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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

#261

Post by lappet »

btbuildem wrote: post #238
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 omit the masses of working poor immigrants that do a lot of the manual labour North Americans do not want to do -- predominantly in agriculture, construction, small manufacturing, and healthcare. They're the de-facto essential workers. Europe's struggles seem to be caused more by a culture clash. Immigrants will always bring their way of life with them, and group together - it's a constant of human nature, this i…

> what always struck me as paradoxical is the nationalist / cultural pride that a lot of immigrants tend to display.

Also an immigrant, and I have observed that some immigrants tend to be become more conservative when they move. Or perhaps they have stopped evolving when their peers in the home country have moved on. I think this might be partly due to dealing with the trauma of displacement, and partly due to lack of diversity in thinking. I have mainly noticed this in a generation older than mine.

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

#262

Post by BeetleB »

Lord-Jobo wrote: post #129
treis wrote: post #97

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.

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the worlds fertility rates catch up(40+ years), and the population growth concerns themselves are a reflection of an outdated (or soon to be outdated) economic model that we should probably focu…

> This is slightly aside, but the concerns over fertility rates in the first world really seem REALLY misplaced to me.

Since the early days of humanity, we've relied on children taking care of us in our old age. I haven't seen a solution for that.

Nursing homes are not a solution. I listened to some grim statistics from my state recently. In many nursing homes, the ratio of staff to patients is 6:1. It takes 6 full time employees to take care of 1 patient. Now I'll grant that these numbers were outliers, because the population was challenging - many/most of these patients had dementia, etc. And they were handling rural areas - you'd get better scaling in the city. Still, I'm sure in a major metropolitan area it's at least 2:1.

And that doesn't account for the poor existence in those places (abuse by employees, abuse by fellow residents - you're screwed if you don't have family members advocating for you).

And that's for patients who get to go. Many elderly will have chronic conditions which are bad enough that you can't live alone, but generally not bad enough for Medicare or health insurance to pay for assisted living. Examples are things like mobility issues - only long term health care insurance covers this, and it's way too expensive. I don't own such a policy and likely won't ever be able to afford it.

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

#263

Post by tspike »

treis wrote: post #97

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.

Grim from an economic perspective, perhaps. Meanwhile, the biggest thing you can do to impact climate change is have fewer children.

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

#264

Post by thebigman433 »

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.

It really isnt that bad. I lived in an apartment building in Bozeman, MT for 3 years that had an enclosed courtyard. It was pretty small and didnt get a huge amount of use anyway, so it isnt the best comparison, but overall people just sorta make do if they want to use it.

You grab a shovel and clear out a bit of snow in front of the doorway to it, and then do whatever you want outside in the snow. Snowball fights, build snowmen, even bring out a bbq if you want.

I could see how people would imagine that things like this wouldnt work well in a wintery climate, but overall Ive found that people just make do. They live with snow everywhere else outside, so why wouldnt they do the same in a courtyard?

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

#265

Post by analognoise »

Lord-Jobo wrote: post #212
analognoise wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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…

“your solution requires a dismantling of the entire global system of governments and economies and the implementation of something new and poorly tested.“

So the system we currently have, which we already agree is failing people here, but we’re worried changing the system is bad?

Why take 40 more years if it’s already failing?

Letting millions of people in is NOT GOOD for the people already here. I say we just don’t do that.

The only people benefitting are part of a global capital class and not regular workers. We were sold that it would bring worldwide peace and better living conditions. It was a lie and we know it - why continue?

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

#266

Post by SilasX »

jack_riminton wrote: post #105
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…

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

Oh wow. Norway and Sweden sound like heaven for apartment living. (Or Valhalla, as the case may be.)

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

#267

Post by prmoustache »

rewmie wrote: post #215
prmoustache wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Spaniards curse de puta madre

corrected for you :)

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

#268

Post by wackget »

spaintech wrote: post #73

What a fantastic site! Wish more titea were build this way. It was an awesome experience! I’m an outsider living in Spain for the last 22 years, I think that while the content portrays a reality of the high rise movement in Spain, there is an angle that was missed. It is important to say that the at time draconian land laws pay an important role in the urban landscape. Not to mention that Spain relative young democra…

Unpopular opinion but I hate the design of the site. The transitions are too slow and the entire site is inaccessible to anyone with vertigo, visual processing or balance disorders. Needless to say it also doesn't respect the browser's `prefers-reduced-motion` preference.

A massive case of style over substance for me.

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

#269

Post by whalesalad »

jeffbee wrote: post #14
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.

Everyone on the receiving end of a tacit subsidy is pretty happy about it.

not sure what this means

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

#270

Post by caskstrength »

analognoise wrote: post #260
caskstrength wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You’re right, it’s not that a standard wage can’t even get you an apartment, medical care is astronomical, and the capitalists are ruining everything. It’s that people stopped wanting kids. How silly of me. We undid all the evolutionary programming of our species to play XBox and rent. …or it’s that the system is broken and we should cease importing people because the only people that “win” in that situation are thos…

> You’re right, it’s not that a standard wage can’t even get you an apartment, medical care is astronomical, and the capitalists are ruining everything.

Did you somehow miss word "Spain" in the title and immediately proceeded with US-specific rant?

Additional info from Wikipedia[0]:

> As of 2020, according to the World Economic Forum and to Bloomberg, Spain has the most efficient health system in Europe, and also ranks at the top worldwide along with Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore.

> Due to universal health care coverage, inequality is reduced substantially. Inequality in Spain is even further reduced in that co-payments do not usually apply, limited to special medicines and services that are not covered by the National Health System.

And yet socialist Spain has fertility rate of 1.3 compared to 1.7 of dystopian capitalist-driver privatized-healthcare-only US [1]. I'm sure everyone buying a house every year and enjoying even better health care in such countries as Niger, Chad and Somalia that somehow on top of the fertility list though.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Spain

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer...

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