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Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage

construction-physics.com

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Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage

#591

Post by VHRanger »

xyzelement wrote: post #416
VHRanger wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New residents don't just include immigrants: it's also all future inhabitants of the place. Your perspective amounts to existing residents extracting all the economic value in a location simply because they bought land there first. That's ridiculously inefficient and toxic at a national scale. Or even at a local scale, over 40-50years. One important paper on the topic calculated 50% GDP losses in the US because of la…

// Your perspective amounts to existing residents extracting all the economic value in a location simply because they bought land there first. I think people mainly think of it as "their home and their community" rather than "economic extraction" // calculated 50% GDP losses in the US because of large metro areas being too expensive to move into Doesn't that strike you as obvious bullshit?

> I think people mainly think of it as "their home and their community" rather than "economic extraction"

It doesn't matter what they think. Some people also talk of "protecting property values".

At the end of the day it's all ways to restrict the allowable number of units per square foot of land.

Those people are enriching themselves sitting on a piece of land. It's not the value of the building on the land that is going up.

This modern landed gentry are not improving the economic value of their land. They are extracting the economic value through higher resale prices. Because *other people* are doing productive economic activity nearby.

It's the same idea as "everybody works but this vacant lot" [1] on a large scale.

> Doesn't that strike you as obvious bullshit?

No. You can go read the paper, come back and argue methodology.

The economic GDP gain for a person from West Virginia to NYC is large.

1. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Ev...

Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage

#592

Post by c0nfused »

mortify wrote: post #544
novok wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't sit on the train for an hour. In properly designed large cities the metro beats the car by a huge time margin unless they made cars so expensive by policy that nobody has a car and there is no traffic at that city as a result. Americans often think the shitty experience they have in their country applies universally. Ex: The bus & light rail is bad and slow, so therefore it will always be bad everywhere. Am…

I used to live in a major city in the US. My commute by public transit was 45 minutes and I lived close to a major hub. I now live outside of that city. I can drive into that same job in 60 minutes. Public transit from here is over 2 hours. Outside of Boston and NYC (well, maybe not NYC right now), I hear of no one happy with public transit in the US. We need to stop pretending that if we just move into cities, the p…

This is the fundamental problem. One an individual basis moving to a 8k square foot house in the suburbs is the thing to do. For the aggregate this means the mass transit gets worse, the traffic gets worse the emissions get worse, the tax base gets smaller.

The solution is policy. Use public money to make that 2 hour transit shorter and everyone wins, not just those of us with cash

Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage

#593

Post by avar »

majormajor wrote: post #306
novok wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't sit on the train for an hour. In properly designed large cities the metro beats the car by a huge time margin unless they made cars so expensive by policy that nobody has a car and there is no traffic at that city as a result. Americans often think the shitty experience they have in their country applies universally. Ex: The bus & light rail is bad and slow, so therefore it will always be bad everywhere. Am…

> You don't sit on the train for an hour. In properly designed large cities the metro beats the car by a huge time margin unless they made cars so expensive by policy that nobody has a car and there is no traffic at that city as a result. You should meet some of my old coworkers in large cities in Asia... (you don't SIT on the train at all in rush hour!) In a smaller city it can work great! But in a small NA city, ev…

    > you don't SIT on the train
    > at all in rush hour!
The horror!

Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage

#594

Post by mlsu »

zamfi wrote: post #558
mlsu wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We only have 2 cities in the United States that even approach a "medium sized" Asian metro in population. Los Angeles and NYC. Only NYC has a usable public transit system. This is actually an argument for transit systems. Los Angeles, San Francisco/San Jose, Dallas, Phoenix -- could be (and should be) a global metropolises, with a populations and cultural relevance rivaling Tokyo or Hong Kong. They would be, if not f…

> Los Angeles, San Francisco/San Jose, Dallas, Phoenix -- could be (and should be) a global metropolises Yes! > with a populations and cultural relevance rivaling Tokyo or Hong Kong. YES! > They would be, if not for the car. ...what? They are not because their local governments prohibit construction and actively oppose growth, which is only vaguely related to the car. Approximately zero "global metropolises" have sin…

I think we agree. But the car is a much bigger part of it than you're letting on.

The reason we zone this way is because people are unable to imagine their lives without being able to drive around. The very first thing people say in my town when an apartment tower goes up is "where am I going to park? Do they have a plan for moving the parking spots that this tower displaced? Traffic on tower St. is going to get so much worse!"

If the expectation is that everyone owns a car, upzoning is a huge problem -- it actually is, because everything that scares a car brain ("I can't park!" "It's going to be loud!" "This will increase traffic!") is actually true. Rather than limiting cars, of course, we choose to limit zoning. Which is actually quite a logical thing to do if everyone is to own a car.

If you get rid of cars you get rid of collectors, arterials, onramps and offramps, turn lanes, parking spots... Those are things that are fundamentally incompatible with a major, dense, vibrant city. You can easily fit 50,000 people, their workplaces, senior care homes, schools, and restaurants into the land area of a 4 way cloverleaf that is designed to service 50,000 round trip commutes by car.

Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage

#595

Post by sweetjuly »

bombcar wrote: post #367
foxyv wrote: post #177

It takes significantly less materials to build a multi-dwelling apartment/condo/townhouse structure than a single family home. In addition, the required square footage per person drops by huge amounts when people can walk to nearby community centers, restaurants, kitchens, theaters, and bars. We are building massive 3-4k sq. ft. homes for families of four because all of their food, entertainment, and social needs are…

Outside of literal college dorms, where can you find apartments without kitchens?

Accessory dwelling units ("ADUs") are becoming somewhat common because it lets people throw down a tiny (sometimes pre-fab) cheap housing unit that they can rent out. Many of these don't have real kitchens (no stove, etc.).

Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage

#596

Post by [deleted] »

wolverine876 wrote: post #381
adamisom wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just went to Panda Express for lunch--yeah yeah, it's not fancy at all, but it's a step above McDonald's--and someone begged me for food. Cue a bunch of online warriors on their high horses implying I'm a bad person for not prioritizing their need over my negative experience. I'm still going to second-guess going out to eat a little bit, though. I want to create my own beautiful bubble, and that might be home. Ever…

What is your reasoning here? Cities are 'bad' from something as minor as that? We all deal with things we dislike, such as stoplights, rain, or bad news on TV. Let's not even start on traffic! Where will you find this idyllic place to call home? FWIW, it might be alien at first but there's nothing to be afraid of from people who want some food, any more than from anyone else. That is based on long experience with zer…

[deleted]

Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage

#597

Post by krapp »

huytersd wrote: post #585
foxyv wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying without kitchens so much as smaller kitchens. When you look at new home construction in the past 10 years, they have MASSIVE kitchens. A lot of them are bigger than my first apartment. https://www.homes.com/property/kestrel-at-waterston-north-gr...

This is honestly the wrong angle to take. I’m a raging environmentalist and your decrementalist comment is making my blood boil. Advocating for a reduction in standard of living is not the way to go about environmentalism. Using science and technology to make Manhattan project tier changes to energy generation and transportation are. There is a way to reduce your impact almost completely while still maintaining the e…

The existing standard of living requires exponential growth and unbounded resource consumption. It isn't possible to maintain that while reducing energy consumption "almost completely." This isn't Star Trek where you can just outsmart the laws of thermodynamics and run everything on free energy and vibes.

A "raging environmentalist" should understand that, particularly given that climate change and the collapse of the ecosystem is already underway. The window for "Manhattan project" scale solutions passed decades ago, the only solutions available now are damage mitigation. The future is going to be about maintaining our survival and civilization, not a reasonable standard of comfort.

Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage

#598

Post by nradov »

scoofy wrote: post #545
nradov wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is exactly the cherry picking that I mean. You can point out a few examples that appear to fit the Strong Towns hypothesis (although causality isn't clear) but there are many other suburban cities which are quietly doing fine and have sustainable budgets. The Detroit metro area would be a mess even if it had higher density housing and better public transit. The problems there are more due to federal trade polici…

Their thesis is clear and falsifiable, it's just that the timelines are very large. If you are going to criticize the thesis, it would make sense to address the actual arguments of ongoing cost-per-resident of various pieces of infrastructure, rather than just calling the organization 'biased'.

The Strong Towns "hypothesis" is at least partly falsified by objective economic data. Many suburbs/exurbs have been around for decades now. If the costs per resident were truly unsustainable then we would expect to see a surge in Chapter 9 bankruptcies, or at least a major spike in muni bond insurance premiums. So far that isn't happening. Most cities manage to muddle through and patch their infrastructure well enough to keep things working.

Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage

#599

Post by mlsu »

nradov wrote: post #552
mlsu wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We only have 2 cities in the United States that even approach a "medium sized" Asian metro in population. Los Angeles and NYC. Only NYC has a usable public transit system. This is actually an argument for transit systems. Los Angeles, San Francisco/San Jose, Dallas, Phoenix -- could be (and should be) a global metropolises, with a populations and cultural relevance rivaling Tokyo or Hong Kong. They would be, if not f…

Most people who currently live in San Francisco/San Jose don't particularly want to turn it into a global metropolis and don't give a damn about abstract concepts like "cultural relevance". Cultural elitists should have some humility and not presume that they know best. Another option would be to set policies that encourage greater economic development and job growth in Stockton so that residents aren't forced to com…

Most people move to the Bay to get a good job, which is only possible in a large, vibrant, globally connected city. Everyone -- every single person -- who buys or rents a house in the SF bay today does so because they either have or want have "a good job." Is there a single person alive who has bought a house on the peninsula recently because it's a quiet place where nothing much happens?

The Bay Area is extremely special. It's the only place to go to get a good job! There are probably 500,000 people who would move in next week if we had the apartments to house them. That is absolutely not true of Stockton.

Someone who commutes to SF from Stockton isn't a resident of Stockton. They're a resident of SF who is priced out!

Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage

#600

Post by mlsu »

LunaSea wrote: post #564
mlsu wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We only have 2 cities in the United States that even approach a "medium sized" Asian metro in population. Los Angeles and NYC. Only NYC has a usable public transit system. This is actually an argument for transit systems. Los Angeles, San Francisco/San Jose, Dallas, Phoenix -- could be (and should be) a global metropolises, with a populations and cultural relevance rivaling Tokyo or Hong Kong. They would be, if not f…

You described hell.

If Tokyo is hell why did so many people choose to move there?
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