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The accidentally resilient design of Athens apartments

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Re: The accidentally resilient design of Athens apartments

#61

Post by bawana »

StavrosK wrote: post #11
panosfilianos wrote: post #2

What I say to my non-Greek friends is that Athens is a really beautiful city, because it is really ugly. I have yet to meet a person living in Athens that likes these buildings for any other reasons than that you've grew up in them. In fact, the houses made in what Greeks call "neo-classical" style are considered to be a major improvement. This is the style you can find in the area of Plaka, Metz etc.

I don't think any Greek likes them, but I think most of the problem is that each one looks different. They don't have a common aesthetic, so the city looks like you bumped your building tray and all your buildings fell over and now you can't be bothered to sort them all again.

The ugliness is only visible from 10000 feet. Up close, the uniqueness of each building, the uniqueness of each intersection, street width, flora, etc gives each neighborhood the character that allows a human to grow their identity, their feeling that they too are unique, that they have a place in the world that is ‘justified and allowed to be different, even unique’

Re: The accidentally resilient design of Athens apartments

#62

Post by istjohn »

bluGill wrote: post #39
istjohn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That part jumped out at me, too. > “There were wealthier people on the upper floors,” says Dragonas, “people who had just arrived from the countryside further down and poor students in the basement. That sort of vertical stratification inside a five-story building helped Athens to avoid horizontal stratification — there weren’t really neighborhoods that were only rich or only poor. In the US before Brown v. Board, ma…

White flight wasn't only because of fear of blacks. That was an issue, but suburbs were in style and offered other benefits. Most people left for other reasons if they could. This is that couldn't afford to leave were poor. Often enough they were black as well. Remember even a tiny minority acting in a bad direction can make the whole that way. Don't descend too far into racism to explain a complex situation.

No, that's simply false. White flight was about racism. Period. And it was not "a tiny minority acting in a bad direction," it was one of many ways Blacks were systematically oppressed at the time, see, e.g., red-lining, employment descrimination, and discriminatory policing. (To be clear, except traditional red-lining, all of this still happends.) White opposition to school integration was so mainstream, presidential candidate Joe Biden vocally opposed busing in the 1970's when he was a Deleware senator. You may remember Kamala Harris pointing this out in a Democratic primary debate. In Boston, white residents rioted in opposition to school desegregation.

For more evidence that white flight was motivated by racism and not something more innocuous, look at the story school enrollment numbers tell:

> Upon desegregation in 1957 in Baltimore, Maryland, the Clifton Park Junior High School had 2,023 white students and 34 black students; ten years later, it had twelve white students and 2,037 black students. In northwest Baltimore, Garrison Junior High School's student body declined from 2,504 whites and twelve blacks to 297 whites and 1,263 blacks in that period.[1]

Now look at this chart of Columbus City Schools enrollment over the past 100 years.[2] It looks like a church steeple with the peak at 1971. In the nine years leading up to 1971, enrollment increased 19%. In the nine years following 1971, enrollment fell 34%. What happened?

In 1972, the CCS school board adopted a pledge stating, "It shall be the goal and policy of the Columbus Public Schools to prepare every student for life in an integrated society by giving each student the opportunity of integrated educational experiences." In 1974, the board approved a program to transport students in a voluntary racial balance plan. In 1975, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund sued the school district, demanding desegregation. Finally, in 1979, the district implemented a busing plan to desegregate its schools after the district court ruled against it.[3] White families in the 1970's saw change coming and fled to the suburbs in response.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight#Desegregation_of_...

[2] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qvT_UF_mZdyqjfDlCdMy...

[3] Getting Around Brown details the entire history of school segregation in Columbus, including the events cited in this paragraph. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxH84YBTnvm3dmhNM0ZqMHlCbDg...

Re: The accidentally resilient design of Athens apartments

#63

Post by lbrito »

csomar wrote: post #59
lbrito wrote: post #52

To solve this conundrum, Greeks created their own funding system called antiparochi, in which developers saved themselves the cost of buying land by giving landowners a share of the constructed units when they were completed. “The best translation of the term is probably ‘flats for land,’ or as some people say, ‘quid pro quo,’” says Panos Dragonas, an architect and professor at Greece’s University of Patras. “The sys…

Where I live it's more extreme. Construction materials are sourced from different suppliers, and they are given apartments instead of cash. A developer can get started with around an apartment worth of capital. He'll leverage 2-3x through a bank to pay for workers and various. Then raise money before building from some want-to-be homeowners. The pre-construction sale gets you a cheaper price. So he gets 2-3x his capi…

Interesting. What part of the world are you talking about?

I bet that, with so many moving parts, if there is the slightest problem the whole thing falls apart and unlucky buyers end up cash-strapped and with no apartments to show for it.

Re: The accidentally resilient design of Athens apartments

#64

Post by fennecfoxen »

lbrito wrote: post #58
fennecfoxen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people in the US find it more expedient to use cash for the land, rather than take in-kind compensation. Consider, for instance: where will you live while your apartment is under construction? And, can you actually trust the value that the developer touts, attached to the new apartment? Financing for this sort of up-front buyout will be readily available so there is no major barrier.

>where will you live while your apartment is under construction? Maybe my wording was confusing, but this kind of thing won't really happen. If someone in a large city owns a patch of land that is big enough and well-located enough to become an apartment complex, then that person(s) is usually wealthy enough to have other real estate already. Its seen as an investment, not as a more affordable way to own an apartment…

Ah. I had assumed that part of the Greek setup came from relatively small owners with an individual plot of land and a much smaller owner-occupied building on it. Perhaps this is expectation is in error!

Re: The accidentally resilient design of Athens apartments

#65

Post by fifnir »

panosfilianos wrote: post #2

What I say to my non-Greek friends is that Athens is a really beautiful city, because it is really ugly. I have yet to meet a person living in Athens that likes these buildings for any other reasons than that you've grew up in them. In fact, the houses made in what Greeks call "neo-classical" style are considered to be a major improvement. This is the style you can find in the area of Plaka, Metz etc.

The one beauty I can attribute to polykatoikies is the balconies. They are often filled with plants (at least my parents kept it that way) which makes for your little private oasis in the mess that is Athens.

Neoclassicals don't have that

Re: The accidentally resilient design of Athens apartments

#66

Post by istjohn »

iguy wrote: post #54
nitrogen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the conditions externally should not be enough to contradict data Data can easily be used to lie or conceal, and if the observed conditions are clearly inferior, then the data is qualitatively inaccurate and/or incomplete.

Seems like a puzzle worth understanding. If the budgets & class sizes are similar, and the teacher salaries are lower in tough schools, then what is the rest spent on? In some countries I would guess that the budget is being pocketed along the way, but I doubt that's the case here. Is there sufficient extra off-the-books spending in rich areas to explain the difference? e.g. a volunteer donating to fix the AC? While…

I agree it's a worth exploring. Just spitballing, part of it may be the cost of maintaining old buildings, particularly when changing demographics lead to over-capacity in some neighborhoods and under-capacity in others. It may also stem from financial mismanagement. There is generally less parental engagement, since poor families have more pressing concerns, so it's easier for waste or fraud to go unchecked. I don't know, none of these explanations are particularly convincing.

Re: The accidentally resilient design of Athens apartments

#67

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #55
lbrito wrote: post #52

To solve this conundrum, Greeks created their own funding system called antiparochi, in which developers saved themselves the cost of buying land by giving landowners a share of the constructed units when they were completed. “The best translation of the term is probably ‘flats for land,’ or as some people say, ‘quid pro quo,’” says Panos Dragonas, an architect and professor at Greece’s University of Patras. “The sys…

I think most people in the US find it more expedient to use cash for the land, rather than take in-kind compensation. Consider, for instance: where will you live while your apartment is under construction? And, can you actually trust the value that the developer touts, attached to the new apartment? Financing for this sort of up-front buyout will be readily available so there is no major barrier.

> Consider, for instance: where will you live while your apartment is under construction?

It many parts of the world where this is practiced, there are strong familial ties and obligations. No one would think twice of living with a parent or sibling while the apartment was under construction.

Re: The accidentally resilient design of Athens apartments

#68

Post by babesh »

csomar wrote: post #59
lbrito wrote: post #52

To solve this conundrum, Greeks created their own funding system called antiparochi, in which developers saved themselves the cost of buying land by giving landowners a share of the constructed units when they were completed. “The best translation of the term is probably ‘flats for land,’ or as some people say, ‘quid pro quo,’” says Panos Dragonas, an architect and professor at Greece’s University of Patras. “The sys…

Where I live it's more extreme. Construction materials are sourced from different suppliers, and they are given apartments instead of cash. A developer can get started with around an apartment worth of capital. He'll leverage 2-3x through a bank to pay for workers and various. Then raise money before building from some want-to-be homeowners. The pre-construction sale gets you a cheaper price. So he gets 2-3x his capi…

A lessor version of this happens in the US where previous phases of a development pay for later phases. A cash strapped developer may offer initial phases at especially low prices.

Re: The accidentally resilient design of Athens apartments

#69

Post by bluGill »

jungturk wrote: post #42
bluGill wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

White flight wasn't only because of fear of blacks. That was an issue, but suburbs were in style and offered other benefits. Most people left for other reasons if they could. This is that couldn't afford to leave were poor. Often enough they were black as well. Remember even a tiny minority acting in a bad direction can make the whole that way. Don't descend too far into racism to explain a complex situation.

These are certainly multi-factor situations, as you say, but white flight isn't the only race-related contributor to deteriorating home prices in predominantly non-white neighborhoods. For example, the impact of federal policies denying mortgage loans in non-white neighborhoods in the 1930s (aka redlining) are still detectable today. If your pool of buyers is lower (because of the lack of availability of a loan progr…

True, but that doesn't mean it was racism that kept individual people out.

Re: The accidentally resilient design of Athens apartments

#70

Post by bluGill »

istjohn wrote: post #62
bluGill wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

White flight wasn't only because of fear of blacks. That was an issue, but suburbs were in style and offered other benefits. Most people left for other reasons if they could. This is that couldn't afford to leave were poor. Often enough they were black as well. Remember even a tiny minority acting in a bad direction can make the whole that way. Don't descend too far into racism to explain a complex situation.

No, that's simply false. White flight was about racism. Period. And it was not "a tiny minority acting in a bad direction," it was one of many ways Blacks were systematically oppressed at the time, see, e.g., red-lining, employment descrimination, and discriminatory policing. (To be clear, except traditional red-lining, all of this still happends.) White opposition to school integration was so mainstream, presidentia…

A tiny minority combined with many who have better things to do than care is enough to be explain that. Fear of racism in others is more powerful than the reality of racism.
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