Living closer together
aeon.co
Living closer together
1–10 of 35 posts
Re: Living closer together
#2I dont know, the frenetic rebound of tourism this year tells me that people don't want to live closer together unless they have to
Re: Living closer together
#3Living close together does not seem to be optimal for mental health. Quite the opposite. Physical proximity to other humans is not the same thing as community. One can be very alone and feel anxious whilst been surrounded by other humans.
Re: Living closer together
#4Given all the urban unrest and pandemic in past couple years, this reads like a reactionary or PR piece to discourage even more people from moving out of cities.
Re: Living closer together
#5Given all the urban unrest and pandemic in past couple years, this reads like a reactionary or PR piece to discourage even more people from moving out of cities.
Cities are completely unaffordable right now. If you raised concerns about a sudden glut of empty and available homes, you'd be laughed out of the room.
Re: Living closer together
#6This is PURE FOLLY. Really. Cities always have problems but in the past they also have many advantages, being dense means having sewers problems, who led to health problems, but also being many skilled in different things, able to defend against enemies, able to communicate in a world without powerful transportation means etc.
Nowadays cities are needed:
- by dictatorships since very few can control very many, making them dependent on city services and so unable to revolt;
- by surveillance capitalism to keep people surveilled and as above dependent from ton of services since there is not enough space to be autonomous in any case.
MARGINALLY cities are needed for having enough people together to meet interesting people from any cohort of interests, but that's now marginal thanks to TLCs and IT development, not from today in the era of the anti-social networks, but already in the past in the usenet/BBS era.
MARGINALLY cities are needed by certain cohorts like elder people to being able to live well while being not able anymore to travel and not interested anymore in different activities in nature.
To being able to evolve, just toward the flying cars McKinsey want [1], just toward a retail-delivery economy, just toward renewables, just toward resilience we damn need FAR LESS dense areas. Single family homes mixed with small buildings for various working/service purposes with enough space to evolve, to have room for p.v., drone landing, delivery of large stuff etc. Modern smart-cities are just old capitalism factories fusioned with their old slums to keep a handful of slaves ready to work in slavery condition.
[1] https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... and
Re: Living closer together
#7Given all the urban unrest and pandemic in past couple years, this reads like a reactionary or PR piece to discourage even more people from moving out of cities.
Cities are completely unaffordable right now. If you raised concerns about a sudden glut of empty and available homes, you'd be laughed out of the room.
Depends on the room. A glut of empty and affordable homes would also signal a downturn in the housing market which would probably upset some people.
Re: Living closer together
#8I dont know, the frenetic rebound of tourism this year tells me that people don't want to live closer together unless they have to
It's been noted that American tourists absolutely love the charm and density of European cities when they visit but somewhere over the Atlantic, they forget that they could have that at home too, if it were legal to build.
Re: Living closer together
#9Given all the urban unrest and pandemic in past couple years, this reads like a reactionary or PR piece to discourage even more people from moving out of cities.
Cities are completely unaffordable right now. If you raised concerns about a sudden glut of empty and available homes, you'd be laughed out of the room.
Not if that room was full of REIT managers. They sometimes hold empty units to boost the prices of the others. Essentially constricting the supply side for larger margins.
It seems prices have risen just about everywhere. Even rural raw land has gone up substantially in the past couple years (what I'm interesed). It should be no surprise with inflation, the increase in the money supply, and some increase in wages, that real assets are "expensive".
Re: Living closer together
#10This is PURE FOLLY. Really. Cities always have problems but in the past they also have many advantages, being dense means having sewers problems, who led to health problems, but also being many skilled in different things, able to defend against enemies, able to communicate in a world without powerful transportation means etc. Nowadays cities are needed: - by dictatorships since very few can control very many, making…
How do you think the carbon footprint per capita compares between urban and suburban areas?
Take a look at this study by UC Berkeley [1]. It is quite clear that we need to be reducing our carbon footprint, and living in cities is the responsible choice unless the global population begins to plummet.