Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

strongtowns.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 564 posts

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#551

Post by hattori31 »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #13

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 tiny apartments. In Tokyo houses are tiny but enough. You have to be clever when there is no space. Also, we should be more careful with the space we use for living. Smaller living spaces equals more space for park, forests etc

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#552

Post by refurb »

quadrangle wrote: post #546
refurb wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, the point is that these neighborhoods aren't just relativist taste and opinion. Human-scale walkable life is more deeply and objectively a better way to live. Your last sentence gets in the right direction. There are TONS of "right" ways to design a city. ZERO of them are car-dependent. Car-dependent building approaches are a completely new experiment that is less than 100 years old, and it is a failure. This is…

This approach seems to be based on “there is only one right way to live and that’s without a car”.

You may not like a lifestyle that is car dependent, but plenty of people do. I’ve lived in cities with high density and excellent transit and what do people buy when they can afford it? A car.

Your claim that these areas are desirable because they aren’t car dependent is clearly not supported by fact. Plenty of areas are highly desirable and people still want their cars.

This article is written like someone complaining about someone else’s taste in wine. It’s all arguments about subjective tastes.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#553

Post by quadrangle »

refurb wrote: post #552
quadrangle wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the point is that these neighborhoods aren't just relativist taste and opinion. Human-scale walkable life is more deeply and objectively a better way to live. Your last sentence gets in the right direction. There are TONS of "right" ways to design a city. ZERO of them are car-dependent. Car-dependent building approaches are a completely new experiment that is less than 100 years old, and it is a failure. This is…

This approach seems to be based on “there is only one right way to live and that’s without a car”. You may not like a lifestyle that is car dependent, but plenty of people do. I’ve lived in cities with high density and excellent transit and what do people buy when they can afford it? A car. Your claim that these areas are desirable because they aren’t car dependent is clearly not supported by fact. Plenty of areas ar…

That's an uncharitable and incorrect view of what I'm saying. There's TONS of right ways to build cities and communities, and ALL of them are not car-DEPENDENT. Whether some people want to use cars is a more fuzzy and complex question, and there's definitely a place for them and lots of good arguments for the benefits of cars, especially for specific cases. But there's no good case for building communities that are fundamentally car-DEPENDENT where you CANNOT live there other than by complete car reliance.

It's not about subjective tastes. Objectively, car-dependent places are financially and environmentally unsustainable. It's a matter of scale. Some individuals can live car-focused lives within a system that is not entirely car-dependent, and that can be fine. Cars can have a place. But if everything is car-dependent, we get non-resilient places that are not economically productive enough to maintain the massive amount of infrastructure that car-dependent communities have.

https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme

Subjective tastes are like choosing the color for painting a house. It's not subjective to notice simple facts like that cars take up orders of magnitude more space than all other forms of transit.

You are completely right that many people want cars. But people also want to be free of traffic jams. There is no actual way to build a system in which everyone has all that they want when our wants are incompatible. These things have to be balanced.

A lot of people might want to live in beautiful wilderness locations, but if we let everyone build homes there, the wilderness goes away. Saying that it's wrong to ruin the wilderness with suburban sprawl doesn't in the slightest deny the fact that many people like living in the wilderness and countryside. We simply can't all live in beautiful wilderness. But we COULD all live in non-car-dependent walkable places. So, while living in a special wilderness or ocean-side cliffs and so on is necessarily scarce and elite, it's possible to build enough human-scale walkable places for everyone who wants to live that way, and it's a tragedy and market-failure that we don't do that — and THAT is the point of the original article.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#554

Post by necovek »

mrep wrote: post #216
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're locked into a Capitalist view there. What you say amounts to "without rich people to pay every time they do some work poor people wouldn't be able to build houses". I don't buy it. I think it's perfectly possible to organise society without the driving force being "how can we as a society benefit this tiny cadre of super-rich people without pissing-off everyone else enough that they revolt". Of course…

Who are you suggesting to build houses for rent then? The government? I would love some examples of where that actually went well.

Check out home ownership rates: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_ow...

Countries ranking at the top have had a few decades of government provided homes (communist countries).

Now, they are not the most prosperous countries in the world, but my theory is that it's exactly because there is not as big a pressure to work just to have a roof over your head. Which is why foreigners frequently comment on the easygoing attitude and carelessness they see in people.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#555

Post by armandhammer »

vineyardmike wrote: post #491
pronlover723 wrote: post #15

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…

And SF is way better than most other cities in america. The muni is "okay" but worlds ahead of transit in any other west coast city. Most of SF is way more walkable than most other US cities (outide of the North-East).

I take it you’ve never been to Portland and used Tri-Met? It’s the second best public transit system I’ve used in the US, NYC being #1. And I’ve used transit in Boston, Chicago, SF, Seattle, Philly, Denver, and a handful of other big cities.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#556

Post by ivanhoe »

sime2009 wrote: post #221
ivanhoe wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Good for you, I don't, and that's my whole point. What works for you wouldn't necessarily work for me, and not because we are savages incapable of urban planning, but because there are real challenges totally different than in Holland (geographical, economical, historical, cultural, etc.). Simply, what you call "urban planning" is way easier to do in a flat land and specific types of architecture, where cities where already built with planned street layouts, wide boulevards, etc. I happen to live in an old city with lots of narrow, one way streets, steep hill slopes, etc. and urban planning can get you only as far, without resorting to destroying historical neighborhoods just to make space for bike lanes. And btw my city is perfectly walkable, to make it clear, it's just not particularly bike friendly...

Anyway, my point being that IMHO it's not always a good idea to just try to copy/paste architectural and urbanistic solutions between regions with very different geography, culture and population density, no matter how trendy the idea is.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#557

Post by ivanhoe »

rekado wrote: post #245
ivanhoe wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> You do realize that this is just your privilege? Yes, that's the point, though. This discussion thread is about walkable cities. I should also point out that urban planning that gives priority to people who walk benefits everyone , independent of their income. This cannot be said for designs that give priority to cars.

What bikes have to do with walkable cities? IME the explosion of popularity of e-bikes, e-scooters, etc. made my own city only less enjoyable for walking, not more. IMHO if you want a walkable city it should be organized around pedestrians and efficient means of public mass-transport (trains, trams, electric busses), not bikes... and all I hear is a push for replacing cars with e-bikes...

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#558

Post by will4274 »

matkoniecz wrote: post #549
will4274 wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe in some third-world crime infested countries? Like Seattle and San Francisco? This isn't a third world problem, unless you consider these cities to be third world.

OK, I was unaware that USA really had such runaway crime problems. I thought that it is an exaggeration. (and still suspect this)

Almost every single park in downtown Seattle and San Francisco is covered in drug users. It's been this way for about ten years now.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#559

Post by harpersealtako »

dragonwriter wrote: post #544
harpersealtako wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The plurality of Americans do, even (and especially) those with the means to afford dense, walkable urban life. I don't see why this should be a surprise to anybody to be honest.

I dunno, the really rich tend to be attracted to cities more then the merely moderately rich. I think its possible that you are just working with a too low assessment of what really affording dense urban life looks like. Once you get into the realm where you can afford as much space as a generous suburban home but in a dense urban environment,...

The really rich have city homes sure. But they also have beachside cabins and vacation homes in rural and suburban areas, so they can enjoy both worlds. If you're still in the realm of merely moderately rich mortals who can't own both a penthouse apartment and a generously large villa in the suburbs, you'll have to choose one or the other -- and in most cases in America, they'll choose the suburban home.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#560

Post by rhacker »

erik_seaberg wrote: post #506
rhacker wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A home needs so damn little maintenance. They're not providing that as a service. If the person owned a home maintained it - what fix a broken hot water heater for 600? And that's a reason to make more people required to rent?

Isn’t it something like $8K to replace the roof every 20-ish years?

Like $33 per month if it's 20 years, but the average is closer to 30 and can last as long as 50.
Post reply on HN