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Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

strongtowns.org

531–540 of 564 posts

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#531
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's so easy, do it yourself then? Who do you think funds the building and maintenance of property?

The people who rent it after its built, duh? Not everyone can buy property because not everyone is sitting on unallocated capital.

> unallocated capital.

i imagine one day when you have " unallocated capital. " this will be a distant embarassing memory for you

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's so easy, do it yourself then? Who do you think funds the building and maintenance of property?

>If it's so easy, do it yourself then? A decent apartment here costs the equivalent of 20 times the average income. you need to have roughly 25% of the cost for a mortgage to be granted, according to local regulation, which would be 5 times your yearly salary. Try to save that considering that just renting (while you save) will easily take 50-60% of your income. Even those who can do it will only achieve it after mor…

> A decent apartment here costs the equivalent of 20 times the average income

And there will be places where that will not be true

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Choking can happen anywhere you are; preventing accidents from drowning and bicycling is 100% under your control (just don't swim or ride a bike). Mass shootings don't and aren't.

>preventing accidents from drowning and bicycling is 100% under your control (just don't swim or ride a bike) With a risk profiles like this I'm starting to see why emergency covid measures never end.

I mentioned relatively extreme measures that are still reasonable for the sake of argument. The point is you can greatly reduce risk from these activities without affecting your life too much (except maybe if you're a professional swimmer/cyclist); the equivalent for shootings would be to never leave your house and that has an obviously much worse impact on most people's lives.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#534
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

and this is where things collide with capitalism. Once your neighborhood is a part of "your space", you're much more invested in that neighborhood and its future evolution. However, under the "rules" of a capitalist economy, in which the private ownership of real estate generally trumps most other concerns, you have very little ability to control the future of your neighborhood. If it starts changing in ways you don'…

No- this is unintended consequences of anti-discrimination laws.

Capitalism had contractual things like deed restrictions and binding neighborhood covenants to deal with this problem, which were all but eliminated in the name of integration.

Of course we have trouble dictating the character of our neighborhoods- it was the express intent of those laws that we couldn't.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#535
I would imagine most people agree with the What and the Why of the article in about 30 seconds of reading. What I think is missing from the article and perhaps from all of us is the How. Tracing the line from urban design aesthetics to policy to legislation to legislators and lobbyists is a very obscure line with many sharks looking to stay obscure and keep their cut in the pipeline I imagine.

This probably explains the prevalence of bike lanes (I do use them frequently) because its so much easier for polticians to say “I built that!” than it is to say “I prevented abstract concept X!”

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#536
post #356

Bizarre article. Calling out working class housing built in 1880 seems to ignore why it’s not longer a working class neighborhood - because it’s now in a prime location.

While that's a good point, the article remains spot-on. People would readily pay 1/2 to 3/4 the price of that neighborhood to live in a place that felt similar in terms of the general neighborhood even in a much less prime location. By contrast, the people who choose to live in this particular prime location would not prefer to live in the same location if the neighborhood were razed and replaced by car-dependent sty…

Right but what’s the argument? That the people who razed it 50 years ago should have known that the old style would be more desirable in 2021?

I mean, cities change. Shit gets torn down, neighborhoods that were wealthy go to crap, neighborhoods that were crap become trendy.

The article infers there is one “right” was to design a city and complains that people in the past didn’t know that.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people who actually like the suburbs? It's the worst of all worlds.

Well, I do like to live in my suburban house. At least I like it more than living in apartments in "dense neighbourhood", where I grew up. I have parks, playgrounds, a grocery store, school for my kids, convenience stores, fast food places, a pet store, a booze store, even two cannabis dispensaries in 600m radius. I have a huge tech park with tons of jobs in 10 minutes of cycling. I'm happy here. Why would I need to…

Interesting. I grew up in suburbia and hated it.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#538
post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any stats about tourists in Houston or Phoenix? I'm pretty sure that international tourism is more of a thing in more "walkable" cities like New York.

I think there are quite a few other factors that could explain the difference in international tourism between Phoenix and NY. LA seems to be doing alright though with ~7.5M foreign visitors a year: https://www.discoverlosangeles.com/sites/default/files/2019-...

I think LA has some other advantages, like being a movie cultural center.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people who actually like the suburbs? It's the worst of all worlds.

Well, I do like to live in my suburban house. At least I like it more than living in apartments in "dense neighbourhood", where I grew up. I have parks, playgrounds, a grocery store, school for my kids, convenience stores, fast food places, a pet store, a booze store, even two cannabis dispensaries in 600m radius. I have a huge tech park with tons of jobs in 10 minutes of cycling. I'm happy here. Why would I need to…

sounds like the dream tbh. cities are overrated

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The walkable bit I see, but proper, fully segregated cycle infra is very rare.

Yeah, if you want to ride a bike then you ride on the street and try and stay to the side. Kids can ride on the sidewalks. It works for me because I can walk to my butcher, coffee shop, various restaurants, book store, etc and if I need to do more then I can drive my car. Sometimes we'll bike for fun when going to places not too far away. I only end up driving a couple times a week generally. I think it's a great bal…

This sounds like my neighborhood (Coolidge corner, Brookline)

Where are you?

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