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

321–330 of 457 posts

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

#321

Post by whalesalad »

jeffbee wrote: post #314
whalesalad wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are loads of people who believe this but who are mistaken. Typically they are underestimating the value of services delivered to them for free at the point of use. We don't know your individual situation of course, but it's true in the aggregate.

Sounds like a problem with the system, and not a problem that should be projected/blamed on individuals. No one likes paying taxes, but I believe most people are willing to contribute to the common good when they know that it is actually going towards the common good. I feel this way at least and have a decent sense based on anecdotal conversations that a lot of others do too. I am willing to pay more taxes if I know that it is going to directly help people around me, and raise the quality of my entire community. Unfortunately that is often not the case.

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

#322

Post by jvican »

vanderZwan wrote: post #11

I wonder if Barcelona's "ventilation-oriented" architecture from the cholera period had a measurable effect on the spread of covid. Of course the article itself notes that a lot of the architecture was "speculative", and that modern-day Barcelona is very densely populated, but still. IIRC Spain was also one of the first countries during the pandemic to publish research on the importance of keeping rooms well-ventilat…

Keep in mind Barcelona and Madrid are some of the densest cities in the whole Europe. It's one of the reasons why COVID took such a big hit at the beginning of the pandemic.

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

#323

Post by RomanPushkin »

jupp0r wrote: post #294
RomanPushkin wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux, Chrome. I can't even read the website, feels like it watching animated GIF loading on dialup modem in 1994. It jumps from one area to another randomly

Sounds like hardware rendering is not working for you. No need to blame that on the website.

Hardware rendering, lol? It's just a website, not a video game. My system is quite powerful. At least high-res OpenArena runs like a charm.

Why do I need GPU to access the information - that's the question. What did they do so the website works worse than a 3D video game? Obviously I am missing something.

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

#324

Post by csnover »

jjav wrote: post #286
j_heffe wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Single family homes are fine. The problem in the U.S. is that it's illegal to build anything _but_ single family homes in the majority of suburbs. Wouldn't it be better if people had access to a walkable grocery store, coffee shop or park? Or if kids could safely walk or bike to school? Many communities have absolutely zero options and are completely reliant on cars in order to go about daily life.

> The problem in the U.S. is that it's illegal to build anything _but_ single family homes in the majority of suburbs. This is always repeated, but could you point to studies documenting in which cities it is illegal? All around I see townhouses, apartment buildings, 2/4/6-plexes and other variants being built, none of which are single family homes. Maybe it takes a bunch of paperwork (I don't know) but clearly it is…

> This is always repeated, but could you point to studies documenting in which cities it is illegal?

You don’t need to look at a study, you can just look at zoning and land use maps for basically any city in America. Areas zoned single-family are not allowed to build anything else. There are multiple articles on Wikipedia[0][1][2] about this topic with literally hundreds of citations to primary and secondary sources. What a frustrating question.

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

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-family_zoning

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning_in_the_United_States

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

#325

Post by jvican »

rewmie wrote: post #158
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.

> 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. Spain's economy is very screwed up. Unemployment rate tends to hover above 20% and I think it has the highest rate of students dropping out of basic education. To top things off, cost of living in urban centers is way way above the median income, specially nowadays. Young…

> Unemployment rate tends to hover above 20% and I think it has the highest rate of students dropping out of basic education.

The first claim is true, but there's a lot of under-reported economic activity, and a lot of fraud (people claiming they don't work when they actually do), so the unemployment rate figure can't be trusted.

Your second claim around the highest rate of students dropping out of basic education needs a citation.

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

#326

Post by travisb »

caskstrength wrote: post #196
alphanullmeric wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do need to coerce people for funding, which might as well be the same thing. That’s like saying “people aren’t forced to attend public schools” - well yeah, but by forcing them to pay for it anyways you leave many with little other option. Meanwhile a quarter of American roads are private. Private transportation would exist with or without force. And in anything other than a big city, private transportation cont…

Care to provide link proving your assumptions? Every time I checked stats for that for some particular country it was always cities subsidizing countryside/suburbs, not vice versa.

Care must be taken when evaluating those statistics because all the ones I've seen are done only in dollar terms and entirely discount the economic beneficiaries of the movement of people and goods.

For example, consider a paved rural road into farmland. In dollar terms paving that road is a subsidy from the nearest city to the people living in that rural area. However, in part the road is paved rather than gravel only to support heavier trucks to more efficiently transport agricultural products destined for the city. It is also paved in part to support larger, faster, heavier agricultural equipment which brings economies of scale to agriculture and reduces the per-unit price of the result -- again destined mostly for the city.

Residents themselves don't need the more expensive paved and it isn't their relatively light private vehicles causing most of the wear on the road in the first place.

Considered this way, a not insubstantial fraction of the cost of non-city areas is the city indirectly subsidizing itself. The full costs could be incorporated directly into the goods sourced from the supposedly subsidized areas, but that would be less efficient overall. For example, good roads reduces the cost of agricultural products for, say, three months a year. Instead of directly paying capital costs to pave the rural road the city could pay operational costs in higher food prices while missing the other cost advantages of the paved road the rest of the year in reduced recreational costs, policing costs, education costs, etc. If those other costs were higher there would be less of them and people would be less willing to live in those areas, increasing wage and commuting costs.

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

#327

Post by alphanullmeric »

caskstrength wrote: post #196
alphanullmeric wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do need to coerce people for funding, which might as well be the same thing. That’s like saying “people aren’t forced to attend public schools” - well yeah, but by forcing them to pay for it anyways you leave many with little other option. Meanwhile a quarter of American roads are private. Private transportation would exist with or without force. And in anything other than a big city, private transportation cont…

Care to provide link proving your assumptions? Every time I checked stats for that for some particular country it was always cities subsidizing countryside/suburbs, not vice versa.

Which assumptions? I said nothing about subsidizing cities or suburbs. I said cars and roads would exist without the government, but anything resembling public transport would not.

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

#328

Post by kdmccormick »

whalesalad wrote: post #321
jeffbee wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are loads of people who believe this but who are mistaken. Typically they are underestimating the value of services delivered to them for free at the point of use. We don't know your individual situation of course, but it's true in the aggregate.

Sounds like a problem with the system, and not a problem that should be projected/blamed on individuals. No one likes paying taxes, but I believe most people are willing to contribute to the common good when they know that it is actually going towards the common good. I feel this way at least and have a decent sense based on anecdotal conversations that a lot of others do too. I am willing to pay more taxes if I know…

It is indeed the system, and you (to no fault of your own, probably) are part of that system. NotJustBikes, while a little anti-car-propogandaey for my tast, does a good just explaining why it'd be basically impossible for suburbia to ever pay for itself: https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0?si=F-ePxGzjUjHrSJCR

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

#329

Post by j-a-a-p »

Vinnl wrote: post #72

What's interesting is that the Netherlands is pretty low on the list of countries with the highest percentage of people in collective dwellings (at 21% vs Spain's 65%, only the UK is lower), even though it's one of the most densely populated countries in Europe. I suppose that's the result of the mentioned "mushroom neighbourhoods"? Great visuals btw.

In the Netherlands an exceptional high percentage of houses are social - so they should not be expensive. But most of them are single family houses connected 'rijtjeshuis'. Think of them as flat buildings flipped over. I can imagine with the countries muddy soil it was the cheaper solution to build this way.

About weight, you can see the strength of the soil in the historic buildings. Like Delft: 3 stories high. Zaandam: 2 stories where one is build from wood. Amsterdam is build on wooden piles allowing for 5 stories.

And you can also see wealth in the height of the building. The Hague is most famous for that (as they say you come from clay or from sand), poor areas were build on clay -> low buildings. Rich areas were build on sand, high ceiling heavy buildings. Living on sand was/is healthier also, another reason why the rich flocked there.

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

#330

Post by stetrain »

jjav wrote: post #297
stetrain wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More dense construction in urban areas will probably help make single family homes affordable for those who want them. I imagine people who own single family homes in nice suburbs are pretty happy about it, especially if they bought it when prices were half of what they are currently and are paying <3% interest.

> More dense construction in urban areas will probably help make single family homes affordable for those who want them. That seems highly unlikely. Let's look at how SFH have become very affordable in the densest area in the US, Manhattan. Or the second densest, SF.

Why would there be single family detached homes in a city center?
Post reply on HN