Live data from Hacker News

Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

fastcompany.com

321–330 of 427 posts

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#321
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know anyone in this country, urban or rural dwelling, who can't walk to a shop or a pub The average walking distance to a pub has gone up a lot in recent years due to closure, and walking on rural roads at night where there is no footpath is horrendously dangerous even if you carry lights. It's a nice idyll but it's no longer really true. What you say about Simcity is absolutely true though. It doesn't corr…

...walking on rural roads at night where there is no footpath is horrendously dangerous... Do you have to walk on the road? One might have expected that in rural areas one could walk through fields and forests.

In truly rural areas you can, but I think the areas being referenced are more semi-rural, with single track roads, and fenced off private land or dwellings on the sides. I’ve done that sort of walk a few times and it’s terrifying, especially when you know half the locals are going to be charging round at 60mph because they know the roads.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is people want to call it "mixed zoning" but still have Karens on the central planning committee making stupid rules, e.g. they'll have "businesses" next to "residences" but a given plot will be explicitly designated as one or the other. What you really want is the small businesses which start off being operated out of the proprietor's residence. A hair salon in a converted living room, a restaurant servi…

Can anyone explain how the term "Karen" isn't both racist and sexist at the same time? I hadn't heard of it until a few months ago, and now it seems everyone is using it to refer to a certain kind of "middle class white woman". A term like that to describe a certain kind of middle class asian or black man would be very offensive. Are the days where we try to exercise civility and empathy gone? It feels like society h…

Middle-class white women also suffer the Karens. They might suffer less on a per-encounter basis but they have lots more encounters with Karens so it might even out.

If you haven't suffered the Karens, you might be a Karen...

When could society ever be characterized by an ethos of "let's tolerate people"? ISTM that now anyone might receive for criticism for objectionable behavior, not just poor black young men.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#323

Mixed use zoning is just about the best case situation for everyone. - Less reliance on cars, which results in less parking, which results in less traffic... it becomes self-perpetuating. - Better walkability - Knowing your corner store clerk or at least having a rapport with them - Healthier citizens, due to them walking everywhere (Go to NYC and see how few overweight people you see... not many unless they're touri…

As far as I can tell, "zoning" is just a bad idea. There's no such thing in the UK [1] and it still surprises me that it's quite a common approach. (As a kid I thought it was a game device employed to make urban planning in Sim City manageable. I still wonder if that series of games hasn't increased its prevalence.) Instead, in the UK you require 'planning permission' to change the land use of any building. This is d…

> As far as I can tell, "zoning" is just a bad idea.

Spend a week in Houston, TX and see if you still hold that opinion after. That is one of the least walkable cities in the US and doesn’t utilize zoning as far as I’m aware.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is insulting via the sexist, racist, and stereotype routes simply because you meant it to be insulting. You explicitly use the "image" of a white woman in a stereotypically unflattering situation as an insult. In this case it's your implication that [quoting you] "a specific type of asshole" must be associated with the image of a white woman as represented by the name "Karen". Only a serious level of bigotry would…

It's insulting via the "Karens are bad people" route because I meant it to be insulting. Karens are terrible, even when they're teenage Vietnamese males.

No my friend, it's also insulting via the "why you picked Karen (implicitly white woman) as a reference for an insult" route. You may use the insult on anyone else but the fact that you picked "white woman" as the reference means you believe that this is a defining enough trait to associate with them, you consider white women the embodiment of that negative trait and as representative of it.

It's the same reason calling someone a "fag" is meant as an insult for both that person (even if they are straight), and for homosexuals since you obviously consider this trait of theirs only suitable for an insult. It's an attack both on the people you address it to, and on the ones you based your insult on. Something an uneducated bigot would readily use but never realize why. They usually feel threatened by everything they don't understand or like (different gender, color, sexual or religious orientations) and "weaponize" that as a cover for their own ignorance. ;)

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~4-5 stories is totally sufficient to be "dense" compared to most of the US. Cities in the US sprawl absurdly flat. Consider that Paris is one of the densest cities in the world, and famously has almost no tall buildings.

By curiosity I checked some numbers to compare. Paris density is just crazy! When compared, Berlin (mentioned by cameldrv) really has a low density for the huge capital it is, at around ~3.9k persons/km². London seems to have around 5.5k, New York around 10.2k, while Paris is at a crazy 20.7k! Numbers from https://versus.com/en/berlin-vs-london-vs-new-york-vs-paris/... .

As dmurray commented there's differences in what is counted. Another difference is that Paris proper has relatively small parks, whereas Berlin has several huge ones as well as lakes.

So yeah, Paris is dense, but if you compare block by block the differences are smaller.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#326
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anyone explain how the term "Karen" isn't both racist and sexist at the same time? I hadn't heard of it until a few months ago, and now it seems everyone is using it to refer to a certain kind of "middle class white woman". A term like that to describe a certain kind of middle class asian or black man would be very offensive. Are the days where we try to exercise civility and empathy gone? It feels like society h…

Amen. Childish name-calling like this and "ok boomer" are being used to dismiss anything a person says because they're older.

You are really tempting fate with this comment...

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anyone explain how the term "Karen" isn't both racist and sexist at the same time? I hadn't heard of it until a few months ago, and now it seems everyone is using it to refer to a certain kind of "middle class white woman". A term like that to describe a certain kind of middle class asian or black man would be very offensive. Are the days where we try to exercise civility and empathy gone? It feels like society h…

> Can anyone explain how the term "Karen" isn't both racist and sexist at the same time? Because it’s tied to behaviour. Stop behaving like an a-hole and you stop being called a Karen. You can’t stop being black or a woman. That’s the key difference.

> Because it’s tied to behaviour.

We wouldn't call illegal gardeners a Hernandez, or terrorists from the middle east Mohammeds. Those are behaviors too.

What makes it wrong is picking an ethnic name to associate with that behavior. Karen is a euphemism for suburban, white, female.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#328
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know anyone in this country, urban or rural dwelling, who can't walk to a shop or a pub The average walking distance to a pub has gone up a lot in recent years due to closure, and walking on rural roads at night where there is no footpath is horrendously dangerous even if you carry lights. It's a nice idyll but it's no longer really true. What you say about Simcity is absolutely true though. It doesn't corr…

...walking on rural roads at night where there is no footpath is horrendously dangerous... Do you have to walk on the road? One might have expected that in rural areas one could walk through fields and forests.

Most fields and forests aren't walkable.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory sure. In reality, the financial system is oriented towards big capital. My aunt ran a coffee shop that was established by grandparents in 1939. It was in the lobby of a office building in he central business district of our little city. The building was bought by a Chinese investor. Like other similar stores, her rent went up 5x and she shuttered. I live in a mixed use urban neighborhood. 50% of he storefro…

> Like other similar stores, her rent went up 5x and she shuttered. Want to know the best way to protect against exceedingly high prices? Increase supply. If the market had enough supply to meet its own demand, then that situation wouldn’t be possible. The number one thing that holds back the supply of real estate is insane zoning and planning regulation. The idea that permanently preserving nonsense like the “charac…

You accidentally described an even more practical solution than increasing the naturally limited (e.g. good commercial spots in the city center) supply: make neighbourhoods unattractive by building communist era style apartment blocks in beautiful areas to drive prices of victorian houses down...
Post reply on HN