481–490 of 564 posts
In a capitalist society, when you find something that people are willing to spend above average on, there's usually no shortage of providers trying to produce it. Why isn't that happening in this case?
Put simply, zoning doesn't allow it.
It’s not just scarcity. People “need” a place to park three or four huge (subsidized) vehicles. Also, people like to brag. N -thousand square feet and an n -car garage provide an objective measure. It’s harder to one-up by saying you have a really nice trattoria three blocks over.
Everybody wants walkable cities, but nobody wants to live in tiny-ass flats. I'm a European and if you look at the size of housing here (perhaps excluding the few cities that have low population density) it's tiny in comparison to most of the USA (except for NYC). So as always there are pro's and con's - would you want to live in a city like NYC? Would you like to raise a family in those conditions?
I love living in a walkable city and a tiny-ass apartment (3 people, 75 square meters). When the neighborhood is attractive it becomes part of "your space". I don't need my whole world to be within the confines of these walls.
This is at least part of the motivation for people seeking out their own larger properties, not to mention buying land adjacent to them: it's not necessarily that they have any use for the acreage, they just want to be able to exert (more) control over what happens in the "space around them".
Note: I'm not condoning that behavior in any way.
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Yes more supply would make it cheaper for the people in the niche that wants that type of house. The writer hints at this but the penny doesn’t drop. It’s most likely that maybe he doesn’t understand the middle and working class market as well as the entire home building industry of America. Regular people need schools, offices, shops etc which need a level of scale to operate efficiently. That is going to counter th…
This isn’t about “quaint shops”. This is being able to walk or cycle to your GP, or to the local shops to grab some milk, or to the nearest park to play with your kids. In the most sought after places, it’s about being able to take regular, fast public transport to your place of work, because it’s obviously quicker & less hassle than driving. In most of the US, you can’t build like this, because of zoning & planning…
I live in a much denser town and I couldn’t walk to the GP, school or train station. They’re all 30-40 minutes walk in different directions. And we don’t tend to just choose the closest services to where we live.
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> These two together make housing small and expensive. Nothing small about these houses in the walkable neighbourhood of Roncesvalles: * https://www.google.com/maps/place/150+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+... * https://www.google.com/maps/place/150+Westminster+Ave,+Toron... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roncesvalles,_Toronto * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb You still have a (back)yard and can have a garage…
Isn't Toronto one of the most expensive cities to live in North America? If you are building large houses in a nice, walkable area, you can't fit enough people there to match demand, and so the cost of the housing spikes. The point is that you can pick 2: walkability, large houses, affordability. * Walkability, large houses = very expensive neighborhoods and gentrification * Large houses, affordable = rural areas whe…
Up until ~2000 it was not so, because living in the city was for immigrants and all the WASPs moved into the innter/outer suburbs with their white picket fences. The area of the links is where the Poles concentrated; to the west were the Ukrainians; to the east is Little Portugal (then onto Chinatown); to the north-east is Little Italy. Toronto is a good example of what Jane Jacobs saying 'you don't live in a city, but in a neighbourhood':
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_neighbourhoods_in_Toro...
And the reason why Toronto (SW Ontario) is so expensive, especially since 2015, is because we've had so much immigration in the region, but housing hasn't kept up by pure volume (regardless of density or other factors).
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I love living in a walkable city and a tiny-ass apartment (3 people, 75 square meters). When the neighborhood is attractive it becomes part of "your space". I don't need my whole world to be within the confines of these walls.
This is a key, I think. If you live somewhere that has no common space and nowhere to walk (which is most of US housing) you "need" the larger space of your own because you have nothing of any value available to you (unless you are willing to get in a car and navigate the hellscape of suburban sprawl that isolates these types of housing developments from each other and from any amenities). It's a "tragedy of the comm…
It might be my impression, but lots of traditional tech companies have offices out in the suburbs. Because land is cheaper there for a sprawling single-story office park.
Remote work has done the opposite and allowed me to live in the city. And because I'm at a central site choosing where to commute I have more opportunities. Rather than living in one suburb and commuting to another suburb.
Everybody wants walkable cities, but nobody wants to live in tiny-ass flats. I'm a European and if you look at the size of housing here (perhaps excluding the few cities that have low population density) it's tiny in comparison to most of the USA (except for NYC). So as always there are pro's and con's - would you want to live in a city like NYC? Would you like to raise a family in those conditions?
I get the impression Americans buy these huge houses that they then barely use any of most of the time. And a dense neighbourhood can substitute for many rooms - I have a community hall around the corner if I want to host a party, I don't have a home gym/cinema/pool/sauna but I have those things a ten minute bike ride away....
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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.
For me it's not been that it's inconvenient to do it without a car, but that it's inconvenient to do it at all . I used to do my shopping on the way home from work, and the stores were on my way so they added nothing to my travel time, yet they added time spent in shops , and I had no desire to keep doing that when delivery options appeared. I'm in London, and use Ocado, which means if I can't even be bothered to ope…
Personally don’t believe the supermarkets will go away. I don’t think the business model of these delivery platforms allows having qualified staff to do the shopping.
I'm pretty addicted to "Not Just Bikes" youtube channel which seems to be either directly or indirectly related to stongtowns https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes It's frustrating. Even though I'm currently in SF, SF still doesn't feel remotely as nice as many other places outside the US. Public transportation is slow and although the muni is okay the busses are kinda gross compared to good non-US cities. There are…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a key, I think. If you live somewhere that has no common space and nowhere to walk (which is most of US housing) you "need" the larger space of your own because you have nothing of any value available to you (unless you are willing to get in a car and navigate the hellscape of suburban sprawl that isolates these types of housing developments from each other and from any amenities). It's a "tragedy of the comm…
> the "remote first" revolution seems to just encourage more sprawl, since you don't need to live near where you work. It might be my impression, but lots of traditional tech companies have offices out in the suburbs. Because land is cheaper there for a sprawling single-story office park. Remote work has done the opposite and allowed me to live in the city. And because I'm at a central site choosing where to commute…