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Spain lives in flats: why we have built our cities vertically

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Re: Spain lives in flats: why we have built our cities vertically

#181

Post by f6v »

matsemann wrote: post #52
mathieuh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It also depends on a neighbor. I heard my previous downstair neighbors only when they had guests. Now, there’s a single person who is a god damn elephant. They way she always stomps and throws things on the floor…

Re: Spain lives in flats: why we have built our cities vertically

#182

Post by circlefavshape »

prmoustache wrote: post #58
pja wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Spanish just don’t seem to care about noise at the institutional level. I spent a week in a small Spanish city last year & the local rubbish collection went down the street outside the door, pouring bins full of bottles from the local bars in the back at midnight. Midnight! Just when even the Spanish are trying to get to sleep. Co-incidentally, there was an article in the Spanish national press that week detailin…

I am living in south of spain and not only spanish do not care about hearing noise, I think they actually do like being noisy and hearing noise. They are basically shouting all the time instead of talking for example. At the beginning I almost felt I should have interrupted couples in the middle of their conversations. I thought they were arguing and were about to become physical against each other, shouting mere inc…

Chileans have "spaniard" jokes reflecting this (or they used to in the 80s anyway)

Re: Spain lives in flats: why we have built our cities vertically

#183

Post by wing-_-nuts »

J_Shelby_J wrote: post #98
matsemann wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I live in a modern mid-rise in Dallas. Same experience. Most noise comes from people in the hallways because a solid wood door does not insulate sound. Traffic noise could be improved with triple pane windows, but really it's just un-restricted mufflers that penetrate, and that should be handled by the city.

Just a tip for anyone dealing with noise in a multi-tenant situation. Get yourself a white noise machine. It's a life changer. I thought I was going to murder my neighbor with his own leaf blower until I got it.

Re: Spain lives in flats: why we have built our cities vertically

#184

Post by Tade0 »

bedobi wrote: post #20
flagged24 wrote: post #15

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.

was gonna comment the same :melting face: I'm an armchair urbanist and all about density, and in well built buildings it's fine, even with tiled floors you can't really hear your neighbors but in Spain it's as if the buildings are built with zero soundproofing - you hear every single neighbor in the whole building and their tvs, radios, conversations, footsteps... it's maddening, I don't understand it

As someone who grew up in a commie block, I think density over a certain point just sucks.

Cities in southern Europe are generally denser than what the communists built and to me this is simply too much.

I remember staying in Bilbao and the garbage truck waking me up on each garbage day because its sound bounced back and forth between the walls and some genius thought it would be a good idea to have it do its run during the night.

Meanwhile back at home if it weren't for a construction site that propped up recently there would have been at least 70 meters to the building next to mine.

Re: Spain lives in flats: why we have built our cities vertically

#185

Post by layer8 »

I dream of a world where, given the data set, such a presentation would be straightforward to create with standard office software, or from a few interoperable ubiquitous software components, and easy to safely share online and offline, in a format that could be assumed to still work without issues 20 years later.

Re: Spain lives in flats: why we have built our cities vertically

#186

Post by rewmie »

glitchc wrote: post #171

One should not discount the impact of climate/weather on the style of construction. Buildings enclosing gardens or a common area open to sunlight in an internal square is a great idea in moderate climates, but would work poorly in heavy snow regions.

In Spain, most of those socialized residential housing projects were not designed with quality of life in mind. Instead, they are more in line with France's post-war operational urban planning approach mainly designed to maximize how many lower-class people could be stored in small areas. They might place a roof over your head, but apartments are extremely small with extremely small rooms, quality of life is very poor, and zoning didn't even allowed any type of non-residential use. Some neighborhoods are outright designed after prison blocks. In contrast, the middle/upper middle class residential areas often come in the form of locked up apartment blocks manned by one or more "conserges" (like a mix between a janitor and private security guard) with the ground and first floor completely locked up.

Re: Spain lives in flats: why we have built our cities vertically

#187

Post by anthk »

Maken wrote: post #70
anthk wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all Spain has a Mediterranean climate.

Outside of the areas in the Cantabrian Coast and the Pyrenees, Spain is basically a dessert.

Castilles are not a dessert. Even heard of Picos de Europa? Mountains from Soria? Sierra Nevada?

Re: Spain lives in flats: why we have built our cities vertically

#188

Post by romafirst3 »

s_dev wrote: post #174
mathieuh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an apartment in Dublin -- noise is not a problem for me. I'll concede there is a bias in Ireland against apartments. I suspect it's because of the perception that 'flats' are either like the Ballymun flats or Luxury apartments no one can afford with little room in between. It's a real shame this bias exists in Ireland it really does little to help the housing crisis or the egregious amount of one off housin…

Just to chime in on apartment living in Dublin. There was a period during the late 80s and 90s when awful apartments were built in dublin (private buildings as well as social housing). Really bad sound insulation, build quality and design. They had mold problems, were poorly ventilated always too hot or too cold and were extremely grim. Even thinking about them now grims me out.

This really poisoned the well in Ireland towards apartment living.

Re: Spain lives in flats: why we have built our cities vertically

#189

Post by kubb »

harperlee wrote: post #178
kubb wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s ideology. People living in religious communities often worship fertility, and try to make breeding as widespread as possible. Blood based nationalism is obsessed with the “race” (unscientific term) not dying out. For both, having children and raising them in the same ideology is crucial for preserving their existence. For the global liberal capitalism, the only way it can maintain its egalitarian promise is for…

Not positioning myself here but ideology is one of those partisan despective words that have another-side-of-the-coin words (“culture” in this case, but see religion vs. cult, indoctrination vs. education, etc.). Several spanish regions are very keen on maintaining their particular culture.

Ideology is just a system of ideas. Of course I don’t like religious fundamentalism and fascism, but feel free to s/ideology/neutral equivalent/g

Re: Spain lives in flats: why we have built our cities vertically

#190

Post by caskstrength »

analognoise wrote: post #147
Lord-Jobo wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is slightly aside, but the concerns over fertility rates in the first world really seem REALLY misplaced to me. Population growth concerns are easily mitigated with immigration which will stay in demand until the rest of the worlds fertility rates catch up(40+ years), and the population growth concerns themselves are a reflection of an outdated (or soon to be outdated) economic model that we should probably focu…

“We made it terrible for our own people to make families, but don’t worry! We can keep the party going by importing loads of people due to economic forces!” Sounds so incredibly shitty. If an economic system works so poorly for people they have to be imported (I.e. locals who want to form families can’t) it should be dismantled. I care about “global capital” far less than I care about my compatriots ability to form s…

> If an economic system works so poorly for people they have to be imported (I.e. locals who want to form families can’t) it should be dismantled.

Most of developed countries have bad fertility rate, some developing and/or poor countries have good fertility rate. People in rich countries don't have children not because they can't afford to, but because they don't want to.

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