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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

#211

Post by imiric »

willio58 wrote: post #102
mathverse wrote: post #88

Condos are absolutely atrocious, inhuman way of living. If I could I would move to a villa or a suburb house.

By condo you mean apartment right? Condos are usually just apartments you own. 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 ar…

> Suburbs are _heavily_ subsidized. They require a ton of money from taxpayers to sustain their existence.

That's highly relative. Urban areas have high maintenance costs as well, precisely because of the higher density. The infrastructure requires more maintenance, higher sanitation costs, law enforcement, etc. Not to mention that cramming hundreds of people per km², surrounded by concrete and no vegetation, in small and dimly lit apartments, is awful for mental health. I know where I would prefer to live during the next pandemic.

> It's better for the environment

How is it better for the environment, exactly? Cities destroy the environment just by existing, and they hardly have enough green areas to sustain wild life.

> physical and social health (ever wonder why Europeans live longer?)

This has nothing to do with the urban lifestyle. Europeans live longer on average because of less socioeconomic inequality, healthier diets, and better healthcare systems.

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

#212

Post by Lord-Jobo »

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of the worlds fertility rates catch up(40+ years), and the population growth concerns themselves are a reflection of an outdated (or soon to be outdated) economic model that we should probably focu…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…

There are no nations that currently have a both modern living and population growth, i think there are definitely some fundamental failures to make having children an attractive option in many countries like the US, but even countries that give a billion hours parental leave, tax breaks, etc. have declining populations.

your solution requires a dismantling of the entire global system of governments and economies and the implementation of something new and poorly tested. which may be in our future regardless, and may be necessary at some point. but massive change on that scale only happens in response to horrifying levels of war or unpredictable changes in technology(changes on the scale of a power positive fusion revolution). You either dont want or cannot force those things.

the immigration solution is a stop-gap and still a big change for most, but one that buys nations 40+ years and is no harder than simply opening the door that millions are banging on right now, and billions will be banging on as climate disaster grows.

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

#214

Post by localplume »

Lord-Jobo wrote: post #208
ShrigmaMale wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're acting as though an immigrant from any of the dense population centers has the same impact as a native-born child on the culture and economy. that is false. sometimes it's for the better (in America, we have many well-educated immigrants from India and China). sometimes it's for the worse (see Europe's struggles with uneducated muslim immigrants from north Africa and the Middle East). importing large groups of…

>you're acting as though an immigrant from any of the dense population centers has the same impact as a native-born child on the culture and economy. that is false I am not, i am acting like immigrating literally anybody is going to be massively better than a declining population. If they live in a country, they are paying for housing, food, and services, and almost certainly have a job. taxes on top of all of that.…

[dead]

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

#215

Post by rewmie »

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…

> They are basically shouting all the time instead of talking for example.

That's my experience as well. Sometimes it's hard to tell apart if there's a bar brawl happening on the pub down the road or if it's a grou having a good time. It also doesn't help that in both cases Spaniards curse like crazy.

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

#216

Post by cm2187 »

bluGill wrote: post #122
jack_riminton wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having stayed in Norwegian houses many times, I can attest they've really sorted their insulation out. Similarily my Swedish sister-in-law always complains about British houses when she visits, saying their cold and draughty

British houses have a worldwide reputation of bad insulation. They live in a mild climate where you don't need to heat the entire house to ensure the pipes don't freeze, and don't really need much AC to be livable in the summer. As such it is really common for people who live there to only heat the room they are in.

Also a lot of them date from the XIX century or earlier and can't be touched.

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

#217

Post by ska »

wiseowise wrote: post #213

> Percentage (%) of population living in collective dwellings, as opposed to single-family houses and townhouses Love how they’ve included only advanced western/westernized countries there and not third world hellholes or post-soviet dumps.

Love why? It's not the only comparison/analysis that can be made but it's an interesting one, to pick countries with roughly equivalent planning parameters.

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

#218

Post by whalesalad »

SkeuomorphicBee wrote: post #154
whalesalad wrote: post #3

Different strokes for different folks. I’m a very happy single family home dweller. Living in a dense city feels claustrophobic.

Different strokes indeed. As a very happy apartment/flat/condo dweller, the suburban home life feels to me like being trapped in a tiny deserted island (the cartoon ones, with a single coconut tree), just a tiny personal plot surrounded by endless nothingness, with nowhere to go within reach. When in the suburbs I end up just staying in the couch all the time, because I can't be bothered to face the big journey neces…

> just a tiny personal plot surrounded by endless nothingness

Truthfully this is the dream.

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

#219

Post by glitchc »

Tade0 wrote: post #204
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.

Define moderate climate. I'm currently in a building from 1990 in Eastern Europe which apparently was inspired by those in Barcelona, because it's the same shape and we have a common area with greenery and trees, but the latitude is 51° N and we used to have -30°C winters as recently as the late 90s, so I wouldn't call the climate (at least back then) moderate.

Do you get a lot of snow? How do you deal with snow accumulating in the centre?

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

#220

Post by jorvi »

rangestransform wrote: post #149
jorvi wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except our distaste for flats has plummeted us into one of the worst housing crises of the entire world. Literally grinding our entire society to a halt, from students to young couples to prisoners to elders to cured long-term patients, everyone is trapped.

I don't actually think americans have a distaste for flats in general, but that some of them felt the need to impose their distaste for flats beyond the borders of their own land

I’m talking about The Netherlands haha
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