainEvident » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 1:10 PM UTC

nivenkos wrote: post #164

CalRobert wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be useful to you - trimodal nature of comp in NL. https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...

In my experience, it's bullshit. The author must be conflating staff positions with "senior". I was paid 75k as an L5 engineer at Amazon, that's like intermediate senior (two levels down from Staff). So maybe one level up you'd get 100-110k? I've never seen salaries anywhere close to that article. Even contractors might pay $150k (and then you have to pay your own taxes, insurance, etc. out of that).

Anyone getting USD75k/EUR65K/GBP55K in Europe can afford to buy an apartment in any of the major cities, including London with access to a walking lifestyle.

Add a partner’s salary to the equation and you are walking your kids to school and living the dream.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#306

Post by refurb » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 1:13 PM UTC

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 has fewer people in the entire country than Singapore. I’m not exactly shocked that it’s capital city is walkable.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#307

Post by rufus_foreman » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 1:13 PM 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

If you make something less profitable, less of it will be provided.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#308

Post by snarf21 » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 1:17 PM UTC

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…

LA != America. I've lived in cities and rural mountains. I loved the walk-ability of Boston with really good public transport.However, most cities have awful public transport. Additionally, I can afford to live in/near a city. A lot of people can't and drive because they can get 2x the space with a yard for kids to plan in for less than a 1BR in the city. They get an awful commute in the bargain but I don't think it is about beautiful places at all, it is about lifestyle.

Also, I don't understand your edit. You say everyone should move to a beautiful city in Europe like Dublin and then you move out of Dublin because the city isn't bike-able. It sounds like you really just hate California so good for you that you don't live there anymore.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#309

Post by kgin » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

When housing markets are extremely tight, people fear improvements. Improvements mean the neighborhood will be more desirable. More desirable neighborhood means people with more money will be interested. More people with money means higher rents. In tight housing markets, people come to see the unlivability of their neighborhood as a shield to defect attention of people who could price them out.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#310

Post by xyzelement » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 1:19 PM UTC

Really enjoyable article. There's a thread that's running through it - that places that are rare and desireable are expensive. While this article talks about a specific kind of place, the pattern is true on general. It's another way to say "supply and demand"

Whenever we talk on HN about high rents or house prices, we need to keep this in mind - what makes a place "affordable" is that either not that many other people want to live in a place like it, or that there's a lot of other places like it that exist. I am not implying policy but simply that this is the baseline of all real estate conversation whether we want it to be or not.