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

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

#51

Post by anonzzzies »

capableweb wrote: post #6
whalesalad wrote: post #3

Different strokes for different folks. I’m a very happy single family home dweller. Living in a dense city feels claustrophobic.

Indeed :) Living too far away from any metropolitan area makes me feel claustrophobic as there is usually very little social groups active in my favorite hobbies/niches unless near a city.

Indeed. I'm very happy I can live in a large house with a lot of land for next to nothing. Please all stay in cities, but don't complain about the housing crisis and housing prices; it's quite obvious that if you want to all live together prices will rise.

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

#52

Post by matsemann »

mathieuh wrote: post #39
flagged24 wrote: post #15

I'm okay with these high rises so I can enjoy the quiet tranquility of rural Spain. Everytime we do stay in an apartment in Spain the lack of sound proofing really stands out. Perhaps even more so because everything is tiled, no carpets.

I live in northern ireland in an actual house and the walls are thin enough I could dip my bread into my neighbours' soup. It is the number one reason I could never see myself living in an apartment, I'm very sensitive to noise and I get disproportionately angry at even low levels of unwanted noise. I'd be too worried about noise from neighbours.

I live in a modern apartment in Norway (2019). I guess some of our heat insulation demands make it so that we get extra thick walls and floors, but I've never heard any noise from neighbors. No tv sounds, no stamping feet etc. Maybe twice a year someone drills a hole to mount something on the walls and I hear that for a few minutes. Even have a train passing by outside I can't hear with the windows closed.

Point being that it depends.

Edit: modern fire safety also dictates a bit how contained each unit should be, I guess.

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

#53

Post by hbarka »

rsynnott wrote: post #19

> Only in South Korea more people live in collective dwellings than in Spain. I... have doubts. (Looks like they're only looking at OECD countries, so Singapore and HK, the most obvious counter-examples, are excluded.)

I agree with you. Also, comparing by countries is intuitively not a good measure due to the averaging out of highs and lows. It would be absurd to compare Spain versus Alaska or Texas but these are two US states larger than Spain. How about comparing by cities? How does Madrid fare versus New York City or Chicago or Hong Kong?

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

#54

Post by browningstreet »

mathieuh wrote: post #39
flagged24 wrote: post #15

I'm okay with these high rises so I can enjoy the quiet tranquility of rural Spain. Everytime we do stay in an apartment in Spain the lack of sound proofing really stands out. Perhaps even more so because everything is tiled, no carpets.

I live in northern ireland in an actual house and the walls are thin enough I could dip my bread into my neighbours' soup. It is the number one reason I could never see myself living in an apartment, I'm very sensitive to noise and I get disproportionately angry at even low levels of unwanted noise. I'd be too worried about noise from neighbours.

I live in northern Nevada in an exurb. I go for a walk everyday that requires me to go on a road for half a mile before I get to the dirt path. On that half mile road the traffic is so constant and so loud (from my small gated community) I can’t hear whatever I’m listening to on my headphones. The clamor is so aggravating I’m usually a bit angry by the time I hit the dirt path. My exurb neighbors (multiple) have loud grinding ACs and they run them all night. I can’t leave my windows open while I sleep even when it’s in the 50s outside, because of their grinding noise.

I recently walked about 20 miles back in SF again. It was comparatively pleasant. Road traffic was slower. The materials they use to make the roads reflect less of the sound than here in Nevada. I wasn’t triggered by vehicles or traffic or trucks. I stayed in the Panhandle and could sleep with the bedroom window open.

There’s a way to make heaven or hell in both cities and rural areas.

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

#55

Post by VancouverMan »

dotcoma wrote: post #18
bitwize wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Anglosphere is more car dependent and more prone to NIMBY policies and housing shortages than continental Europe, because continental Europeans are more comfortable with density. Density is the solution to many land management problems.

Yes, but they got many things right in the Netherlands even with an incredibly low percentage of people living in flats. Bikes, not cars, please.

The feasibility of widespread bike usage doesn't just depend on density. It depends a lot on a region's weather, too.

Amsterdam, for example, happens to have weather that's relatively compatible with biking, all throughout the year.

On the other hand, for four to six months of the year, most areas of Canada, and even a good portion of the US, definitely don't.

While a very small handful of people can handle biking when it's consistently -10 °C (14 °F) or colder out, possibly through 10 cm (4") or more of uncleared snow/slush, and possibly on ice, the vast majority of people can't and won't.

The summer isn't necessarily any better. The cities in southern Ontario, for example, where many Canadians live, can become surprisingly hot and humid for weeks at a time, and biking isn't pleasant then.

Given those conditions, people will definitely try to drive instead of biking.

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

#56

Post by Axsuul »

stetrain wrote: post #40
whalesalad wrote: post #3

Different strokes for different folks. I’m a very happy single family home dweller. Living in a dense city feels claustrophobic.

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.

Probably the opposite effect for SFHs in the urban areas. People usually prefer living in a detached house, especially when raising a family, and those are gradually being replaced by these multi-family dwellings, so the supply of them is actually going down.

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

#57

Post by jmyeet »

Americans have a very skweed view of what apartment living is actually like, in part because the construction of such buildings in America (outside of the ultra-luxury market) is generally terrible.

Lumber is abundant in North America and cheap so everything is timber-framed, which is awful for noise. I actually do not understand how people can live in two-story houses in the US. Such people complaining about noise seems crazy to me. Only drywall separating rooms. Only a plank between floors pretty much. Awful.

Anyway, a lot of apartments in the US are what's called 5-over-1 construction. That's 1 concrete framed floor, often commercial and then 5 floors of timber-framed apartments above that. Terrible.

Live in a decently built apartment and it's a completely different world. Actual high-rises tend to be decent because they have to be concrete and steel framed (although they may have cheap walls). Any pre-war apartments in NYC are generally amazing.

It's also worth pointing out that complaining about noise and wanting things to be quiet isn't universal. Whenever you hear such complaints, make a mental note of their demographics and see what patterns you notice.

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

#58

Post by prmoustache »

pja wrote: post #49
bedobi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

was gonna comment the same :melting face: I'm an armchair urbanist and all about density, and in well built buildings it's fine, even with tiled floors you can't really hear your neighbors but in Spain it's as if the buildings are built with zero soundproofing - you hear every single neighbor in the whole building and their tvs, radios, conversations, footsteps... it's maddening, I don't understand it

The Spanish just don’t seem to care about noise at the institutional level. I spent a week in a small Spanish city last year & the local rubbish collection went down the street outside the door, pouring bins full of bottles from the local bars in the back at midnight. Midnight! Just when even the Spanish are trying to get to sleep. Co-incidentally, there was an article in the Spanish national press that week detailin…

I am living in south of spain and not only spanish do not care about hearing noise, I think they actually do like being noisy and hearing noise. They are basically shouting all the time instead of talking for example. At the beginning I almost felt I should have interrupted couples in the middle of their conversations. I thought they were arguing and were about to become physical against each other, shouting mere inches from each other face with arms throwing all over the place. But no, you quickly realize they are just talking about trivial things, agreeing on something or just complaining about something external.

Living there you kind of get used to it.

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

#59

Post by Maken »

bedobi wrote: post #20
flagged24 wrote: post #15

I'm okay with these high rises so I can enjoy the quiet tranquility of rural Spain. Everytime we do stay in an apartment in Spain the lack of sound proofing really stands out. Perhaps even more so because everything is tiled, no carpets.

was gonna comment the same :melting face: I'm an armchair urbanist and all about density, and in well built buildings it's fine, even with tiled floors you can't really hear your neighbors but in Spain it's as if the buildings are built with zero soundproofing - you hear every single neighbor in the whole building and their tvs, radios, conversations, footsteps... it's maddening, I don't understand it

Noise is not the biggest problem: Cheap apartment buildings from the 60s and 70s has such thin walls what they have no thermal isolation whatsoever. In poor neighborhoods you will see air conditioner machines everywhere because there is no other way to keep the flats livable.

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

#60

Post by matsemann »

whalesalad wrote: post #3

Different strokes for different folks. I’m a very happy single family home dweller. Living in a dense city feels claustrophobic.

I feel being trapped in a suburb more claustrophobic. Can't walk anywhere, entirely car dependant for even the smallest things.
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