Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

especiales.eldiario.es

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 457 posts

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

#221

Post by Arctic_fly »

mathieuh wrote: post #39
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.

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.

Same. I try to rent exclusively on the top-floor (next to impossible in a big city) because of a memorable experience I had with a an overweight upstairs neighbor who favored jumping jacks as his primary form of exercise.

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

#222

Post by kube-system »

bluGill wrote: post #133
jmyeet wrote: post #57

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…

You have a very incorrect build of what modern American construction is like. Yes it is mostly timer-framed, but we have fire codes which means walls are not as thin as you seem to think. Sure if you look at an apartment built in 1950 your summary is valid, but that isn't done anymore. 5 over 1 refers to section 1 and section 5 of the building code and not the number of floors built for each. It is coincidence that w…

5-over-1, 5-over-2, 4-over-1, and 3-over-1 are all often used terminology and they're referring to the number of floors in a podium-constructed building, not different sections of IBC. All of these podium construction styles are a product of section 510.2 of the IBC which allows for these to be treated as two separate buildings for fire purposes.

https://www.woodworks.org/resources/code-path-and-requiremen...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-over-1

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

#223

Post by stevekemp »

arethuza wrote: post #107
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 lived in flats in the New Town of Edinburgh (i.e. fairly old buildings) for ~30 years and never heard a sound from neighbours - probably because the walls appeared to be ~1m thick sandstone!

I lived in the Leith colonies for twenty years, and while I never heard my neighbours from above, or the sides, I would always hear people running up and down the stairwell, and the maindoor slamming shut.

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

#224

Post by ska »

mathieuh wrote: post #39
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.

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.

This really depends on the build.

I have lived/stayed in places in the middle of dense urban areas where you essentially never hear anything (occasionally sirens if the windows are open, that sort of thing), and others where you can tell when your neighbor is stirring tea.

One of the factors is cost, yes, but also age of the building and materials/techniques matter. I suppose it also matters if any of your neighbors are 23 and like powerful stereos - but that holds pretty much anywhere that isn't very rural.

Oh, and in dense urban/busy areas, height matters too. Living on the first 5 floors is far different than say 15+, in terms of how much street noise etc. you will hear with an open window (or even without).

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

#225

Post by stevekemp »

glitchc wrote: post #219
Tade0 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I live in Helsinki, Finland, and there are often clusters of buildings arranged around a garden - with space for parking, and childrens play-areas.

Snow happens every year, and it is often pushed away by mini-tractors, into giant heaps, that the children love to climb and play on.

Some parts of the ground are just left covered in ice/show for a few months though.

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

#226

Post by [deleted] »

outside1234 wrote: post #74
bedobi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The Spanish love the noise is my theory. They are a very social people. They probably think of it as comforting versus annoying, and like the person that lives next to the waterfall that can't hear it, it probably fades into the background of their consciousness. (I lived in Spain for two years.)

[deleted]

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

#227

Post by sofixa »

gumby wrote: post #206

> Between 1950 and 1975, thousands of Spaniards migrated from the countryside to the city. Franco's dictatorship Ministry of Housing promoted the construction of high-rise housing estates to accommodate them. The same thing happened in other countries like the US, UK and France, yet the outcome was negative rather than positive. What was different about Spain that it worked out well? (side point: I would rather have…

How was the outcome negative in France?

There were failures in ensuring the new high rising estates don't become ghettos due to lack of opportunities and self-reinforcing vicious cycles, which have been in large part corrected and have been taken into account for any new high rise / housing (re)developments. And there has been a lack of enough developments in the big cities for a variety of reasons. But overall I wouldn't say the outcome wss negative. Millions of people have somewhere to live which is more often than not with decent quality and availability of opportunities.

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

#228

Post by electrozav »

anovikov wrote: post #118

Poverty, that's how. They live in flats because they can't afford US-style houses (climate would allow them easily), and can't afford 70km average commute radius - car-only because sprawl can't be covered by public transport. They live in apartments not because they are so conscious about urban planning, but because they can't afford to do otherwise. Give people money and they want to move to single-family houses in…

It's much more expensive to live in the center of a big city. And not just in Spain.

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

#230

Post by yardie »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #183
J_Shelby_J wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I just discovered the white noise generator in iOS/macOS. It's in Accessibility settings under Audio Visual. It's been a gamechanger for me.
Post reply on HN