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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

#301

Post by jjav »

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…

> more distance to cover for things like sewers,

I don't know which one becomes more expensive per capita, but "more distance" is very simplistic metric.

Think of how much money and time and coordination it requires to dig a 200ft trench somewhere in Manhattan. Street closures, permits with multiple organizations, coordinate with tons of utilities and other underground facilities, engineering surveys if you're digging near high rises, etc.

Meanwhile in the suburbs one guy in a pickup shows up with a digger and gets it done before lunch.

Density also bring in enormous complexity, so it's not that simple.

> You can walk your dog in a suburb, but if you need groceries you'll be driving.

I live in a suburb and I walk to one of three nearby (< 10 min walk) grocery stores.

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

#302

Post by manuelabeledo »

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…

> ... and can't afford 70km average commute radius

Do we consider this abomination a luxury now?

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

#303

Post by whalesalad »

kdmccormick wrote: post #299
whalesalad wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not sure what this means

It means that when you look at government revenue vs expenditure per square mile, urban dwellers are massively subsidizing surburbanites. It's mainly because maintainence of roads, parking, and utilities for a spread-out surburbia is vastly less efficient than it is for a tightly packed city.

We all pay taxes, I don't see an issue. I pay significantly more taxes than people who are living in more affordable/dense housing in the city - both in property taxes as well as the fact that I earn a higher income. I am subsidizing lots of other people in my community.

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

#305

Post by manuelabeledo »

jjav wrote: post #301
willio58 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> more distance to cover for things like sewers, I don't know which one becomes more expensive per capita, but "more distance" is very simplistic metric. Think of how much money and time and coordination it requires to dig a 200ft trench somewhere in Manhattan. Street closures, permits with multiple organizations, coordinate with tons of utilities and other underground facilities, engineering surveys if you're diggin…

> I live in a suburb and I walk to one of three nearby (That is an outlier, though. Not only are suburbs less dense and, obviously, services are not as close, but county and/or city regulations across the US are notoriously anti mixed use developments, which make things even worse.

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

#306

Post by bluGill »

bombcar wrote: post #288
kleton wrote: post #284

Isn't there an optimum of about 8-12 stories for any sort of building, before the cross section of plumbing and elevator shafts make it less economical?

The optimum is based on land value, clearly, because in places where the land is effectively free or incredibly low cost, buildings don't seem to naturally get above 2 or 3 stories. So somewhere between 3 and 12 stories is a local optimum, and it's probably about where you need additional "machine floors".

Where land is free 5 floors is the optimum just because nobody will accept more than 3 without expensive elevators (it may not even be legal if you would accept it!). Most people are willing to pay a little bit more for a larger foundation just for less floors.

For car oriented locations 1 floor is optimal because the type of building that can handle more than one level of cars is so expensive you want to just build a large parking lot. (In theory the humans could be in taller buildings, but the space used for humans becomes a rounding error, and so you may as well avoid the expensive elevator)

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

#307

Post by [deleted] »

thriftwy wrote: post #273
medo-bear wrote: post #38

One of the worst things about new development in post-socialist urban areas (high density vertical) are lack of public and green spaces in neighbourhoods.

Socialist housing has schools and kindergardens on large plots of land, lots of kids playgrounds between houses, a small park here and there. "Microraion" planning deprioritizes public road so every apartment house is a part of a superblock a-la Barcelona. The downside is often that places of commerce are lacking. They have to be built separately or have first floors repurposed for commerce. I've heard that capital c…

[deleted]

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

#308

Post by bluGill »

seltzered_ wrote: post #116

The site is beautiful, and yet I ask myself questions like: What is the hydrological impact of urbanization? This can both impact hydrological cycles (see millan millan's papers "greening and browning in a climate change hotspot") and possibly subsurface in karst and aquifer life

Don't forget when asking this question that a higher city is less wide (probably) and so while it affects the area it covers more, there is less area affected at all.

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

#309

Post by bluGill »

simple10 wrote: post #112

I love sites like this! Instead of reading them, it's an instant switch to code view and looking through their javascript libraries. It's built on scrollama and d3. Excellent implementation with very smooth scroll behavior... at least on desktop.

On a fast desktop. I have a slower desktop (pinebook pro laptop) and it was not smooth.

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

#310

Post by userinanother »

thesuitonym wrote: post #124
gyre007 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to second this. Living in flats sounds cute for most of the people who never lived in ones that are being built with cheap materials and thin walls. It's all nice and dandy until a sill neighbour moves in and then you've got nowhere to hide.

Living in a poorly built flat is a bad experience, sure, but there are well built flats out there, where you can only hear your neighbors if they're actually being loud--really not that big a problem.

The incentive is always to build them poorly
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