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Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

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Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#381

Post by [deleted] »

Ensorceled wrote: post #340
orangeoxidation wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulation, education, inertia. All of those tell specialist things like "streets have to be at least this wide in residential areas". Zoning can make it impossible for the requirements of daily life to be in walkable distance. There is also some scale issues. A walkable city is great. A walkable neighborhood might not be, not if it is too small and everyone has to drive to work, to the grocer and to the doctor. Publ…

> A walkable neighborhood might not be, not if it is too small and everyone has to drive to work, to the grocer and to the doctor. If a "walkable neighborhood" has none of those things, it's really a neighborhood with sidewalks. There are doctors, dentists, grocers, a theatre, bars, restaurants, hardware store, ... all within walking distance in my neighborhood. Neighborhoods can be like that.

[deleted]

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#382

Post by sokoloff »

maxsilver wrote: post #377
zchrykng wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Seriously, what is your proposal for how it should work? Presumably the people renting the housing would have bought it themselves if they had the financial resources to do so (unless they just like having housing with no real downside investment risk). So what would they do without a landlord? If the builders didn't have people to sell the property to, they wouldn't build them and the housing just wouldn't…

> Presumably the people renting the housing would have bought it themselves if they had the financial resources to do so It's actually quite the opposite. By literal definition , every renter that's paying their rent can already afford the housing they currently occupy, because every renter is already paying for (their entire unit) as well as (all cost of maintenance) and (some extra profit for the landlord) So by de…

So if you want to move out of your parents house to attend college or to begin your career, you can do so by simply purchasing an entire dwelling in perpetuity and will save money doing so?

That seems unlikely to hold true.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#383

Post by xboxnolifes »

nuerow wrote: post #273
jdblair wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Zoning is the biggest impediment. Most US cities have parking requirements, rules for setbacks, and limits on number units in a building. Surely that's not it, because zoning in general and urban planning in particular is what determines walkability, and that is determined by design. Even if you have the most stringent requirements for parking, plans are already produced with that in mind. Therefore, either a urban…

Walkability requires a certain degree of density and mixing of residential and commercial buildings. When a lot of zoning is only single family homes on large plots with the commercial structures separated a few miles away, walkability becomes basically impossible.

When you don't have those requirements, it doesn't even make sense to design around walkability, as nobody would walk to you even if you built a walking path to their doorstep.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#384

Post by convolvatron »

nuerow wrote: post #157
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…

> 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. The economy exists to support everyone's life, not the other way around. Just because you can argue someone can make a quick buck selling a basic necessity, that does not mean it's ok to deprive a whole community of basic necessit…

i think you misunderstand. the tail has been wagging the dog for some time now. it is not for the market to adapt to our needs, it is for us to adapt to the market and hopefully we can extract what we need.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#385

Post by CapitainEvident »

fsloth wrote: post #189
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AF (anno ford) Nice reference to Brave New World, I suppose?

Oh, yes, I actually forgot the original reference. While Ford did not invent the automobile, he can be rightfully to be considered the icon of affordable automobile for the masses and hence a clear demarcation line on the design constraints of inhabited areas.

If so, in my view that’s a feature as most large European cities have wide enough roads for cars and the new neighbourhoods that were designed with cars in mind have never outperformed the old areas, where people actually want to live.

London Canary Wharf being the epitome, where no one wants to live so badly the people that work there will pay more to live further away and suffer the horrible commute to go live in a walkable, older area.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#386

Post by tjr225 »

jollybean wrote: post #326
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…

"I don’t get why housing should be a special carve-out " Capital and leverage. Wealthy and access to capital can build, rent and make giant returns. Students paying off debt cannot even get the minimum down payment. If everyone rented, and, if transition costs were very simple i.e. you could 'jump homes with ease' - then this would be less of a problem. Also I would add stability. A government job which can be had fo…

> Students paying off debt cannot even get the minimum down payment.

This is huge. My wife and I are pretty privileged and own a very modest fixer-upper home on the very edge of a coastal metro area. We somehow managed this only after a decade of paying off ~150k of student loans that our parents encouraged us to take out when we were effectively children.

I have friends who are software engineers who own big houses in the city who skipped a 4 year degree altogether or their parents were able to pay for their education.

The difference between them and me? They were able to pocket that 150k as opposed to giving it to some useless university administrators and various federal lenders.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#387

Post by germinalphrase »

ivanhoe wrote: post #130
matkoniecz wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Increasingly less true with the adoption of electric bicycles.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#388

Post by maxsilver »

sokoloff wrote: post #382
maxsilver wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Presumably the people renting the housing would have bought it themselves if they had the financial resources to do so It's actually quite the opposite. By literal definition , every renter that's paying their rent can already afford the housing they currently occupy, because every renter is already paying for (their entire unit) as well as (all cost of maintenance) and (some extra profit for the landlord) So by de…

So if you want to move out of your parents house to attend college or to begin your career, you can do so by simply purchasing an entire dwelling in perpetuity and will save money doing so? That seems unlikely to hold true .

I don't know where "in perpetuity" comes from. Nothing stops you from selling your small apartment condo later or whatever.

But yeah, generally speaking, adults should be able to own their buy and own their own housing, and be able to reside there as long as they choose to. For the same reasons we expect people to be able to own their own coats and shoes and laptops and such, and hold on to it as long as they are alive. And if people change jobs or move to a new city or start a family or whatever, they sell their old one and buy the new one.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#389

Post by devchix »

Kaibeezy wrote: post #264
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the USA is only ~250 years old and most of its planning was done in the past ~150 years, whereas most European cities date back to the middle ages or even before that, growing much more organically, often around a castle, wall, church, or all of the above. It's only in the past 100 years or so that cars are a thing. But the other is just different approach to planning. I live in a relatively new, so-called "vin…

> the USA is only ~250 years old and most of its planning was done in the past ~150 years, whereas most European cities date back to the middle ages or even before that, growing much more organically Agree. This is key. To be sure, Europeans are busy making plenty of wasteful American-style car-based future ghost towns around the edges and satellites of their beautiful (or at least walkable) dense old urban cores. Pl…

Dresden was leveled by bombings in WW2, and rebuilt. There was an attempt to preserve its architectural heritage - red tiled roofs, cobble stone streets, large piazza at the center. There's a burnt church somewhere that's preserved but everything else is new. I remember it being nice, but not as charming as similar places which had preserved its centuries of haphazard, worn, old buildings and alleys. In the main square there's plenty of swank shops, Wempe, Chanel; the bricks were new, so were the unstained roof tiles, the avenues were wider, the water drain quickly, but I remember it as a Epcot version of a European city; there was a tram service, not sure if that qualifies as walkable but it was easy to get from one end of town to another.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#390

Post by CapitainEvident »

stavros wrote: post #293
KptMarchewa wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regular brita filter is great solution for drinkable tap water.

I tried that but the jug had a weird smell. I don't know if those filters that go on the tap directly are better, I keep meaning to try them. Have you?

Filtering tap water at home has been a solved issue for generations. From ceramic water filters (CWF), ceramic candles to reverse osmosis and etc...c’mon dude.
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