101–110 of 457 posts
Spain also has the lowest fertility rate in Europe at 1.28. Not sure how much apartment living is cause or effect on that but it's a grim number. Every generation is only 60% the size of the one that came before it.
UN article on it here: https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/events/pdf...
Condos are absolutely atrocious, inhuman way of living. If I could I would move to a villa or a suburb house.
Apartments are not inherently bad. They allow for density which, if you went through the tour this site provides, you know allows for cheaper public services. I've lived in many great apartments and a few bad ones. It's not the style of building that's bad, it's the owners and the laws they are forced to or not forced to follow.
Suburbs are _heavily_ subsidized. They require a ton of money from taxpayers to sustain their existence. So much so that many North American cities are essentially permanently in a state of insolvency because they can't sustain the infrastructure needed for suburbs. Think about this, for a suburb you have inherently more roads and more distance to cover for things like sewers, power/cable lines, water mains, etc. Plus you just take up more space so suburbs don't tend to be walkable in terms of productive travel. You can walk your dog in a suburb, but if you need groceries you'll be driving. So you pay more for suburbs even if you don't live in them AND they require you to pay for a car which depending on circumstances can total a few thousand dollars a year, especially if you don't have the money to drop on a car that doesn't require a lot of maintenence.
As mentioned in this website, suburbs should always be considered a luxury. The vast majority of people should live in more dense areas. It's better for the environment, personal finances, city economies, physical and social health (ever wonder why Europeans live longer?), etc. If you want to live in a suburb, good for you! But I believe we should fully stop subsidizing them. Start making suburb communities compensate cities financially for the imbalance they impose on our systems.
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Norwegians are also some of those most quiet people I've ever met.
Not disagreeing with your point but I’d like to support what the op said regarding “modern” buildings often having excellent sound deadening. My previous Dutch residence also had those “fake” (non concrete) walls but I couldn’t hear others in their rooms even when they played loud music (and they had different nationalities). But if no effort goes into soundproofing, it can be unsurprisingly pretty bad.
One example is the original thick wooden beams that was the floor went through the unit walls. So they same piece of wood I was walking on was also being walked on by the neighbors. That was a great transmission of vibrations, especially when their kid were playing on the floor hehe.
Condos are absolutely atrocious, inhuman way of living. If I could I would move to a villa or a suburb house.
That's like half of UK housing.
The people who would rather live in an old 50 sqm house than a modern apartment must be abusing some serious substances
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I live in northern ireland in an actual house and the walls are thin enough I could dip my bread into my neighbours' soup. It is the number one reason I could never see myself living in an apartment, I'm very sensitive to noise and I get disproportionately angry at even low levels of unwanted noise. I'd be too worried about noise from neighbours.
I live in a modern apartment in Norway (2019). I guess some of our heat insulation demands make it so that we get extra thick walls and floors, but I've never heard any noise from neighbors. No tv sounds, no stamping feet etc. Maybe twice a year someone drills a hole to mount something on the walls and I hear that for a few minutes. Even have a train passing by outside I can't hear with the windows closed. Point bein…
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I am just curious- why did you opt for a place that is so out of sync w what matters to you ?
Not OP, but there's so many general reasons someone buys this place: - They didn't opt for the place, someone else in their family did - This is where the jobs were - What matters to them changed over time - The place changed over time - A lot of things matter to them, this is just one, and the place delivers on the others - When they were looking for a place, this was what was available - etc.
I'm okay with these high rises so I can enjoy the quiet tranquility of rural Spain. Everytime we do stay in an apartment in Spain the lack of sound proofing really stands out. Perhaps even more so because everything is tiled, no carpets.
I live in northern ireland in an actual house and the walls are thin enough I could dip my bread into my neighbours' soup. It is the number one reason I could never see myself living in an apartment, I'm very sensitive to noise and I get disproportionately angry at even low levels of unwanted noise. I'd be too worried about noise from neighbours.
Americans have a very skweed view of what apartment living is actually like, in part because the construction of such buildings in America (outside of the ultra-luxury market) is generally terrible. Lumber is abundant in North America and cheap so everything is timber-framed, which is awful for noise. I actually do not understand how people can live in two-story houses in the US. Such people complaining about noise s…
Spain also has the lowest fertility rate in Europe at 1.28. Not sure how much apartment living is cause or effect on that but it's a grim number. Every generation is only 60% the size of the one that came before it.
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The feasibility of widespread bike usage doesn't just depend on density. It depends a lot on a region's weather, too. Amsterdam, for example, happens to have weather that's relatively compatible with biking, all throughout the year. On the other hand, for four to six months of the year, most areas of Canada, and even a good portion of the US, definitely don't. While a very small handful of people can handle biking wh…
Even in perfect conditions there's a lot of reasons not to bike. Distances are more difficult, you can't bring someone with you, your carrying capacity is much smaller for shopping trips. It also just plain takes longer to get anywhere and people just don't like spending more time than they have to on errands.
- You can have someone ride on the backseat or in the cargo space of a cargo bike. [1]
- You'd be hard pressed to come up with a shopping load that won't fit on a cargo bike. [1]
Then there's the cost vs a car [2], which will likely make up for any inconvenience.
Of course, you do need at least decent bike infrastructure for this to be realistic.