Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing • Hacker News Board

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#341

Post by amanaplanacanal » Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 5:28 PM UTC

Aromasin wrote: post #320

vladvasiliu wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I understand Paris to have undertaken a serious revolution in purging cars within the past decade. The issue is that they have mainly increased the friction of using cars in the city (reducing lanes, restricting parking, converting avenues to one-way) all the while the public transit enhancements are running late, and whatever lines were already there saw a drop in service quality. So increasing density would requi…

The same is happening in the UK. They've made car travel harder without making public transport any better (outside of London), which has just lowered the average person's productivity rather than making any headway into tackling the core issue of people getting from A to B quicker, cheaper, with less pollution. They put in some heavy traffic restrictions in my local city of Oxford by closing off residential roads, f…

I feel like the best way to make getting from A to B quicker is for A and B to be closer together. Which makes walking or biking more practical and you don’t have to spend as much money on public transit.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#342

Post by agucova » Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 5:30 PM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #333

bluefirebrand wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to lean lefty, but this scheme makes me understand why libertarians want less government How much my home is worth should not be capped by whatever government thinks. That's bs If government is counter offering all of my neighbors and they are accepting it, then I am screwed. I either accept the government counter offer or I go to tribunal who will cite all of the government's recent purchases from my neighbor…

> How much my home is worth should not be capped by whatever government thinks What's your take on anti-price-gauging laws? Should the government "cap" the price of food and bottled water after a natural disaster, or should the seller determine how much it's worth, as determined by supply & demand?

Now I'm curious about what's your take on them

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#343

Post by circlefavshape » Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 5:31 PM UTC

circlefavshape wrote: post #328

hollerith wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The higher the density, the more vehicles get in each others way. If your reply is that the vehicles are not needed because everyone can just walk: it takes more energy and more carbon emissions to walk a mile than it takes to drive a vehicle a mile -- and that's before we get to transporting things other than people. (Growing food is very energy intensive; walking burns food.)

A 155lb human burns 177kcal when walking at 2.5mph[1], so that's 71kcal per mile There are 340kcal in 100g of wholemeal wheat flour[2], so walking one mile takes around 21g of wheat Wheat flour creates carbon emissions of 0.80 kg CO₂e/kg [3], so walking one mile creates carbon emissions of 170 g CO₂e Driving a vehicle powered by gasoline produces tailpipe emissions of around 400g per mile [4] [1] https://www.healthli…

However if the calories from your walk come from beef ...

100g of beef gives you 217 kcal [1], so you need 33g of beef for your walk

Carbon cost for beef is 99.48 kg CO₂e/kg [2]

So walking one mile fueled by beef creates ~3.3kg of carbon emissions, over 8 times what would be emitted if you drove

[1] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods/beef#nutrition [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201677/greenhouse-gas-e...

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#344

Post by circlefavshape » Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 5:33 PM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #336

circlefavshape wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 155lb human burns 177kcal when walking at 2.5mph[1], so that's 71kcal per mile There are 340kcal in 100g of wholemeal wheat flour[2], so walking one mile takes around 21g of wheat Wheat flour creates carbon emissions of 0.80 kg CO₂e/kg [3], so walking one mile creates carbon emissions of 170 g CO₂e Driving a vehicle powered by gasoline produces tailpipe emissions of around 400g per mile [4] [1] https://www.healthli…

Don't forget that the person would be burning calories even if they weren't walking.

The figure for calories consumed when walking is excess calories consumed (compared to sitting still)

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#345

Post by 8note » Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 5:33 PM UTC

vladvasiliu wrote: post #187

digging wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Light pollution is relatively easily solved, there's just not much will to do so. Noise pollution is best solved by reducing car-dependency which is a non-starter in most North American cities; I can't speak for Europe but I understand Paris to have undertaken a serious revolution in purging cars within the past decade.

> I understand Paris to have undertaken a serious revolution in purging cars within the past decade. The issue is that they have mainly increased the friction of using cars in the city (reducing lanes, restricting parking, converting avenues to one-way) all the while the public transit enhancements are running late, and whatever lines were already there saw a drop in service quality. So increasing density would requi…

This doesn't sound right?

If you increase density, you should be avoiding the need to improve public transit, as more people will be closer to their destination than it's worth driving to.

For the same population increase, less density means people have to travel farther to get to their destination. More people travelling farther necessitates more public transit

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#346

Post by underlipton » Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 5:34 PM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #334

underlipton wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the value your espousing is, "No one should ever pay to have others live better than them off a livelihood that they don't support," a great portion of the remainder of America's middle class gets Thanos snapped. A lot of the decently-paying jobs in services, tech, etc. that these communities rely on essentially make the world a worse place, but they're profitable, and people gotta eat.

> A lot of the decently-paying jobs in services, tech, etc. that these communities rely on essentially make the world a worse place, but they're profitable, and people gotta eat. If those jobs are paid for by voluntary customers, then that's fine. If they're subsidised through taxes of people who don't want them, that's the issue I'm mentioning.

>If those jobs are paid for by voluntary customers

>If they're subsidised through taxes of people who don't want them

Yes.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#347

Post by martythemaniak » Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 5:34 PM UTC

gxs wrote: post #331

rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> build taller As someone who lives in an area with plenty of high-density residential buildings, I can attest that this is a perfect recipe for creating congested cities with such intense light and noise pollution.

This is a huge problem with housing in general that is mostly ignored. Let people build 4 units where today it's zone for 1, and if you disagree, you're an out of touch racist/classist/luddite who is just not a visionary and can't embrace the future. Surely nothing bad is going to happen when you take a subdivision with 30 homes and take just 10 of those and turn them into quadplexes. 30 homes might approximate somet…

Maybe the reason people accuse you of being "racist/classist/luddite" is because you're fearmongering, and they suspect these talking points are just a cover for looking out for your financial interest (keep increasing property prices), or keeping your community free from "others" or something.

Why is this fearmongering? Because your figures are wildly, wildly out of touch with reality. If you legalize quadplexes by right, you're not going to magically see a doubling of housing, there just aren't that many people! That is completely made up bullshit. Fast growing place have growth rates in the low single digits, like 2%/a, not 50%. Growth projections for fast growing regions like the Toronto area have 50% growth projections on the scale of decades. But "If we legalize quadplexes, our 100 home with turn into 102 home next years and there'll be one extra car" just doesn't have the same zing and it's hard to keep the housing crisis going with realistic complaints.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#348

Post by kazinator » Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 5:35 PM UTC

not2b wrote: post #340

kazinator wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only true if we hold the population constant, and get everyone to scrunch together onto smaller lots built taller. The main aim of density is to turn cities of a million into cities of ten million, not to just stick with a million and have birds chirping in parks everywhere you go.

No, the aim is to have that one million people occupy a smaller area, so that there's more space for parks, open space, farms, etc.

Sorry, which density advocacy groups have this nice idea as their literal goal?

Density is the population of a metropolitan area divided by its total area. Not population divided by the footprint area of residential lots. Density advocacy is all about accommodating population influx; it is really burgeoning population advocacy.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#349

Post by samatman » Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 5:35 PM UTC

justin66 wrote: post #231

samatman wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been to most major American cities, and Toronto, and D.F., as well as Paris and Brussels. What Paris and Brussels have in common with D.F., which they do not share with either the major American cities or Toronto, is police open-carrying machine guns.

I assume by "machine guns" you mean rifles, and by "open carrying" you mean "carrying." (there's no way to carry a rifle concealed) I have no idea what "D.F." is. Another response above mentioned that American cops generally keep the long gun in the car. Since today we've got National Guardsmen with rifles in the NY subways acting as police, this conversation all feels a little tone deaf, but it's fair enough to poin…

> I assume by "machine guns" you mean rifles

I mean both fully-automatic rifles and submachine guns, but sure, I never saw someone lugging around an M2 like a 1980s action character.

> and by "open carrying" you mean "carrying."

I mainly meant to contrast it with having one easily accessible in their squad car, actually. American police do have long rifles, although these are mostly semiauto.

Since there is no way to carry a rifle concealed, all carry is in fact open carry... or is it? Is a rifle in a case open carry? It is not. The term means something in the U.S., and I was using it correctly. In places where citizens have the right to open carry, this applies to a slung rifle as well, in places where they do not, it's legal to carry a rifle, but it must be in a case.

> I have no idea what "D.F." is.

Distrito Federal, Ciudad de México. Had you been a bit more curious, the answer is very easy to determine: https://www.google.com/search?q=D.F+city

This is no stranger than referring to New York City as NYC, it is an utterly commonplace term for the city, the one which Mexicans normally use in referring to it.

> Since today we've got National Guardsmen with rifles in the NY subways acting as police, this conversation all feels a little tone deaf

That may be the case, I've been to New York many times but not for many years now. If I had seen this, I would have mentioned it.

I don't see what about this conversation is tone deaf, other than perhaps your refusal to read what I said with reasonable generosity, or look up a common term for the largest city in North America when you didn't recognize it.

> I noticed that the first time I used a French airport, though, not out in the street.

They do tend to cluster around airports and train stations in both Paris and Brussels, although not exclusively. In D.F. you'll see machine guns open carried pretty much anywhere, true throughout Mexico in fact.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#350

Post by OkayPhysicist » Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 5:36 PM UTC

everforward wrote: post #222

simonw wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it takes more energy and more carbon emissions to walk a mile than it takes to drive a vehicle a mile" I've never heard that before, can you expand on that?

I wouldnt be completely surprised if it were true, though I lack the background and willpower to try to get an actual answer lol. My thought process is that food also implies some level of driving (delivering pesticides/fertilizer, driving crops away), the fertilizers are fossil-fuel derived, and if you count the sun it takes to grow crops to eat (or worse, as feed for meat). The whole chain is pretty inefficient, to…

A human walking is absurdly efficient, as anyone who's ever tried to outrun a bad diet can tell you. Running or walking a mile burns ~100 extra calories relative to sitting on your couch. Unless you're putting active effort into not doing so, most diets fluctuate by far more than that.