171–180 of 223 posts
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Cities aren't loud, cars are loud.
We really need more public transit, though there also exist pavements that reduce road noise (most of it comes from tires) considerably… it’s just that it’s more expensive (and more effective) than noise walls… but government mandates say noise walls are “adequate”.
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Well since it sounds like you’re in a suburb or semi rural suburb, then you likely won’t need to speculate on that. Just wait a few years and you’ll find out. Because instead of infill density in cities, the sprawl will keep up its creep. Low density building makes that certain. With how it goes with new development in American suburbs, it’s going to be car oriented and increase loud traffic and make walking unpleasa…
Right so we are in agreement - I will experience more noise and more traffic in higher density, and I have every right to complain about it. My complaints may fall on deaf ears, but that is neither here nor there.
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> it's that I don't care. Can you understand why a community would want to exclude you? That antisocial attitudes like this are shunned accordingly and projects that would attract them are avoided. We actively select to avoid these kinds of antagonistic attitudes getting a foothold because we know what makes our community attractive. Certainly it isn't people that "don't care" about what the community values. You'll…
> That antisocial attitudes like this are shunned accordingly and projects that would attract them are avoided. I don't find them antisocial whatsoever. Especially since, to my reading, the wider society is _ better_ because of the change. New communities take root and a better place arises. Regardless, the community will change wether you want it or not. I find it rare that people wanting to stop something from happ…
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I could never understand why some people don't understand that people buy into a community because they like the community in the state when they bought into it. And that making large changes to the community would alter the community and what people liked about it will be diminished. Not to mention the practical aspects like utilities, road capacity, schools, etc. as you've pointed out. For some reason, some people…
I used to agree with this when I was a kid. Then I realized that it’s literally just a part of live in a modernized country. Both my wife’s and I home were “out in the country” when we were kids. Now they’re surrounded by houses. The same pattern is basically everywhere. If you want the community of 20 years ago, move to a new one that looks like it. It’s simply part of the constant change of life. Being bitter over…
My town was a bucolic paradise at one time and then in the late 19th century a few of the regional villages merged and the community of land owners began to subdivide and develop the land and establish a new town. And now it’s highly desired. This was their choice to transform their holiday community into the bedroom community it is today. And now us, as the land owning community, get to decide how further development goes. Not interlopers with no skin in the game. And we do develop new things but they’re rightfully contested and very carefully decided upon because this is our home.
This paragraph looks wrong. "In 2005, when D.R. Horton sold a record number of homes, it made $1.47 billion. In 2023, when it built roughly half as many, its profit was a little over three times as high, or $4.7 billion. " It did not build half as many homes, it was 82917 homes in 2023 vs. 51172 in 2005. Also, the profit number should be corrected for inflation when comparing across almost 2 decades.
1.47 billion 2005 dollars is 2.29 billion 2023 dollars. Profit per house in 2023 dollars: $44,751.04 in 2005 $56,683.19 in 2023
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> Presumably double the density you also double the size of the school and double the teachers. It's not that easy. If you doubled the density, maybe there is nowhere left to go for the school to expand, or the land is now so expensive there is no way for the town to afford expanding the school. My town is an example. The middle school had two quite large empty lots on two sides. Those lots have now multi-story apart…
Couldn’t the school just build taller too?
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1.47 billion 2005 dollars is 2.29 billion 2023 dollars. Profit per house in 2023 dollars: $44,751.04 in 2005 $56,683.19 in 2023
Thanks for doing this calculation! It would be interesting to know if the average square footage of houses built by the company has changed. If they have increased by 25%, the profit per square foot would be roughly unchanged.
* My family worked with home builder marketing departments, and I use to enjoy seeing home & price progression in the area over the years (D.R. Horton has been and is, mostly 1200-2200sqft with a few going past that on either end). One of my many issues with this article is making the mass production builder into a bad guy. D.R. Horton IS the "Starter Home" builder, few other builders can compete for that market because the cost and time it takes to build. It's why local small builders tend to build higher quality homes, they only have the resources (money for permits, legal etc and manpower) for a few houses a year. If the profit on a home is $55k with all the marketing and construction bulk prices DRHorton gets, whats that profit for the 2-4 homes a year local builder this guy wants to replace them with? Probably not much to want to keep doing the job; always on the verge of financial collapse if 2008 happens again (many small home builders disappeared and did not come back. I dont think many people want that kind of risk to start up again). If we wait for small local builders to build homes we would be in a far worse situation than we are now.
I had the opportunity to talk, in length, to the owner/CEO of a mid-sized builder who had to sell the remaining lots from one of three communities because he couldn't keep the prices within: both a price that they would sell and price to make a profit (or break-even); the shortage of construction workers and regulatory delays and cost were a large drain on resources. It had nothing to do with having land or needing to buy land, he already had, it was simply taking too long to get through the building process. Not sure if home builders are still doing it, but many in the area were working together to try and get high-school students into construction apprenticeship/vocation programs to make up for the shortage.
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You’ll see that it’s true once you decouple the idea that one person == one more car on the road. Aside from lawn equipment, the noise pollution I suffer from in my streetcar suburb in a major metro is almost completely from cars and other fossil fuel motorized vehicles. I was out in a fairly high earning suburb recently and the backyard was constantly inundated by the roar of a not so nearby highway. Like, what exac…
Cars make noise. More people == more cars. This will happen whatever ideas I personally may or may not have.
Counter example: Europe, Japan. It's perfectly possible for a city to grow denser of people without growing denser of cars.
My inner city neighborhood is quite calm and quiet, because the city has decent public transit with three different modes within 3 minutes walk (besides decent biking infra).
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That place doesn’t practically exist in most of the US.
It doesn't exist in most of Spain/Catalonia either; it's in a few of the largest cities.
I chose a random small city in northern Catalonia called Vielha and viewed it on Goggle Maps, there they are. They look different to Eixanple apartment buildings, but they are there in the centre. Population less than 6k.
Chose another, Gironella, a bit further south; population around 4k. One less floor on the multi family apartment buildings in the old centre, and a much higher ratio of SFDs to MFDs in the settlement as a whole, but still there.
How many should I sample to convince you?
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So your assertion is that if all the open space near me was mowed down to make room for massive apartment complexes, then I would actually experience less noise and traffic. It's a bold theory but not one I want to try out in practice.
I see you've never visited Tokyo, and have probably never set foot outside North America.