Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any solution that involves shared walls with neighbors is not desirable to the vast majority of Americans. Anyone who wants to live in apartments can do so. Nobody is forced to live in single-family homes -- on the contrary, we work long and hard to afford the money to get into them because they are better than listening to our neighbors all the time.
That's a big claim with nothing backing it up.
The Hollywood sign debuted 100 years ago
41–50 of 142 posts
Re: The Hollywood sign debuted 100 years ago
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your own reference seems to confirm OP's point that sprawl, not density, is what increased. Relatively few places in the greater LA area have properly dense housing projects, and you just have to look across LA from vantage points along either Mulholland drive or Rancho Palos Verdes to see for yourself. Plenty of opportunity for high-rise and even more mid-rise projects, but nearly everything is low-rise. Thankfully…
NYC density: 26,403 people per square mile (source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_Cit... ) Hollywood density: 22,193 people per square mile Koreatown density: 42,611 people per square mile Source: https://maps.latimes.com/neighborhoods/population/density/ne... Yes, greater LA area also has a lot of what people like to call “sprawl”, but it’s a big place and has many different neighborhoods.…
NYC is a whole city of five boroughs with different densities, Hollywood and K-town are neighborhoods. Manhattan which is what most think of as NYC is 70k+/sqmi
Re: The Hollywood sign debuted 100 years ago
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
NYC density: 26,403 people per square mile (source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_Cit... ) Hollywood density: 22,193 people per square mile Koreatown density: 42,611 people per square mile Source: https://maps.latimes.com/neighborhoods/population/density/ne... Yes, greater LA area also has a lot of what people like to call “sprawl”, but it’s a big place and has many different neighborhoods.…
NYC is a whole city of five boroughs with different densities, Hollywood and K-town are neighborhoods. Manhattan which is what most think of as NYC is 70k+/sqmi
Even with five boroughs, I'm still surprised NYC is this low.
In addition to the obvious Staten Island, apparently Queens "only" has 22,125! I always thought it would be close to Brooklyn etc.
Re: The Hollywood sign debuted 100 years ago
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your own reference seems to confirm OP's point that sprawl, not density, is what increased. Relatively few places in the greater LA area have properly dense housing projects, and you just have to look across LA from vantage points along either Mulholland drive or Rancho Palos Verdes to see for yourself. Plenty of opportunity for high-rise and even more mid-rise projects, but nearly everything is low-rise. Thankfully…
NYC density: 26,403 people per square mile (source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_Cit... ) Hollywood density: 22,193 people per square mile Koreatown density: 42,611 people per square mile Source: https://maps.latimes.com/neighborhoods/population/density/ne... Yes, greater LA area also has a lot of what people like to call “sprawl”, but it’s a big place and has many different neighborhoods.…
> but it’s a big place and has many different neighborhoods.
That's called sprawl.
Re: The Hollywood sign debuted 100 years ago
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your own reference seems to confirm OP's point that sprawl, not density, is what increased. Relatively few places in the greater LA area have properly dense housing projects, and you just have to look across LA from vantage points along either Mulholland drive or Rancho Palos Verdes to see for yourself. Plenty of opportunity for high-rise and even more mid-rise projects, but nearly everything is low-rise. Thankfully…
That’s because people want to live in low rise buildings. The average person in California (and in the rest of the country) desires to live in a detached home that they own. It is not wrong to want that. However, it is definitely wrong to assume that high-rise apartments are “proper” density and that LA is doing it wrong. LA is the way the people live there want it to be. If you want high density and high-rise living…
There's a false choice presented here, about choosing to live in high rise/high density. Even NYC basically peters out to low rises just out of brooklyn!
The overall problem, though, is that these density restrictions cause a nasty spiral. People looking for work are asked to move to one of these cities where their bosses own these wonderful homes. They mostly have to rent. Rent is high. Supply is low, so it's hard to even find a place! Every single service that you might use, also has to pay rent. Not only do you have to put a significant portion of your paycheck to rent, but basically every restaurant has to charge a very heavy amount to this. Every corner store. Parking. Every minor service. Public spaces might barely exist, but forget having community spaces run by individuals, because commercial real estate got super expensive from this same cycle.
It's hard to overstate how real estate pressure makes _everything_ more costly. People have to work to live. If they want a good job, they _have_ to buy into the urban real estate tradeoff. There are ~no good rural jobs. It's pervasive.
If every part of living wasn't so financialised, if it was possible for public spaces to survive, if teachers could actually afford to live close to schools, this is a different story. And some cities manage this better, of course. But at one point decisions around parking minimums, height restrictions, endless ability of localities to object to building development, and other whining from people who would rather have their yard than replace that with a larger public park... it just makes it harder and harder to sustain urban living at all
Re: The Hollywood sign debuted 100 years ago
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
The average person has no choice but to live in single-family homes. That doesn't mean they want that. Your solution of 'move somewhere else' is completely tone-deaf. Furthermore, you completely ignored mid-rise housing, and the fact that it can be seamlessly mixed in with SFH without significantly changing the feel or character of the neighbourhood. Oh The Urbanity made a great YouTube video about this recently wher…
Any solution that involves shared walls with neighbors is not desirable to the vast majority of Americans. Anyone who wants to live in apartments can do so. Nobody is forced to live in single-family homes -- on the contrary, we work long and hard to afford the money to get into them because they are better than listening to our neighbors all the time.
I think that loads of people are fine with apartments because of the price/convenience/location. If you ask a young couple "would you rather pay $1500/month to be in an apartment or $3000/month to be in a SFH", you think everyone is choosing the latter?
Re: The Hollywood sign debuted 100 years ago
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any solution that involves shared walls with neighbors is not desirable to the vast majority of Americans. Anyone who wants to live in apartments can do so. Nobody is forced to live in single-family homes -- on the contrary, we work long and hard to afford the money to get into them because they are better than listening to our neighbors all the time.
I think that loads of people are fine with apartments because of the price/convenience/location. If you ask a young couple "would you rather pay $1500/month to be in an apartment or $3000/month to be in a SFH", you think everyone is choosing the latter?
Once they have kids, almost everyone who can afford it chooses a home in the quietest and safest neighborhood they can get into.
Apartments are fun when you are young and want to live downtown and enjoy the restaurants and the night life. When you get older and want your home to be a refuge and raise a family, apartments really suck.
Re: The Hollywood sign debuted 100 years ago
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s because people want to live in low rise buildings. The average person in California (and in the rest of the country) desires to live in a detached home that they own. It is not wrong to want that. However, it is definitely wrong to assume that high-rise apartments are “proper” density and that LA is doing it wrong. LA is the way the people live there want it to be. If you want high density and high-rise living…
There's a false choice presented here, about choosing to live in high rise/high density. Even NYC basically peters out to low rises just out of brooklyn! The overall problem, though, is that these density restrictions cause a nasty spiral. People looking for work are asked to move to one of these cities where their bosses own these wonderful homes. They mostly have to rent. Rent is high. Supply is low, so it's hard t…
It sounds like your problem is not really about housing at all. This is a rant against the entire society.
I used to think the NIMBYs were full of it -- they say their opponents wanted to force everyone into high-density living arrangements, everyone must live in a communist tower block dystopia, people's yards and green spaces would be taken from them, huge buildings would tower over neighborhoods and block out all the light, etc. I thought that was a pretty bad strawman representation of their opponents.
Now I realize that some people really do want those things, after seeing quite a lot of unreasonable people on HN and a few other places, who really do seem to believe the insane ideas the NIMBYs ascribe to them.
You wrote "But at one point decisions around parking minimums, height restrictions, endless ability of localities to object to building development, and other whining from people who would rather have their yard than replace that with a larger public park.."
Do you really think it's ok to build a public park right in someone's yard? Do you really, truly believe that our society should operate that way? Because if you do, the NIMBYs are right!
Re: The Hollywood sign debuted 100 years ago
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Hollywood is not only the oldest film industry in the world, it is also first in revenue. I bet that people around the world know about Hollywood and the top actors just like they know Coke everywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_industry
Your own link refutes you.
The oldest is the French film industry (Gaumont still exists & is the oldest studio still in operation), closely followed by the British film industry (notably Ealing Studios, still the oldest continuously working film facility too).
Hell, the earliest American film industry was in Brooklyn. Hollywood happened initially due to it fleeing to the west coast to avoid patents (ironically) and later the cheaper land.
Re: The Hollywood sign debuted 100 years ago
#50People need to remember the Hollywood sign was for a housing development at the edge of town in Los Angeles. That's how long it's been, and we've added almost no density, and eternal sprawl.
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