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Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia will be completed in 2026

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Re: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia will be completed in 2026

#321

Post by __loam »

chupasaurus wrote: post #316
__loam wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah man you'll note I explicitly mentioned how things went to shit after the collapse.

"Housing became cheaper and affordable = things went to shit" doesn't adds up.

"Homelessness jumped substantially" is not "Housing became cheaper and affordable". It was all state owned lol, what does affordability even mean in that context? I'm just saying they built more housing than they needed and housed everyone and that was good. The Soviet economy itself was fucked (20% of gdp on defense spending!), and after the collapse housing did obviously become more expensive (ie, not free).

Re: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia will be completed in 2026

#322

Post by coryrc »

wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #318
coryrc wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salk_Institute_for_Biologica... is a picture of the named building. Your link, for me, puts up a beautiful (sandstone?) cathedral.

We have very different minds ;). I see why you like it, it's interesting in a desert clean kind of way. But it's not a loving livable place. I have a hard time believing most people will express the same kind of feeling of inspiration they have walking on the old cobblestone streets of for instance France or Italy. Or take a random Amsterdam outskirt, not famous at all, but lovely: https://www.ehr.nl/wp-content/uploa…

Well, different climates have different building requirements and materials. Plus, a cathedral isn't meant for living in.

I think you'd find that feeling walking the old market streets, covered by cloths to block most of the sun, bees buzzing around the honey vendor, people bustling by. I can't find the perfect picture, but https://i.ytimg.com/vi/M-g876LtXFs/maxresdefault.jpg isn't bad. That one's a little more tourist-focused and lacking in crowds than the exact street I'm remembering.

Re: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia will be completed in 2026

#323

Post by SergeAx »

__loam wrote: post #290
audunw wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened is that a vast quantity of people moved into and around the cities. We also have more strict building codes that take into account light, air quality, longevity, energy effiency etc. You’re looking at an old city built for a relatively small elite over many hundreds of years, and you’re surprised why cities built for many millions of people over a few decade look a bit basic in comparison? I came across…

One of the only things the Soviets did right was building a shit load of dense, boring housing at huge scales. They eliminated homelessness, which jumped substantially when they became the Russian federation and privitized everything.

Do you speak from experience? Because I was born in the USSR and spent the first five years of my life with my parents in a single room in a communal apartment. "Communal" here means that other families occupied other rooms, one room per family. These families shared the same single kitchen, single bathroom, and single toilet. And the icing on the cake was that these habitats were provided by the state and it was almost impossible to rent anything better, at least not with a standard Soviet salary.

If you are wondering what happened after these five years, we moved to another state-provided habitat, this time separate, for a change. All we had to do was put half a year of effort into finishing it to the acceptable quality — all by ourselves — because you cannot exploit other Soviet citizens. Only the state can do that.

And why exactly five years? Because that was the queue wait time for a new living space once you had a child (me) and exceeded a Soviet norm of square meters per human being. And it was Moscow, the capital, where top money was invested into looking good before the eyes of foreign guests.

Re: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia will be completed in 2026

#324

Post by fuy »

pixl97 wrote: post #280
kiney wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, visit ANY old german village that wasn't bombed during ww2. Most of the old houses still stand and every single one is prettier than what is being build today.

And how much would that same house cost to build now? Again, this is survivorship bias at best.

Are you saying medieval Germany was richer than present-day Germany or USA? That's of course not true. And it's also not clear why you call it a survivorship bias - these villages were probably above-the-median in their days, but it's not some singular building like Pyramids that is not representative of overall building of that era/territory. It was just how the houses were built there and then.

Re: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia will be completed in 2026

#325

Post by __loam »

SergeAx wrote: post #323
__loam wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the only things the Soviets did right was building a shit load of dense, boring housing at huge scales. They eliminated homelessness, which jumped substantially when they became the Russian federation and privitized everything.

Do you speak from experience? Because I was born in the USSR and spent the first five years of my life with my parents in a single room in a communal apartment. "Communal" here means that other families occupied other rooms, one room per family. These families shared the same single kitchen, single bathroom, and single toilet. And the icing on the cake was that these habitats were provided by the state and it was alm…

Yeah I'm not trying to say it was all peachy or wax poetic about the Soviet Union. It was clearly a deeply flawed country with myriad economic issues. I'm just saying that even if some of the housing was shit, everyone was housed which is commendable.

In the United States, housing is by far the biggest expense for most people, there's a severe shortage of housing, and there's a homelessness problem in most cities. Solving that problem might require a more radical departure from the market based solutions we've been relying on up to this point (and I acknowledge local zoning makes the market less than perfect). Working on the supply side with publicly built housing is something I'd like to see, but the hazard, as you point out, is that it ends up being poorly maintained, overly crowded, and bad.

The failure case in the United States, eg dying of exposure is worse than the failure case was in the Soviet Union, eg being stuck in a really shitty apartment. Another issue is there were probably way more people in that failure case in Russia than there were in the United States. All I'm saying is there's a balance to strike here and public building shouldn't be a tool we ignore.

Re: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia will be completed in 2026

#326

Post by SergeAx »

__loam wrote: post #325
SergeAx wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you speak from experience? Because I was born in the USSR and spent the first five years of my life with my parents in a single room in a communal apartment. "Communal" here means that other families occupied other rooms, one room per family. These families shared the same single kitchen, single bathroom, and single toilet. And the icing on the cake was that these habitats were provided by the state and it was alm…

Yeah I'm not trying to say it was all peachy or wax poetic about the Soviet Union. It was clearly a deeply flawed country with myriad economic issues. I'm just saying that even if some of the housing was shit, everyone was housed which is commendable. In the United States, housing is by far the biggest expense for most people, there's a severe shortage of housing, and there's a homelessness problem in most cities. So…

In Soviet Union everyone worked for the state and the state decided on the wages. Wages, consequently, were shitty, just enough to make ends, and the rest were put where state wanted it to be, mostly into arms race and military budget, then into Party means, and the rest into social projects, including housing.

Think of it as a universal welfare, when there are no market-driven actors to produce better quality goods and services, and everything is just shitty enough to not do harm to consumers.

US homelessness is not caused by shortage of housing. There's tons of cheap housing in US, but people just don't want to live where housing is cheap. California's problems are mostly caused by commie-like government and money they put into non-working social programs. Actually, if they keep doing that for several more decades they may end up in a next level USSR.

Re: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia will be completed in 2026

#327

Post by mrexroad »

eps wrote: post #283
brandall10 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, went last summer and have told at least a dozen people how it’s the most impressive interior I’ve been inside in my 48 years. Stayed for 3 hours just to observe the shifting light. I’ll be in Barcelona again on Thurs, can’t wait to go back.

If you haven't been to Park Güell, it's also worthy a visit.

Agree! Along with the Mies van der Rohe pavilion — one of my favorite spots.

Re: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia will be completed in 2026

#328

Post by __loam »

SergeAx wrote: post #326
__loam wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm not trying to say it was all peachy or wax poetic about the Soviet Union. It was clearly a deeply flawed country with myriad economic issues. I'm just saying that even if some of the housing was shit, everyone was housed which is commendable. In the United States, housing is by far the biggest expense for most people, there's a severe shortage of housing, and there's a homelessness problem in most cities. So…

In Soviet Union everyone worked for the state and the state decided on the wages. Wages, consequently, were shitty, just enough to make ends, and the rest were put where state wanted it to be, mostly into arms race and military budget, then into Party means, and the rest into social projects, including housing. Think of it as a universal welfare, when there are no market-driven actors to produce better quality goods…

> US homelessness is not caused by shortage of housing.

Pointless to discuss this if you can't even agree on basic facts.

Re: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia will be completed in 2026

#329

Post by trgn »

distances wrote: post #320
trgn wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The schism was modernism, a mental breakdown in the west after the world wars. What was easy, convenient, efficient from a machine perspective, therefore was wholesome, aspirational, valuable from a human perspective. Other explanations, survivor bias, population boom, ... are fundamentally wrong because even though they may have ab after the fact rationalization, they were not the instincts that animated this revolu…

One of the major points, afaik, is that these beautiful buildings require a lot more manual work. It used to be that materials were expensive and labor cheap, but that equation reversed, and skilled labor required for such a nice facade now comes with a heavy price. But I have no expertise in construction nor history so can't say if that's true.

Yes, that's true, but the style also changed so dramatically, not just means of production. e.g. machine production does not have to mean that overall building proportions became so weirdly unattractive as well.

But really, just because it was _cheap_ an _easy_ for a machine, therefore it meant it was _aspirational_, _desirable_ for a human. That is the core shift, it was primarily ideological (and we rationalized this new mindset _after_ it already reified itself).

Re: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia will be completed in 2026

#330

Post by vidarh »

QuarterReptile wrote: post #305
vidarh wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's also the case that plenty of Christians don't believe in the resurrection. E.g from the UK: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/10/quarter-christia...

Show me a 'Christian' who doesn't believe in the resurrection, and I'll show you a non-Christian.

You can very substantially discount measures of the importance of Christianity in most countries, then, as by that measure the number of Christians is massively overreported in censuses etc. and it's a dying religion.

However fact still remains that a huge number of people who consider themselves Christian do not believe in the resurrection, and that in itself makes it entirely reasonable to word things that way whether you agree that those people are Christian or not.

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