Spain lives in flats: why we have built our cities vertically • Hacker News Board

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

#451

Post by shiroiuma » Fri, Nov 10, 2023, 4:51 AM UTC

kjkjadksj wrote: post #249

Joeri wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that immigration is a quick fix for a low fertility rate. But the people worrying about fertility rates fear cultural displacement by immigrants. They want less immigration, not more, and instead see a return to family values as the answer to the fertility rate problem. Anyway, the problem is not the current decline in population, it is a fertility rate that remains far below a replacement rate. That means th…

People worrying about cultural displacement in europe need to crack open a history book and understand the movement of people is just how the world works. Its like the movement of air from different pressure areas. Most spanish people are actually a mix of moors and visigoths, other mediterranean people through history, and even celtic or germanic peoples who by and large displaced some earlier occupant of the iberia…

You're talking about the moors and visigoths in Spain, but did you forget those people integrated with the locals by invading? They weren't exactly welcomed with open arms, they just forced their way in and then took over. That's how the history of most of Europe looks, with all those examples of people displaced by newcomers. Why would any sane person want this? Just because it happened commonly in the past doesn't mean it's a good thing. In the modern world, we've mostly agreed that invading other places just because you want to live there, and want to marginalize or kill the people already living there, is no longer acceptable. Are you honestly saying you want to go back to those days?

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

#452

Post by shiroiuma » Fri, Nov 10, 2023, 4:52 AM UTC

Lord-Jobo wrote: post #212

analognoise wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“We made it terrible for our own people to make families, but don’t worry! We can keep the party going by importing loads of people due to economic forces!” Sounds so incredibly shitty. If an economic system works so poorly for people they have to be imported (I.e. locals who want to form families can’t) it should be dismantled. I care about “global capital” far less than I care about my compatriots ability to form s…

There are no nations that currently have a both modern living and population growth, i think there are definitely some fundamental failures to make having children an attractive option in many countries like the US, but even countries that give a billion hours parental leave, tax breaks, etc. have declining populations. your solution requires a dismantling of the entire global system of governments and economies and…

Personally, I think the real solution, the ultimate solution, was detailed in the 1930s book "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley: reproduction and child-rearing needs to be outsourced to the government. It's the only way for the math to work. People just don't want to have 6 kids any more, and I don't think that's going to change. (And yes, people have to have 6 kids for population growth to work, because there's always going to be people who have 1 or none, so you need plenty of high-fertility couples to make up for them. People haven't stopped having kids these days, they've just stopped having so many.)

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

#453

Post by mikebenfield » Fri, Nov 10, 2023, 6:10 AM UTC

jjav wrote: post #447

mikebenfield wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only additional point I’ll make is that places like Stallings (the first link I posted) are absolutely considered suburbs. For instance the Wikipedia article on Stallings calls it a “suburban town” ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stallings,_North_Carolina ). That’s another thing I found a bit odd - it would never have occurred to me that anyone would not have considered that area a suburb.

> That’s another thing I found a bit odd - it would never have occurred to me that anyone would not have considered that area a suburb. It's true that there is no agreed definition to "suburb" which confuses these discussions. Suburbs comes from sub (under, although here basically means around) urbs (city). To me a suburb must be connected to its city. The city center has dense tall buildings and as you move away fro…

> driving through mostly forested areas

Yeah, well that's just not the case at all here. The drive from Stallings to downtown Charlotte is almost entirely on Independence Boulevard, which is very much a stroad ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad ), very much developed with lots of pointless strip malls and office parks and little visible nature, and certainly not a foresty experience. The fact that you can see green nearby on satellite view has little to do with people's actual experience driving on these roads.

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

#454

Post by imiric » Fri, Nov 10, 2023, 6:36 AM UTC

willio58 wrote: post #231

imiric wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Suburbs are _heavily_ subsidized. They require a ton of money from taxpayers to sustain their existence. That's highly relative. Urban areas have high maintenance costs as well, precisely because of the higher density. The infrastructure requires more maintenance, higher sanitation costs, law enforcement, etc. Not to mention that cramming hundreds of people per km², surrounded by concrete and no vegetation, in smal…

> Urban areas have high maintenance costs as well, precisely because of the higher density. Urban areas cost more in total, but less per capita. If you don't take that per capita measurement into account, it's pointless to claim things like this. Here's a good infographic on this: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ... See specifically the massive (4-10x) increase in costs for things like roa…

Thanks for the link. I stand corrected regarding the cost difference.

Though I still think the urban lifestyle comes at the expense of quality of life. It's wrong to optimize for lower cost, which often means that other factors important for wellbeing are neglected. Being surrounded by concrete instead of nature has a detrimental effect to our psychological and physical health, with urban runoff being one problem[1]. The amount of air and noise pollution is usually higher in cities than in rural areas[2]. All urban conveniences aren't enough to make this worthwhile, though this is a personal stance, and others may disagree.

And, yes, the suburban sprawl is also damaging to the environment. But we know much more today about sustainable infrastructure than we did in the 1950s. The same is true for cities, but it's a much larger effort to bring cities in balance with nature than rural areas. It's not just a matter of planting trees, and electrifying transportation. These are decade-long projects with enormous cost[3], and governments tend to drag their feet. In contrast, the environmental impact of suburbs can be lowered by relatively minor personal changes[4], which is much more manageable.

I'm not claiming to be an expert in any of this, and ultimately my position is driven by a dislike of cities in general. But thanks for clarifying some of my misconceptions. This research was eye opening.

[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-022-00853-4

[2]: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/ss/ss6613a1.htm

[3]: https://unhabitat.org/news/27-apr-2020/the-cost-of-making-a-...

[4]: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/04/how-to-be-more-sustai...

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

#455

Post by prmoustache » Fri, Nov 10, 2023, 12:00 PM UTC

pja wrote: post #434

prmoustache wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual truck that collect those glasses pass between 2 to 4am. What does it do? It lift the glass collection tank and let the glass fall into the truck bed. So yes I don't think anyone cares that someone if binning some glassware one hour before the truck will do that same noise at much higher scale.

I was referring to the truck here, not the individual bars putting their bins out. They closed relatively early for Spain, as it was mid-week & not high-summer. The truck then came crashing down the street a little later...

Ah yes. I guess they do that so that it doesn't take 3 to 4times the duration because of traffic.

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

#456

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK » Fri, Nov 10, 2023, 4:56 PM UTC

mlrtime wrote: post #431

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #144

I live in a high rise condo now, love that basically everything I need is one elevator trip away. Grocery delivers in under 15 minutes, like a charm. Maintenance takes me one hour a month, mostly changing various filters. Building is of higher quality so no noise issues. No steps to climb. But I'm a lazy retiree. For young people with children and dogs math is different.

Counter point: (I lived in apartments/condos for 20+ years) I live in a SFH now, love that I can simply walk 5 feet from my kitchen to the back yard and have no noise and fresh air. No noisy neighbors above me constantly dropping things on the floor, no smelly hallways, or people leaving garbage in common areas. I don't have to wait for an elevator, or hope that it doesn't have maintenance issues. Maintenance takes n…

Yeah, I too call a handyman everytime neighbors above me think of dropping something on the floor!

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

#457

Post by mariojv » Mon, Nov 13, 2023, 12:30 AM UTC

ajmurmann wrote: post #365

I wonder how many of these building types would be legal in the US just due to fire codes that were created for a different area. In most of the US apartment buildings units must have access to two stairwells which in essence limits everything to a double-loaded hallway layout. That makes it harder to build units for families and makes it impossible to have more windows and a cross-breeze. More complete discussion: h…

On the topic of fire codes, most Spanish apartment buildings also don't have smoke alarms, as far as I can tell. HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31246950

I'm not against safe building, but some friends of ours were actually denied the ability to be eligible to foster a child because their home didn't have 2 points of egress in every room. The US seems particularly stringent about anything fire-related.