41–50 of 75 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, that is big one. Perhaps we need to rethink housing. Shared restrooms, bathrooms, and kitchens. Keep the same restrooms on every floor. A gym with individual showers and a food court on specific floors.
What will distinguish these structures from slums in 10 or 20 years?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is historically incomplete. American cities were replete with dorm room style housing. These were especially popular with new migrants to the city. An incredibly large percentage of apartments in cities like NYC are used as multi family housing with several housemates sharing them to save on rent. The reality is that the reason such housing doesn’t exist/isn’t more widespread is because cities have passed laws e…
Isn't it also the fact the almost no one wants to live like that? The expectations has changed and there's probably little demand for such type of housing.
When I travel around the US, vacant storefronts and empty commercial buildings are a constant, not just office buildings, and not just in certain places.
For a long time, the US had the money to build things, use them, let them slowly deteriorate, and then abandon them. It was cheaper to simply let things fall into disrepair, and build shiny new buildings and developments further away from the city center. Rinse and repeat. This is why a lot of inner ring suburbs are filled with strip malls that can't maintain their parking lots, don't have the residential density to…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, that is big one. Perhaps we need to rethink housing. Shared restrooms, bathrooms, and kitchens. Keep the same restrooms on every floor. A gym with individual showers and a food court on specific floors.
What will distinguish these structures from slums in 10 or 20 years?
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
When I travel around the US, vacant storefronts and empty commercial buildings are a constant, not just office buildings, and not just in certain places.
I tried going out to shops again to buy things recently - its so much harder, more expensive and time consuming than having it arrive through my letterbox the next day.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Commercial buildings can't be easily converted into housing that provides the same return. Once the current owners have gone out of business it'll be profitable to turn them into flats. The arguments against conversion assume you care about the current owner's financial situation.
It's not so much the owner's financial situation, but rather that it'd be cheaper to build new homes than to retrofit a ten floor+ building's plumbing. You'd also have to install a bunch of showers, which could be a significant problem on its own. And then there's the increased amount of sewage, which the building might not be able to handle - even the local sewers might not be equipped to handle the uh... Load a lar…
I do see this. That's my point. Your plumbing problem has been solved by not jamming a ton of people into the building.
When I travel around the US, vacant storefronts and empty commercial buildings are a constant, not just office buildings, and not just in certain places.
For a long time, the US had the money to build things, use them, let them slowly deteriorate, and then abandon them. It was cheaper to simply let things fall into disrepair, and build shiny new buildings and developments further away from the city center. Rinse and repeat. This is why a lot of inner ring suburbs are filled with strip malls that can't maintain their parking lots, don't have the residential density to…
When I travel around the US, vacant storefronts and empty commercial buildings are a constant, not just office buildings, and not just in certain places.
I tried going out to shops again to buy things recently - its so much harder, more expensive and time consuming than having it arrive through my letterbox the next day.
I do the bulk of my shopping IRL.