31–35 of 35 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We live in rural America surround my forests, empty fields and agriculture. We have more land than we know what to do with. It's surprising that every commenter here made assumptions about my situation.
land isn't the issue. building out the infrastructure to support urban sprawl isn't cost-effective, and the property taxes alone rarely recoup the cost
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People should be forced to use and own more resources than they want/need. Who cares that 6 individuals or families might have wanted an opportunity to have affordable housing and didn't need a larger personal area (because they couldn't afford it)? Shouldn't they just be priced out of the area so that existing home owners can preserve their monoculture? Seems like a cause worth fighting for.
I guess this situation can be easily misunderstood, we are talking small rural area here. With very cheap housing already. The town near us already had this kind of housing built and it was all empty because they couldn't sell the houses because they were built too poorly. Plenty of older homes available. This is _not_ San Francisco. Edit: > Seems like a cause worth fighting for. Only where it makes sense, if there i…
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" I am actually skeptical of any plan that calls for us to smash more people closer together." No such plan exists. People smash themselves closer together when it makes sense for how they want to live. There are plans to allow it. Those plans should go forward because we live in a free country.
I really should have clarified that my situation described was in rural America. I realize that in larger cities the situation may seem completely different. The open space group that I ran into did not care about good quality housing, just making money. And they do exist, but since this happened many years ago, I don't have any of my paperwork left, and finding this online is very hard because of the nature of searc…
You're on well-trodden argumentative territory making early-stage and un-nuanced NIMBY talking points; people are going to be upset. Don't take it personally. I'll assume you just aren't very familiar with the dialogue around this issue yet.
1) The portrayal of sprawl as a lower-greed state is... suspect. Big houses and big yards make it necessary to drive cars everywhere, burn gasoline, pollute the environment with tailpipe emissions, run an enormous military-industrial complex to rig governments and destroy countries to ensure sufficient supply of oil, etc. The status quo for American land use involves an awful lot of resource burn with a whole lot of profit along the way. People have accepted these things as part of the landscape, but are outraged at developers profiting on density. We're looking at this the opposite way: let's be outraged at the auto and energy industries destroying the world, and accept developer greed as part of the landscape while unwinding that damage. YMMV.
2) Pre-automobile settlements (which are more common in Europe, but do exist here) suggest a compact and walkable model, even for small towns, that has a lot of nice properties. Proximity and walkability enable neighborly interactions that Americans just can't have in the built environments you insist on. They enable self-sufficiency for children and the elderly, livelier main streets with more personal interactions and local businesses vs. the big-box-store-with-giant-parking-lot model, etc. HN has an unusually high concentration of people who like the idea of this, and are upset that it's so rarely legal. And it's illegal because of precisely the mindset and activism you describe.
3) "But when a home owner wants to have space they are wrong? You are NOT fighting to have space. No one is taking your land. You're fighting to force other people to have space. Some of us don't want it, don't want to pay for it, don't want to accept the isolation that comes with it... and you've taken it upon yourself to make it mandatory for us to have it anyway.
You don't have to like density. You don't have to want it. You don't have to live in it yourself. All we ask is that when other people want to live compactly, you get out of the way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess this situation can be easily misunderstood, we are talking small rural area here. With very cheap housing already. The town near us already had this kind of housing built and it was all empty because they couldn't sell the houses because they were built too poorly. Plenty of older homes available. This is _not_ San Francisco. Edit: > Seems like a cause worth fighting for. Only where it makes sense, if there i…
Why shouldn't a small town be compact and walkable?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really should have clarified that my situation described was in rural America. I realize that in larger cities the situation may seem completely different. The open space group that I ran into did not care about good quality housing, just making money. And they do exist, but since this happened many years ago, I don't have any of my paperwork left, and finding this online is very hard because of the nature of searc…
Imagine that we like sportscars, and you're bragging about your righteous activism to stop those evil carmakers who think they can get away with selling something smaller than a Chevy Tahoe. You're on well-trodden argumentative territory making early-stage and un-nuanced NIMBY talking points; people are going to be upset. Don't take it personally. I'll assume you just aren't very familiar with the dialogue around thi…
Again, this feels personal. I merely shared my experience with greedy developers that lied multiple times. The largest showing at city hall in 20 years was over this developer's plans.
It's fair for me to say the community's understanding of space was valid.