[HN Gopher] We'd rather have the iceberg than the ship
___________________________________________________________________
We'd rather have the iceberg than the ship
Author : oftenwrong
Score : 276 points
Date : 2021-07-23 12:57 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.granolashotgun.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.granolashotgun.com)
| aeturnum wrote:
| Time to once again post my favorite TED talk "the ghastly tragedy
| of the Suburbs":
| https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_the_ghastly_...
| hef19898 wrote:
| Looking at those older houses, I would rather have on of those
| than a soleless suburban cardboard home. But then I never buy
| stuff with an eye on resell value, I am not a broker or trader
| after all.
| bluedino wrote:
| There are a few larger houses left with character in my town.
| Left, because starting in the 60's people left the city for the
| suburbs, and the houses fell into disrepair, burned down, etc.
|
| I thought about buying one. Twice as big of a house that I have
| now, for half the price. However, you have a boiler system, no
| central AC, basically non-existant insulation, more wallpaper
| than you would ever want to remove, ancient electrical systems,
| and 125 years of shadetree repairs to every part of the house.
|
| You'd spend a quarter million dollars upgrading the house to
| today's standards, like you see on an episode of _This Old
| House_. And then what? You have to deal with the crime and
| nuisances of the city, alley or a horse stall to park in, you
| get to pay city income tax, city water and trash which are 3X
| what I pay in my township, and then you have to figure out
| where you 're going to send your kids to school. The city
| public schools are bottom 5% in the state so you have to go
| private or drive them to another district.
| hef19898 wrote:
| It's almost funny how, besides parking and renovation costs,
| I never heard of any of the other issues over here. Schools
| are all public (except for rich parents kids unable to make
| in a school daddy isn't paying for), crime is hardly a real
| problem (at least where the nice houses are), taxes are
| everywhere the same (for employees, if you have a company
| communities can set their own percentage). Waste removal
| differs, but not by much.
|
| Maybe part of the reason why this kind of houses tend to be
| twice as expensive as a similar sized one in suburbia.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I've bought two houses in my life. My second one is the
| youngster at around 100 years old now. The first one is of
| unknown age, but based on old town maps was between 186 and 199
| years old when I bought it (it was on the later map and not the
| previous).
|
| Both were great experiences, indeed with some maintenance
| needed (just like any structure). Both appreciated
| significantly during my ownership, in addition to providing
| shelter.
|
| I'm glad that people generally don't want older houses. It
| means I can get a lot more of what I want for less money; I'm
| perfectly happy to have 1.5% annual maintenance (and worse
| insulation) instead of 1.0% when the place sells for 25% less
| than a comparable structure (and often has more land around it
| and land that's quality soil often with established/re-
| established trees).
| bombcar wrote:
| As long as you don't end up on the register of historic
| places - then you have costs and restrictions applied to
| "keep it as it was" and the hassle of proving that your
| fixes/changes don't damage the historicity.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Where I live, Bavaria, you cna get all kinds of subsidies
| to refurbish and maintain historic places. You also need
| them due all the restrictions and general age. Also, work
| tends be quite expensive. Overall so, it is affordable. As
| long as you don't go into castles, bit then, if you can
| afford to buy, money probably isn't your problem anyway.
|
| That being said, these places have. alot of charm and
| character. I am kind of sad to not have taken that one
| apartment with a Renessaince wall painting back the day.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, in the US you often get declared historic but
| there's a fund to help pay for things but it's entirely
| underfunded and so you're stuck with the costs or
| ignoring the problem or just jury-rigging something
| unofficial.
| Steltek wrote:
| In 2019, we began a home addition. Every contractor who looked
| at our plan told us to make a tradeoff to allow for a fourth
| bedroom. We persisted, as we were doing this for ourselves
| rather than future buyers.
|
| In 2020 and 2021, we're absolutely loving that we went for our
| home office plan instead of that bedroom. We knew we wanted it
| but had no idea how much we would need it!
| bombcar wrote:
| Sometimes the trade off is as simple as making sure an office
| could "legally" be considered a bedroom - usually an egress
| window and/or something that's arguably a closet (in some
| areas).
|
| It can be worth doing those (or leaving them able to be done)
| for sale and valuation purposes.
|
| Alternatively, when buying, look for those things that can't
| be counted as a bedroom for bonus value (basement office,
| etc).
| Steltek wrote:
| In our case, it was hallway access and layout but you're
| missing the larger point: there is no resale in our future
| here. If this house is being sold, it's because we're both
| dead and at that point, I don't care. Inflating value could
| only increase our prop taxes, why do that?
|
| And just for a funny addendum, right now, Boston home
| buyers have only one requirement: a home to buy. The market
| is insane on a level never heard of before. All
| contingencies are waived. No home inspection is allowed.
| During Covid, you had 15 minutes to look over a house and
| you needed to make an offer that day or tomorrow at the
| latest. Your offer also needs to be $50-100k over asking to
| be taken seriously.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Lead-based paint is a legitimate concern for older houses
| (built before 1979/1980), especially if you have children
| staying in the home, or if you want to do any
| remodeling/repainting
| JeremyNT wrote:
| This is a monumental issue in how American cities develop.
|
| I'm from the south and am currently moving from one southern city
| (Durham - which is near Raleigh - NC) to another (Nashville, TN)
| and it's depressing to see how both places keep making the same
| mistakes (Nashville is maybe 20 years further down the road to
| failure than Raleigh, though).
|
| What are those mistakes? Designing all these unwalkable
| neighborhoods filled with single family dwellings with no cross
| streets or any retail corridors, then cramming them in along
| "strips" that connect them to the Old City and accumulate strip
| malls (eventually, holding so much traffic that they are a
| nightmare to navigate).
|
| So what you end up with, is the Old City has an actual grid of
| sorts, with cross streets and some walkability, with commercial
| near residential, and feels vibrant. But most people simply can't
| afford those areas, because they're so desirable for the people
| who recognize the value of this.
|
| Since the old areas are so expensive, most people have to buy
| into one of the aforementioned crappy new neighborhoods, and
| suffer all the subtle ill effects of being isolated from most
| other humans by walls of traffic. When individual developers buy
| these massive swathes of land in (formerly) rural areas, they
| optimize for the short term profit they can make from selling the
| new homes, and nothing else.
|
| As more of those crappy neighborhoods pile up, the traffic gets
| worse, and getting to/from the core parts of town becomes more
| and more painful. In this respect Raleigh fares better better,
| but only because rather than having one city center, the Raleigh
| area has many (Chapel Hill, Raleigh, Durham, and various other
| small towns). The web of sprawl grows between these places, but
| in each core is a small grid with retail, which means that as the
| megalopolis fills in all the gaps (rather than growing outward in
| ever increasing circles from a single center point) people can
| remain close to something attractive.
|
| One big issue is that the cookie-cutter neighborhoods have no
| grid system that connects to their surroundings, and instead
| there's just limited ingress/egress from the neighborhood onto
| the main strips. The developers don't own adjacent corridors, so
| there is no short term incentive to connect to them. This creates
| vast areas where no retail could ever exist, because they're
| along dead-end cul-de-sacs which "belong" to individual
| neighborhoods.
|
| I don't really know what the solution is. I don't really think
| humans want to live in these places, but there are no incentives
| to do better for builders, and real estate is treated as a
| valuable commodity, so here we are. In the south, where rural
| land is cheap, it all feels depressingly inevitable.
|
| I'd love to see a counterpoint of a city (especially a Southern
| city, in a red state) that has taken a different approach to
| development, which has managed to prioritize connectivity and
| walkability in a successful manner.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| If these downtown areas were suddenly cleaned up, packed full of
| operating businesses, and had bicycle lanes and everything added
| overnight, would any customers even show up? I'm not sure how
| much demand there even is for such a thing outside the online
| urban development enthusiast crowd.
|
| I got a sense that the "themed strip mall" was put forward with
| derision but I think people are increasingly going to need more
| of an incentive to go to these kinds of areas beyond shopping. A
| historically preserved area that's neat to look at with
| educational placards/statues, a nice waterfront, an amusement
| park, really good food, some reason to make the trip. Otherwise
| personally I'll just order something online or go to a big box
| store.
| pkulak wrote:
| I don't know about other places, but historic downtown areas in
| Oregon are pretty consistently packed, especially now. My
| family just took a trip to a small town mid-week, which is when
| you can usually get a seat at a restaurant on the "strip". We
| had to wait nearly two hours for lunch this time. Walking
| between shops was bordering on bothersome because of the
| crowds. I can't even fathom how it is on the weekend.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| I think it's the 'historic' that matters, healthy downtowns
| seem to require some specificity and coevolution with the
| people there. The original comment as I understood it was
| speculating what would happen if something resembling a
| healthy downtown was simply dropped into place one day.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Santana Row was pretty much just fabbed from whole cloth
| and it's really fun.
| fogdart wrote:
| It's fun for the people in San Jose who don't have many
| buildings in their city more historic than the 1970s. I
| just despise San Jose so please disregard my biased
| statements if I'm off base here. While Santana Row may be
| fun, it has zero charm to it. Coming from someone who
| grew up on cobblestone city streets built in the 1700s...
| pja wrote:
| If we're talking about a medium density mixed residential /
| commercial suburbs with walkable streets & a varied housing
| mix, including local schools and shops then those are usually
| pretty popular places to live.
|
| The YT channel Not Just Bikes talks about Riverdale in Toronto,
| Canada here as an example: https://youtu.be/MWsGBRdK2N0?t=521
| It has some of the highest house prices in Toronto & that
| reflects people's desire to live there.
|
| Zoning into sidely dispersed commercial / residential areas
| where the only way to get from one to the other is by car is a
| curse on society.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Riverdale in Toronto, Canada_
|
| Other "streetcar suburbs" are listed in:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
|
| There are multiple in Toronto, all of which were not
| expensive post-WW2 since downtown was mostly considered 'for
| immigrants' and all the WASPs moved to the car-centric
| suburbs. Urban living became cool again in the post-1990s,
| and now Old Toronto is quite pricey.
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Toronto
| jaredklewis wrote:
| It's politically hard, but otherwise quite possible to
| redevelop older areas. Old Town in Pasadena, CA is a great
| example. Old Town was a largely uninhabited and unprosperous
| commercial area. Mostly through simple policy changes re: urban
| development, it was completely revitalized. Today, Old Town is
| pretty much endlessly packed with people and the commercial
| rents are sky high. It's bustling with shops, cafes,
| restaurants, bars, luxury apartments, and office spaces.
|
| It doesn't have a water front. There are plenty of older
| (historic?) brick buildings, which IMHO look much nicer than
| modern buildings, but the buildings are hardly unique;
| buildings of this type can be found all over Los Angeles
| County. It does have lots of excellent restaurants, but I don't
| see any reason why that couldn't be replicated elsewhere. The
| restaurants came as a result of the redevelopment, not the
| other way around.
| alex_c wrote:
| There's only so much you can do with an area like this as a
| "destination", without being embedded in a healthy community.
|
| However attractive the area is, if you have to make a trip
| you'll only go there infrequently. Large parts will be
| dedicated to parking. Transit may be a pain to get there.
|
| Not to say it can't have value - it can be a central point to
| bring together a larger low density community. But there's only
| so much need for something like this.
|
| Compare with what is usually meant by a "walkable" area. Medium
| or high density housing mixed with local businesses. Enough
| residents within walking distance to support local restaurants
| and shops even during the week, not only on weekends.
|
| Not a common model in North America unfortunately, the trend is
| either low density residential housing, or high density condo
| areas without much commercial or public spaces.
| [deleted]
| AlanYx wrote:
| Can anyone explain the "We'd rather have the iceberg than the
| ship" expression? I understand the overall point of the article,
| but I'm having trouble parsing the last paragraph, where he seems
| to assume that one reading of that expression is somehow obvious.
| Is it the ship that's ephemeral, or the iceberg? (It seems like a
| reference to the Titanic, and at least in my mind, both the
| Titanic and the iceberg were ephemeral.)
| pimlottc wrote:
| Yeah, it's not very clear to me either. From my reading, the
| poem is comparing the overwhelming majesty and elegance of the
| natural iceberg to the comparatively shoddy man-made vessel.
| But it's open to interpretation.
|
| The author definitely doesn't do themselves any favors, though,
| by making an analogy with a fairly obscure poem and not even
| bothering to explain it.
| AlanYx wrote:
| After reading the poem, I agree that it's open to
| interpretation, but I also wonder whether the author of the
| linked article has really thought about what the poem means.
|
| As far as I can tell, the poem seems to be about how icebergs
| exist in some majestic perpetual space of recurrence. The
| first stanza talks about how icebergs are impermanent, melt
| and eventually turn into rain ("Are you aware an iceberg
| takes repose / With you, and when it wakes may pasture on
| your snows?") but then the last stanza talks about how they
| perpetually arise again ("Like jewelry from a grave / It
| saves itself perpetually").
|
| If anything, the poem seems like it would be perfect for
| referring to America's perpetual capacity to reinvent itself
| -- i.e., areas may fall into decay but then are rebuilt, much
| like urban Detroit is enjoying a revival -- not the more
| pessimistic take of the author of the piece.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Society, on the whole would rather have solutions that are more
| romantic/grandiose, albeit fleeting, uncontrollable and less
| practical
| jppope wrote:
| The author isn't going for direct metaphor. But it appears to
| be around the concept that icebergs eventually melt. So if you
| were traveling/floating on an iceberg it would eventually go
| away. A well built ship on the other hand could last
| indefinitely or much longer at least.
| phnofive wrote:
| I think you've nailed it - I was racking my brain connecting
| the article with any interpretation of the poem, rather than
| the literal text. This feels closer to using Mending Wall to
| justify a taller border fence.
| hamaluik wrote:
| I read it as "if we have to choose between maintaining nature
| and having cruise ships, we'd rather maintain nature and not
| have cruises".
| LanceH wrote:
| The solution is worse than the problem.
| Pxtl wrote:
| I'll never understand it. If you look at the places that
| suburbanites _visit_ - the vacations they take, none of those
| places look like the ones they live in. Paris. Manhattan. Smaller
| locations like Niagara Falls still represents a level of age and
| density far beyond suburbia.
|
| Heck, even Vegas represents a level of density when you think
| about the fact that nobody's visiting the sprawl.
|
| It's like we know what nice places look and feel like, but choose
| to build the exact opposite because of parking convenience.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Just because I might like to visit Disneyland doesn't mean I
| want to live there.
| bombcar wrote:
| Less than a mile from Disneyland you have what appear to be
| mobile homes permanently affixed to the ground, probably to
| get around density rules.
| jen20 wrote:
| Ironic given the average "abandoned Disney castle" style of
| the McMansions that pervade in the suburbs around my city!
| pwinnski wrote:
| Have you never heard the common English expression, "It's a
| nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there?"
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| You mean suburbia? Yes, I know.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Then it's great that we have different options for people
| who have different preferences!
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Look at tourists attitudes of many of those areas; they
| glamorize them to an extent, but they'll also warn you to watch
| out for pickpockets and wear security wallets. They don't want
| to live there, it's an amusement park.
| josephcsible wrote:
| People like having yards for their kids to play in and not
| sharing walls with neighbors. And people visit campsites with
| no running water, but obviously it would be bad to live
| somewhere with no running water.
| caethan wrote:
| It's really strange seeing the anti-suburban attitudes right
| after we got a lesson in why relying on communal urban
| amenities doesn't always work.
|
| We moved to a nice town in walking distance of several parks
| and small shopping districts in winter 2019. Six months later
| the shops were all shut or closed for good, and the parks had
| caution tape all over the playground equipment. They took the
| swings off the swingsets so the kids couldn't play.
| sokoloff wrote:
| This is one of those truths that is so obvious to me and
| simultaneously puzzling that others don't see it as obviously
| the preference of many people.
|
| I have hated every shared-wall/ceiling/floor accommodation
| I've ever lived in, even fairly high-end newish construction.
| (I hated the idea that my noise was annoying others almost as
| much as the times when their noise annoyed me. In my house,
| if I want to do a woodworking project, listen to Van Halen,
| or watch a movie at 10:30 PM, I'm free to do that.)
|
| I love having outdoor space that's "just ours". If we want to
| plant a garden, we plant a garden. If we want flowers, we
| plant flowers. If we want a trampoline, we buy a trampoline.
| antognini wrote:
| That makes sense. Different people have different
| preferences. What's nuts to me is that land use laws take
| the preferences from one set of people and impose them on
| vast swathes of a city. It seems weird to me, for example,
| that you can only build single family homes in 70% of San
| Francisco, one of the densest cities in the US.
| bombcar wrote:
| One thing to remember is that houses in dense older cities
| in Europe are often built of stone or brick or concrete
| (even the newer ones) which results in a building with
| different properties than what we're used to with out stick
| built apartments.
|
| And they often have a garden/yard area. What's sad is that
| we don't really even have the option in the USA for that
| style.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Isn't that very similar to the brick rowhouse/Brownstone-
| style of development in the US (which often _technically_
| have some outdoor space).
| bombcar wrote:
| It is - but I've not seen that built as new in ages.
| MattRix wrote:
| Suburbia is made of families. People want big houses with big
| yards for their kids. They're often not bringing their kids on
| those same vacations. And on top of that, where people vacation
| is very different from where they'd want to live long term.
| Pxtl wrote:
| There's actually a perverse impact, because young people
| can't drive. So moving to suburbia for "the kids" results in
| kids being isolated from their community. And remember,
| vehicular traffic is the 2nd highest cause of death in
| children in the USA, after birth defects.
| lelandbatey wrote:
| I'd rather have a medium house with big safe _parks_. Growing
| up out in the woods is great, but having kids who are trapped
| with no autonomy hurts kids in a way I 'd like to avoid.
| trevin wrote:
| A tangent: Granola Shotgun is one of my favorite blogs and Johnny
| has a unique viewpoint on many issues like urbanism, homesteads,
| town planning, etc. A quote from him that summarizes his writing
| to me: "So this is what America is actually like. The good, the
| bad, and the ugly. Look out your window. Take a drive down to
| your local big box store. Walk around your neighborhood. This is
| reality. Just sayin'."
|
| I have little specific interest in these topics but love his
| storytelling and detailed posts.
|
| A few of my all-time favorites he has written:
|
| https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/7/26/not-for-camera...
| https://granolashotgun.wordpress.com/2019/07/22/the-show-hor...
| https://granolashotgun.wordpress.com/2019/06/03/levittown/
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Granola Shotgun reminds me of blogging in its prime. Maybe 15
| years ago? I had a big RSS feed of several blogs like this that
| I really loved. Over the years I've either gotten worse at
| finding them or the average blog has gotten much worse.
| trevin wrote:
| Yes, I miss the days where independent blogs ruled the web.
| Everything has transitioned to social platforms optimized for
| instant gratification where there is no room for deeper
| thoughts. Or lives on a 3rd party like Medium. Most of the
| blogs I used to read daily have transitioned to being people
| who tweet a lot and rarely write longer content.
| oftenwrong wrote:
| Glad to see there are other fans of Granola Shotgun on HN. Most
| of the titles Johnny uses are probably too vague to capture
| interest here, but a few submissions have made the front page:
|
| "Letting Go of Nostalgia Urbanism"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25626389
| https://www.granolashotgun.com/granolashotguncom/2mvygaw3y67...
|
| "The Show Horse and the Work Horse"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20497711
| https://granolashotgun.wordpress.com/2019/07/22/the-show-hor...
|
| "Eating Jell-O with Chopsticks"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20060732
| https://granolashotgun.wordpress.com/2019/05/27/eating-jell-...
|
| "Guaranteed Minimum What?"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14326505
| https://granolashotgun.wordpress.com/2017/05/05/guaranteed-m...
| Rendello wrote:
| Not Just Bikes is a great channel on urban development, and he
| did a series on Strong Towns' ideas specifically. I like this
| one, "How Suburban Development Makes American Cities Poorer".
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVUeqxXwCA0
| tempest_ wrote:
| I always laugh when watching his videos because it feels like
| his go to bad example is London Ontario. I recognize it in
| all the bad example B roll he uses.
| Rendello wrote:
| He grew up in London so it makes sense! I'm always happy
| (or sad, maybe) when I get to see Ottawa in the b-roll
| godot wrote:
| I agree with the author that the real estate agent described
| something most people want, and not necessarily what the author
| himself wanted. I think it's unfortunate that the agent didn't
| hear what the author wanted and just pointed him to the general
| public's preference anyway.
|
| However, I disagree with his take that America's housing
| development model is to develop into outskirt suburbs, let middle
| class move in, let it deteriorate in 30 years, and build more
| outskirts.
|
| Now, maybe I live in California and things are different. In the
| bay area even old areas with very old houses rise in values, and
| in fact, they rise more than newer developments. Demand for
| housing everywhere in the bay area + surrounding areas are high
| regardless of how new they are and how deep in town or out in the
| outskirts they are. Areas developed 30+ years ago continue to
| have high demand from middle to wealthy families. These areas
| didn't just not deteriorate but have grown into larger and more
| modern areas and in some cases developed their own downtown.
|
| Admittedly California and bay area specifically is probably a
| bubble and behaves differently than much of America. But I have a
| feeling more than a few popular cities are going through
| something similar. Appleton might not be, and maybe he's right
| that the new development outskirts will deteriorate in 30 years,
| but I doubt that'll be the case in new developments around
| Phoenix or Denver.
| [deleted]
| majormajor wrote:
| It might be a thriving city vs smaller town thing. Thriving
| cities outside of California (say Atlanta or Dallas) have
| valuable real estate in central locations just like in
| California cities. Nobody wants to be on the furthest outskirts
| with the furthest commute - it's more just an exhaust valve for
| growth so you don't get the same absolutely insane prices and
| resulting problems like homelessness to the same level.
| ska wrote:
| > Thriving cities outside of California (say Atlanta or
| Dallas) have valuable real estate in central locations just
| like in California cities.
|
| Unless things have really changed recently, this isn't true
| of, say Houston. It was mostly sprawl for most people, and no
| real functional inner core. There is the inner-loop vs
| outside, but it really isn't the same dynamic as other big
| metros (NB LA is it's own weirdness).
| majormajor wrote:
| I'm not as familiar with Houston in particular, but I think
| the important note for most of these places is that while
| there are expensive "central locations" that isn't the same
| as saying prices are centered in downtown (which in many
| cities comes from a legacy of racist policy/actions, though
| this is rather aside from the point of them being different
| from what the article linked here describes about a
| constant outward-migration and abandonment cycle, vs a
| particular moment in history). In Dallas and Atlanta, those
| areas are largely north of downtown. In LA, they're largely
| west. IIRC Austin and San Antonio had hot spots in the
| northern parts of the city too, but I'm less up to date
| there.
| ska wrote:
| To me "expensive suburb/exurb" is really not comparable
| to urban density. If all you are talking about are fancy
| HOAs and gated communities then I think it's a different
| beast.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| Yes, this is different. Not because you live in California but
| because you live in the bay area. Urbanization has been so
| intense that a lot of large metro areas have avoided this fate.
| The land values rise so high that it becomes "worth it" to fix
| up the houses. The author alludes to this when talking about
| how some downtown lots with high enough real estate value are
| refurbished while those without it are dozed.
|
| But this is not the case throughout the vast spread of rural
| towns in America. Some are shrinking, some are stagnant and
| some are growing but still not sustaining land prices that
| unlock the capital necessary to significantly overhaul
| structures.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| High land prices don't "unlock" capital, they drain it away
| from productive use. All other things being equal, it would
| be far more preferable to have cheaper land - in fact, urban
| renewal often occurs in cheaper areas, with negative
| gentrification setting in later as land prices spike upwards
| due to speculation.
| majormajor wrote:
| High land prices don't happen in a vacuum and then just
| magically drain productivity, they reflect demand. And
| demand from people with lots money generally means an area
| that is already currently productive - so wishing a
| productive area could have lower land prices is a bit of a
| non-starter. The limiting factor for the prices isn't
| policy, it's the availability of land (here Texas cities
| have a big advantage over coastal California ones that have
| to deal with mountains and oceans). _DFW airport is over
| half the size of the whole city of SF, and larger than
| Manhattan._ That sort of excess of availability is how you
| end up with cheaper land.
| [deleted]
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| They unlock capital for homeowners by giving them something
| to borrow against.
|
| In my 1980 built neighborhood there are three kinds of
| homeowners.
|
| 1) Low income longtime owners who can't renovate and are
| being replaced 2) Long time middle income residents who
| can't cash flow remodel but who can afford to borrow thanks
| to high appreciation. 3) New, affluent owners who buy
| houses that have been renovated or buy a house and cash
| flow renovation or take a massive mortgage (again largely
| backed by the high land value) and renovate.
|
| If your community's land prices haven't appreciated
| significantly then a lot of the capital you would access
| for refurbishment isn't available. That removes in place
| renovators and your community faces two fates. Slow blight
| as original owners exceed their most productive years or
| replacement as affluent buyers move in.
| ocschwar wrote:
| > Now, maybe I live in California and things are different.
|
| You live in California and things are different. You live there
| because you want to be in a specific location and near a some-
| what-specific crowd of people for work reasons.
|
| In the rest of the country, (most of it), that is not the
| consideration people have.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| This is probably off tangent but who shops for a home like this?
| My wife and I are looking right now and we told our agent what we
| want and then proceeded to spend time on Redfin trying to find a
| house. We find something we want and then ask our agent to get us
| inside of it.
|
| Our agent has suggested a couple of places but she's also had us
| point out 4 or 5 that we were specifically interested in and -
| she works in the area that we're looking in.
|
| I can understand that the beginning with an inexperienced buyer
| being told "how it is" by the experienced agent might be a hook
| but instead it makes me think the buyer is a bit of a flake.
| Sorry if that's mean but honestly that's what I thought.
| samlevine wrote:
| > I realized the truth of the Appleton model. Thirty years from
| now all the new homes she's selling will slip into the "old"
| category and will gradually fester as taxes rise and the middle
| class migrates to new greenfield developments.
|
| This is possible, but a lot of suburbs are old and quite
| successful.
|
| Bellevue and Redmond come to mind just from where I live but
| there are lots of places in America where the periphery is long
| lived and maintained.
| bkberry352 wrote:
| Just speculating here, but is there a possibility that Bellevue
| & Redmond's success is due in part to Microsoft HQ being
| located there? I imagine that without that, those suburbs would
| look quite different...
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Yes, they are company towns.
| brandonhorst wrote:
| Off topic, but looking through the comments, so many people seem
| to believe that any multi-family housing is noisy. That has
| literally never been my experience despite living exclusively in
| multi-family housing for the past 15 years. Sometimes I can hear
| my neighbor's kid when they're directly outside my front door.
| That's it.
|
| Have the folks who think that apartments are noisy just never
| lived in apartment? Or is my experience the skewed one?
| artimaeis wrote:
| I've lived in a variety of multi-family units, some have
| _definitely_ been far too noisy. I'm still trying to work out
| what some upstairs neighbors I had a few years ago were up to
| regularly that sounded just like bowling but with office
| furniture.
|
| But for the most part as long as the unit isn't facing a major
| road/rail and the neighbors aren't the college-frat sort,
| they're usually not too noisy at all.
| yks wrote:
| Most apartment buildings in America have a quite bad sound
| insulation in my experience, and although I've seen some modern
| apartment towers with a solid soundproofing, those are usually
| not affordable to most people and so everyone just believes
| that apartments = noise.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| Every apartment or condo I've lived in in the US (and it's been
| at least 10) has had terrible problems with noise from neighbor
| units, except 2, and one of those was the top floor. The other
| was actually a concrete high-rise built as condos so I suspect
| that solid construction helped. Voices, TV, footsteps, sex,
| arguments, domestic violence, parties, demo/remodeling, noisy
| pets; you name it, I've heard it in excruciating detail. It's
| not been my experience that "niceness" of the building makes
| any difference either, just height, as wood frame construction
| becomes impractical over a certain number of stories--but
| that's getting higher every few years.
|
| I understand there are construction techniques to mitigate this
| even in low-rise wood frame buildings, but I'll eat my hat if
| any designer or builder in the US bothers unless forced by
| regulation.
| devonkim wrote:
| Most US stock of multi-family housing in low and mid-rise
| apartments were not built with modern building code with STC
| above 45 (hotel framing AKA staggered studs). Furthermore,
| between floors sound can carry, and even older homes can drop
| in STC over time depending upon the material used in insulation
| as well as deterioration of materials over time. My friends
| that lived in only high rise buildings haven't had noise issues
| like myself and many others where we could hear conversations
| on the other side of walls of neighbors similar to the extent
| parodied in the movie Office Space with the main character's
| neighbor.
| greedo wrote:
| The "modern" apartments I've lived in have been relatively
| quiet, but the one 50's era apartment was terribly noisy. It
| was a two story with an attic appt and a basement appt wedged
| in-between the main floors.
|
| I lived on the second floor, and loved the hardwood floors and
| french doors etc. Then someone moved in above me, and another
| across the hall. I could hear the guy across the hall every
| time he opened or closed the door. The guy who moved into the
| attic above me must have been related to Sting. His lovemaking
| sessions lasted for what felt like weeks.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| I think this is a key point of customer discrimination. It
| would be really helpful for housing to have a required and
| standardized "sound-proof" rating. If customers could be
| informed and builders incentivized, then what is build and
| bought could change.
|
| That being said most apts I've lived have been pretty quiet,
| but I'm not sure how much that is from materials or luck with
| neighbors.
| bb101 wrote:
| For anyone interested in these topics and how they developed,
| James Howard Kunstler's Geography of Nowhere [1] is an
| informative, if sad, read.
|
| [1]
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/125313.The_Geography_of_...
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Highly recommend his TED talk. It's both hilarious and
| horrifying.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Great post, and agree with pretty much everything.
|
| Solutions? It's going to be hard, for sure, to find anything.
|
| Maybe:
|
| 1) Move to Italy, or equivalent (I'm in Italy at the moment and
| I'm Italian, so why not some free advertising for my own nice
| country?). Not in a big city, but pick a small town. E.g.
| Montalcino, in Tuscany, is home of the best Brunello wine,
| amazing food, lots of history, etc, and they're bringing fiber
| internet to every home as we speak (yes, I saw the temporary
| cables this morning, running from one place to another. The
| entire town will have high speed internet in a few weeks).
|
| 2) Build a new city. I've dreamed about doing this for the past
| ~30 years or so. I think I know how a city like this should be,
| and it would be a mix of something like Montalcino, and something
| like the modern world. But I have failed to find a way to do it
| that doesn't require having a few Billion dollars of disposable
| money.
|
| 3) ??
| voldacar wrote:
| Do most small-town Italians speak English, and would they
| actually want a bunch of expat Americans showing up in their
| neighborhoods one day? You may be Italian, but for others...
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| I think that most would be very welcoming, and the younger
| generations speak a decent English for the most part.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| Why don't American cities redevelop older houses?
|
| New England (except some posh suburbs) is filled with old rotting
| wooden houses. Fit for the 19th century but today they just look
| like slummy creaky shacks.
|
| Just why wouldn't the cities raze old houses to build new ones?
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| Financial incentives aren't there. Why would I redevelop and
| old house if it's cheaper for me to buy a lot and build new?
| nine_zeros wrote:
| Cities should just add a deforestation/nature tax to new
| lots. The market will only have lots that already has a
| property on it.
|
| It is important for older cities to rejuvenate and when
| cheaper alternatives don't exist, they will be forced to
| redevelop. See how large cities redevelop in constrained
| areas.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| A land value tax might be a more effective way to encourage
| redevelopment. That way it doesn't matter if unused land is
| in public or private hands.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| | All of America's institutions are focused exclusively on churn.
|
| Planning prior to 1990s was predicated on the assumption of
| continued upward mobility, middle class persistence and strength
| of US production of goods and services (a/k/a wealth).
|
| Instead, the US exported all of that to China, and praised its
| new service-led, consumer-based, greener economy. Of all the
| self-inflicted (likely fatal) wounds inflicted upon great
| societies throughout history, the civic ignorance (and arrogance)
| of our body politic is the greatest.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| Let them serve lattes ? to rephrase an unfortunate quote from
| France
| kcatskcolbdi wrote:
| Let them eat cake was a monarch's response to being told the
| starving poor had no bread. She offered to let them eat cake,
| as that's what she had been eating.
|
| Your version would only make sense if the rich were
| previously serving lattes.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| "Let them eat cake" is the traditional translation of the
| French phrase "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche", said to have
| been spoken in the 17th or 18th century by "a great
| princess" upon being told that the _peasants_ had no bread.
| frenchyatwork wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it was a silly joke. "Qu'ils mangent de la
| brioche" (brioche is a light pastry bread) is unlikely to
| have actually been said by Mme Antoinette anyways.
| munificent wrote:
| "Yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in
| time we created a lot of value for shareholders."
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
| nightski wrote:
| This is such a dumb quote, because obviously they are
| creating a lot of value for customers as well. It's easy to
| blame "rich shareholders" and ignore our own impact via
| consumerism. Especially when many Americans themselves are
| shareholders through retirement plans.
| avidiax wrote:
| "Shareholder value" seems to be concentrated in industries
| that serve wants rather that needs.
|
| Basic clothing, food & shelter might have large cash flows,
| but they don't have the profit potential needed to have
| "shareholder value" compared with consumerist industries.
|
| To put it another way, we could satisfy most human needs
| with little associated "shareholder value" by meeting those
| needs efficiently.
| urthor wrote:
| As a non-American... this model is crazy in my mind.
|
| How/why do you not promote the growth of denser, middle class
| inner city neighborhoods with a diverse profile? Is there a
| positive reason to not encourage it?
|
| Is it entirely driven by the fact that local taxes decline on the
| outskirts? If local taxes were done at a uniform rate statewide,
| would it helps? Building standards which means construction of
| "depreciation homes" is not viable, and owners have to build for
| 100 years in greenfields?
| Causality1 wrote:
| Because nobody wants to live there. Americans by and large come
| in two types: the urbanists who want to live in a big city, and
| everyone else who wants a cottage in the woods that's file
| miles from a McDonald's. Sanphillippo wants a return to this
| 1940s idea of dense small towns, walkable towns with a
| population of ten thousand. He doesn't get that those towns
| weren't that way because everyone liked it; they were like that
| because they had to be. People were too poor to have a personal
| vehicle. Everybody either farmed and only came into town when
| they had to, or worked in the same factory, or worked in a
| store where the factory workers spent their money. Then when
| the industry changed the factory closed and the town died
| almost overnight.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> Americans by and large come in two types: the urbanists
| who want to live in a big city, and everyone else who wants a
| cottage in the woods that's file miles from a McDonald's
|
| The majority of Americans live in an area they describe as
| suburban.
| hycaria wrote:
| I don't want to live dependent of a car
| Causality1 wrote:
| Then don't. Live somewhere with good public transportation.
| Just don't think that you're ever going to live in a small
| town and be completely satisfied with not having one. Most
| people who don't want to live in a concrete jungle simply
| don't like having everything crammed together like that. I
| certainly don't.
| thrower123 wrote:
| It's probably difficult for a non-American to understand just
| how deeply associated dense, urban environments are with random
| violence and crime.
|
| If I could live in an environment like Berlin, I might consider
| it, although I'd still get itchy at having that many people
| around. But that's not a reality anywhere in the US that you
| have that kind of density.
| odiroot wrote:
| > how deeply associated dense, urban environments are with
| random violence and crime. > If I could live in an
| environment like Berlin, I might consider it
|
| You made me chuckle. Berlin is heavily associated with crime.
| There's multiple better and safer cities to live in Germany.
| ben_w wrote:
| Associated I can believe, but it doesn't feel bad to be in
| it.
|
| Don't get me wrong, when I was in a tiny quiet village in
| the UK I once came back from the local grocery shop to find
| my front door had bounced open instead of locking itself
| when I'd left and _absolutely nothing_ happened as a result
| of this mistake, and I _don't_ expect the same here; and
| sure, Berlin has a _lot_ of graffiti, but I don't feel
| fundamentally unsafe in even the most loudly afearing
| places like Gorlitzer Park or Alexanderplatz -- I don't
| even get why the latter is on the list of places people
| talk about when suggesting danger.
|
| Really, the worst I experience here is the fire brigade and
| ambulance sirens (and, confusingly, one time where the
| sirens were on a van marked "Netzgesellschaft
| entstorungsdienst", which both Google and my own limited
| German think is something close to "Network company anti-
| jamming service", which feels implausible).
| nisa wrote:
| Netzgesellschaft Entstorungsdienst: It's an emergency
| service for gas leaks[1] - it may feel implausible but
| it's totally common in Germany to have a
| "Netzgesellschaft" or some other very generic name like
| "Wasserverband" (water organization).
|
| 1: https://www.nbb-netzgesellschaft.de/ueber-die-
| nbb/entstoerun...
| ben_w wrote:
| Thanks! :)
|
| (What felt implausible was my translation rather than
| anything else, and indeed you showed that it was an error
| on my part).
| [deleted]
| minikites wrote:
| >deeply associated dense, urban environments are with random
| violence and crime
|
| It's true that people think this, but it's not true in
| reality. Many people who don't live in cities believe in the
| 1980s TV and movie version of cities because they're afraid
| of anything new or diverse.
| roamerz wrote:
| I moved from a semi rural area about 30 miles outside of
| Medford OR to an apartment in a reasonably nice area inside
| the city about 2 years ago while I am developing and
| building a house on a piece of property. Compared to the
| area that I moved from and will be moving back to the level
| of random violence and crime in this area is much worse and
| completely offsets any other benefits such as being close
| to work, city infrastructure (water sewer power and fast
| internet) and easier access to shopping and dining. Crime
| and violence thrives in densely populated areas because
| there is more opportunities for such per square mile. So
| yeah people think this because unless you live in a dream
| world that's reality.
| cortesoft wrote:
| This is strange to me. I have lived in big cities for my
| adult life (San Francisco and Los Angeles), and I have
| never experienced any crime.
| bombcar wrote:
| The thing to look for is evidence of protections against
| crime - barred windows and high walls, locked garages vs
| street parking, hotels and businesses with security vs
| everything just open, having to get a key for the
| bathroom vs it just being there, etc.
|
| It's like COVID-19- there's no use in pretending it
| doesn't exist because I nor anyone I know well has had
| it.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| You do wonder about all these walled communities in
| places like Richardson and Plano, TX. What are they
| defending against? When you walk around the area there
| was no evidence of crime or disorderly behaviour, yet
| they still had that strange architecture. So what are
| they defending against?
| bombcar wrote:
| Outsiders. They don't want anyone wandering around.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| The way people prioritize the perceived risk of crime is
| incredibly overblown, largely due to politics and how the
| Republican/Democrat rural/urban divide is so heavily
| propagandized.
|
| Wyoming's homicide rate is 4.4 per 100,000...
|
| NYC's homicide rate is 5.5 per 100,000...
|
| Los Angeles' homicide rate is 6.2 per 100,000...
|
| Mississippi's homicide rate is 11.2 per 100,000...
|
| Chicago's homicide rate is 18.26 per 100,000...
|
| There are differences... but it's not as clearly
| urban/rural as it's made out to be. Economic factors seem
| more relevant as far as I can tell. Of course there are
| also other types of crime to consider, but homicide is
| the common fear.
|
| Meanwhile...
|
| National rate of death from car accidents is 11 per
| 100,000...
|
| Death rate from obesity-related cancers is 54.9 per
| 100,000...
|
| Yet very few people seem to advocate for more walkable
| rural towns or reducing the amount they drive.
| truncj wrote:
| Not saying either side's sweeping statement is correct,
| but "if it hasn't happened to me, its not a problem"
| mentality is less than productive.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Sure, but the person I responded to was giving an
| anecdote, so I responded with one.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Yeah I've lived in a few neighborhoods where e.g. I heard
| gunfire from time to time, had my car broken into.
|
| Living there was gentrification and leaving was flight...
| kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| > the level of random violence and crime in this area is
| much worse
|
| Have you actually experienced any of this random violence
| and crime? Or does the city just have more news coverage.
| roamerz wrote:
| Yes. Aside from what I consider nuisance encounters I was
| walking my dog by my apartment one evening and I had a
| very close encounter with someone who was vandalizing a
| neighbors vehicle. I was able to get enough video
| evidence of the act in progress to assist the Police with
| identifying and charge the perp. I had to testify in
| Grand Jury for my troubles.
| rhino369 wrote:
| Has any western nation achieved dense middle class inner city
| neighborhoods post WWII? The anglosphere cities that rose after
| the ubiquity of the automobile are all sprawling. The outer run
| suburbs of all western major cities are sprawling.
|
| The cities with dense middle class inner city neighborhoods
| mostly developed without cars.
|
| You'd have to ban cars to achieve it.
| Qwertious wrote:
| Check out Amsterdam. You don't need to ban cars, you just
| need to make bikes a preferable alternative. And as has been
| mentioned all over this thread, check out the YouTube channel
| called Not Just Bikes, for a ton of good videos on the
| subject.
| rhino369 wrote:
| Amsterdam is my point. If it were founded in 1906 instead
| of 1306 it would look more Los Angles.
|
| It's very hard take an area developed around a car
| (everywhere in America since 1920s) and make it bike
| preferable.
|
| You basically need for the area to be so run down that you
| can start from scratch. Like a taking a formerly industrial
| area and then only zoning it for mixed use, high density
| residential/commercial use.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| > You don't need to ban cars, you just need to make bikes a
| preferable alternative.
|
| You also need flat ground. Soccer-moms do not do hills.
| Steltek wrote:
| From scratch? What starting point are you looking for? I
| don't think enough time has passed for a classical organic
| urban core to have developed from nothing. I guess for
| walkable postwar communities, I would look at college towns.
| jppope wrote:
| As an American... this model is crazy
| btbuildem wrote:
| Because the driving philosophy is to make a profit. Not to
| build a liveable place or a sustainable community, not to
| improve the standard of living for people, not even to build
| something great. Only to squeeze most dollars out of an
| invested sum.
|
| Once you look at it that way, it makes perfect sense.
| Depressing, self-destructive, short-sighted, awful, but
| logical.
| nine_k wrote:
| Now let's think about ways to make sustainable communities
| and higher standards of living a better investment! They
| _are_ valuable, we just need to be able to share some of that
| value with the investors who decide what to build and how.
| maxsilver wrote:
| > How/why do you not promote the growth of denser, middle class
| inner city neighborhoods with a diverse profile? Is there a
| positive reason to not encourage it?
|
| They do promote it. Every city in the US is promoting inner-
| city neighborhood development (commonly called "gentrification"
| here). It's just not usually a great for actual citizens.
|
| Dense construction is always more expensive, so anytime density
| goes up, your immediately paying a lot more money for a lot
| less housing. And property in the US is valued exclusively by
| it's density (what realtors will call "location, location,
| location", but really just means "how much stuff is around it
| -- how dense is the area"). Living near density (even if your
| own property is not dense) always costs a lot more money, which
| means your again paying a lot more cash for a lot less housing.
| Alternative public transit options are poor in most places, but
| simultaneously, most inner-cities are actively hostile to our
| current universal public transit (cars), so the closer you live
| to the center of town, the harder it will be for you as a
| resident to get anywhere regularly, and you'll be
| transportation-disadvantaged compared to any of your friends in
| the suburbs. And because it's more expensive to live there, the
| taxes there are almost always much higher (since the tax you
| pay is based in large part on the value of your home, and
| houses near the city cost more, so you also get to pay more in
| taxes).
|
| And, since families generally don't have lots of money to
| spend, they are in the same boat as you, and almost entirely
| pick suburbs (to save lots of cash and get better transport),
| so their kids all enroll in schools out there, so the quality
| of the schools out there is a lot higher, which makes future
| families more likely to make the same decision.
|
| And if you have anything "tricky" happen to you (perhaps a
| elderly family member needs support, or you get divorced, or
| your kid becomes disabled, or similar), any and all of the
| assistance you might want or need to help deal with that, is
| also easier to get out in the suburbs. And since your cost of
| living is lower out there, if you need extra cash to handle a
| problem, it's easier to financially float that in the suburbs.
|
| The model is crazy, but it's not crazy at the person-level.
| It's mostly crazy at the federal level. The government _could_
| let properties actually depreciate, so that renovating old
| properties inside the city is cheaper than building new out in
| the suburbs. But that would require them to let property values
| fall in urban areas so that housing can become affordable, and
| cities as well as all rich people are always 100% against that
| idea. So instead, federal policies prop up artificially high
| property values in urban areas, with the net effect being a
| semi-explicit policy that cities are not for most people. The
| goal is that anyone not single /20-something/wealthy, should
| not ever actually live there, and these policies are mostly
| successful at doing that.
|
| > If local taxes were done at a uniform rate statewide, would
| it help
|
| Probably not. The problem with local taxes is not usually that
| the rate is much higher, it's that the cost of living in a city
| is much higher, so your property itself costs way more, and
| that means you pay way more in taxes (even if the rate were
| hypothetically exactly identical in both, you'd still be paying
| way more in taxes city-vs-suburbs, because urban housing tends
| to cost way more to buy, and the taxes you pay are based on the
| sale price of the property itself)
|
| > Building standards which means construction of "depreciation
| homes" is not viable
|
| This is a good idea, but it would actually help the suburban
| sprawl far more than it would help the city (since lower
| density is more affordable), it would encourage people to stay
| in suburban sprawl longer, since those properties would still
| always be cheaper, but now (under this new rule) would also
| would be better built and last longer.
| GhostVII wrote:
| If people want to live in a single family home in the suburbs,
| why not let them? It's not like the US is short on space.
|
| In areas where there is high demand for a particular reason
| (ex. NYC or the Bay Area because of the job market) I think it
| makes sense to intensify. But in cities where it isn't
| important for a lot of people to live close to the center, I
| don't really see a problem with just building more houses.
| Having a backyard is nice.
|
| If you ever go to Phoenix, all you see is miles of suburbs. And
| then you drive out of the city, and all you see is miles of
| open land that they can expand into. I say just keep building
| them, clearly they are pretty popular.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| In principle I agree, but I think that in many cases these
| developments are not well thought out.
|
| Any time the housing values in an area significantly drop or
| the population largely leaves, what gets left behind is a
| poor and poorly maintained neighborhood that creates a ton of
| negative externalities for surrounding areas. When you build
| an entirely new development on undeveloped land this is
| almost guaranteed to happen as all of the buildings and
| infrastructure will need to be replaced at the same time.
| Qwertious wrote:
| >If people want to live in a single family home in the
| suburbs, why not let them? It's not like the US is short on
| space.
|
| 1. The main complaint you hear is R1 zoning, which doesn't
| just permit single family homes but MANDATES single family
| homes. This is wasteful lunacy.
|
| 2. If single family homes can pay for their requisite
| infrastructure without external subsidy, then by all means.
| If they can't pay and expect others to pay _for_ them, then
| we need to have a conversation on the topic.
| notacoward wrote:
| > If single family homes can pay for their requisite
| infrastructure without external subsidy
|
| ...and they basically don't, over time. The initial boost
| in property-tax revenue is eventually overwhelmed by the
| maintenance costs for all that sprawling infrastructure.
| It's one of the drivers behind the churn that OP is all
| about. A fuller exposition was discussed here recently.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27727133
| jandrese wrote:
| It is a relic of slavery. As former slaves moved into the
| cities to find work in the reconstruction era and beyond the
| white residents fled to the suburbs and took their money with
| them. This lead to a decay of the inner cities which sets up a
| viscous cycle of poverty and neglect.
|
| There's a second problem where people who might have good
| intentions and try to revitalize the inner city are instead
| considered to be gentrifiers. Basically in an attempt to break
| the cycle of poverty they cause the rents to increase and end
| up pushing out the poor people instead of uplifting them.
| whymauri wrote:
| Good keywords and historical moments to Google here are "The
| Great Northward Migration" and anything related to the
| founding, population, and history of 19th/20th century
| Chicago. I believe there was a Chicago newspaper (Tribune,
| maybe?) that circulated special edition pamphlets to the Deep
| South with instructions and guidance on how to successfully
| migrate North. Black supporters caught circulating documents
| like this could be killed in retaliation -- it was a wild
| time.
|
| Edit: it was the Chicago Defender.
|
| >Chicago's African-American newspaper, the Chicago Defender,
| made the city well known to southerners. It sent bundles of
| papers south on the Illinois Central trains, and African-
| American Pullman Porters would drop them off in Black towns.
| "Chicago was the most accessible northern city for African
| Americans in Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas."
| They took the trains north. "Then between 1916 and 1919,
| 50,000 blacks came to crowd into the burgeoning black belt,
| to make new demands upon the institutional structure of the
| South Side."
|
| If a recall correctly, they also circulated imagery and
| content about the Black experience abroad; for example, in
| Paris. Arguing that if the condition for Black people was
| comparatively better abroad, then there was no reason for
| conditions to remain so dire in the US. This sort of content
| was particularly enlightening.
| jes5199 wrote:
| the larger cities have been on a trajectory like what you
| describe - it's difficult to increase density, home owners are
| resistant to it, but it happens gradually anyway.
|
| but in small cities, there's just too much empty space
| available. people just build further and further out from the
| old city center, so they can have their giant houses and
| enormous yards.
|
| my state, Oregon, has a concept of an "Urban Growth Boundary"
| which is a zoning rule meant to reduce sprawl, and it helps
| somewhat. But generally people in the smaller cities vote to
| keep density very low.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > How/why do you not promote the growth of denser, middle class
| inner city neighborhoods with a diverse profile? Is there a
| positive reason to not encourage it?
|
| 1) The US is _really big_. Seriously. Our population density is
| 1 /3 that of the EUs with a similar (but now smaller) total
| population. Only Sweden and Latvia are less dense as EU member
| states. Add to that most of the US is more temperate than most
| of Europe and therefore we have even more desirable land
| (Barcelona is north of New York City).
|
| That is to say, we have less need for it. Houston and Phoenix,
| our 4th and 5th biggest cities, just keep expanding out as
| opposed to up. This has long term costs, but certainly is
| cheaper.
|
| 1a) Gas is also a lot cheaper in the US than the EU. Two car
| families are plentiful. So spreading out costs less. And all
| our infrastructure (outside NYC, DC and maybe Boston/Chicago)
| is based around cars, not mass transit, so you need a spot to
| park your cars.
|
| 2) Local taxes are (in general) done based on the value of a
| house. If new houses in less desirable places are cheaper to
| originally buy, they are often also cheaper to hold. They have
| fewer established tax costs as well for maintenance of public
| transit or school because those come later (or not at all).
| What he's talking about is greenfield on the other side of a
| legal boundary, so there are different (usually fewer)
| governments to levy taxes. In the US, you may pay taxes to your
| city, county, state and the country (a lot of caveats there I'm
| skipping). If you buy a house outside the city, that's one
| fewer entity that can tax you.
|
| 3) There's a huge anti-urban political component. Literally,
| there are people who want rural areas to thrive and cities to
| fail. In some states (see Texas and Arizona, where Houston and
| Phoenix are), these people control the state.
|
| 4) Amazingly, for some reason (possibly holding offshore
| dollars), it's far more profitable to use the same square
| footage for luxury condos that sell out right away compared to
| many smaller cheaper houses/apartments in desirable cities.
|
| 5) It's literally been sold to generations of Americans that
| owing a lawn is a sign of having succeeded. That's where the
| "white picket fence" comes in. There is a huge market demand
| for suburbs.
| [deleted]
| notacoward wrote:
| Overall a great answer, but I'm not so sure of #3. Yes, there
| are people who want big cities to fail, but AFAICT not many
| of them are rural themselves. They're in smaller cities or
| outer suburbs ("exurbs") of big ones. They play to a rural
| image or ethos, but typically neither know nor care about
| anyone truly living a rural life.
|
| Also (6) higher level/quality of municipal services, because
| those are (mostly) funded from local taxes. This is most
| obvious in schools but you can also see it in the personnel,
| equipment, and training of the local police and fire
| departments, the number and maintenance level of parks, etc.
| munificent wrote:
| I agree with all of your points in general, but I hate the
| framing of 5) because it presumes a narrative where people
| don't have agency over their own preferences.
|
| I love density and urban living. I've lived in lots of
| apartments over the years. I currently live in a single
| family home. Having a house and a yard is absolutely awesome:
|
| 1. I get acoustic isolation from my neighbors. I don't care
| when they watch loud movies. They don't care when I make
| music.
|
| 2. I have green space that I have autonomy over. Shared parks
| are nice for being a _passive consumer_ of green space. But a
| personal yard means I get to be an _active participant_ in
| its horticulture. I can garden, which has shown repeatedly
| over the years to be good for mental health.
|
| 3. I have more windows that let in more natural light when
| I'm inside. My living space is more seamlessly connected to
| the outdoors. I get natural light on all sides of the
| structure.
|
| 4. It's easier and more efficient to let my dog out in my own
| fenced yard.
|
| I don't think people need _huge_ sprawling yards to get most
| of this benefit. The UK model where everyone has a little
| garden behind the house is probably sufficient. But I do
| think Americans are generally smart enough to like single
| family homes mostly because _they like single family homes_
| and not because they have been hoodwinked by some nefarious
| pro-suburbia organization.
| bsder wrote:
| > But I do think Americans are generally smart enough to
| like single family homes mostly because they like single
| family homes and not because they have been hoodwinked by
| some nefarious pro-suburbia organization.
|
| Maybe, but I would also argue that the US dependence on
| cars makes anything other than single family homes totally
| suck.
|
| The fact that you need a car means you need somewhere to
| park that car. Don't need to go anywhere for a couple days?
| If you've parked on the street, sucks to be you, your car
| got towed. So, you need a garage. And probably enough space
| for two cars, not one.
|
| You want to walk? Great! Except that you have to cross
| several 4 lane highways because we have to accommodate all
| those cars. And, that's assuming you have somewhere you
| want to walk to within a reasonable distance.
|
| You don't have a car so you want some big thing delivered?
| Hope you can wait 2 months and can take off an entire day
| from work.
|
| etc.
| munificent wrote:
| _> Maybe, but I would also argue that the US dependence
| on cars makes anything other than single family homes
| totally suck._
|
| It's definitely hard to untangle the affects of cars on
| city planning from single family homes, but I don't think
| the two are inextricably intertwined. There are many
| places and have been many time periods with plenty of
| both single family homes and public transit use.
|
| _> The fact that you need a car means you need somewhere
| to park that car. Don 't need to go anywhere for a couple
| days? If you've parked on the street, sucks to be you,
| your car got towed._
|
| I live in a single family home in a very walkable city
| with plenty of public transit. I park on the street and
| have never been towed or had my truck broken into. These
| days because of COVID, I rarely drive more than once a
| month. Even before the pandemic, I usually biked to work
| and left my truck parked on the street for weeks without
| using it.
|
| I think you're exaggerating to say that single family
| homes push towards giant two-car garages. There are lots
| and lots of single family homes that are not in sprawling
| suburbia.
| crooked-v wrote:
| I think there's one other major factor you're entirely
| overlooking here: cost. NIMBYism and bad zoning lead to
| that a lot of US cities with housing far, far more
| expensive than similar places in many other countries.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > I hate the framing of 5) because it presumes a narrative
| where people don't have agency over their own preferences.
|
| People have agency over their preferences? Then why do
| people ever strive for stuff? Wouldn't it be easier to just
| want to eat canned beans/spam/nutritious mush to keep you
| healthy? Why are they sad when they cannot afford
| something? Why don't they just stop wanting it?
| bllguo wrote:
| of course Americans like single family homes. I'm sure most
| people throughout the world would love the option. They are
| appealing by definition. But are single family homes good
| for society? They use space so much more inefficiently.
| They encourage more electricity usage, along with other
| resources. They forcibly maintain the wastefulness of
| American car culture. They are ludicrously profligate yet
| have been normalized in this country. It's not that some
| "nefarious organization" hoodwinked people - they are a
| devil's bargain that nobody had the foreknowledge to
| contain.
| munificent wrote:
| _> I 'm sure most people throughout the world would love
| the option. ... But are single family homes good for
| society?_
|
| Is not the ultimate goal of society to enable people to
| pursue and hopefully attain what they love?
|
| _> They use space so much more inefficiently. They
| encourage more electricity usage, along with other
| resources. They forcibly maintain the wastefulness of
| American car culture. They are ludicrously profligate yet
| have been normalized in this country._
|
| Efficiency is not a first-order goal of society. The
| maximally efficient society would kill all of its
| citizens. Everyone walks into the oceans. Plenty of free
| food for the fish and no human consumption whatsoever.
|
| The goal of society is to _provide meaningful happiness
| to its members_ efficiently. It doesn 't strictly
| increase efficiency to simply take away things people
| want.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > Is not the ultimate goal of society to enable people to
| pursue and hopefully attain what they love?
|
| That's not what I would consider the ultimate goal, if
| for no other reason than I don't see how that allows us
| to forbid drunk driving or heroin use.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > 1. I get acoustic isolation from my neighbors. I don't
| care when they watch loud movies. They don't care when I
| make music.
|
| This part is so hard to overstate! I will never voluntarily
| move into shared-wall or shared-ceiling housing. Unless I
| was so broke that I had to do it or become homeless. The
| neighbors' TV. The neighbors' arguments. The neighbors'
| partying. The neighbors having sex. The neighbors clomp-
| clomp-clomping up the stairs directly outside my door. The
| cops making loud visits to the neighbors when they
| misbehaved again. This has been pretty much a constant for
| me in apartment living, no matter the town. I knew I "made
| it" as a grown-up when I finally moved to a single family
| house where I couldn't hear a neighbor. Never again!
|
| The other things you mentioned are great bonuses of
| suburban living, but the major benefit is acoustic distance
| from neighbors--and stepping back a bit--in general not
| being forced by proximity to be a part of your neighbors'
| wild lives.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Oh, I like SFHs too, but my new-build home in London was
| sound-proofed to the gills. I ran into the neighbours at
| the lifts one day and they apologized for their kids
| shrieking "they've been awful this weekend, I'm sorry". I
| hadn't heard a thing. I could hear the river boats and
| everything with my window open (faced the Thames) but I
| never heard a peep out of a neighbour.
|
| American construction is shoddy, which is why American
| homes are relatively cheap, even at the mid-luxury end.
| High-end luxury is pretty good. My cousin pays some
| $12k/month for his home and it's really quiet.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Having loved high-density cosmopolitan places, I confirm
| it's not baked in American values but it's based on actual
| benefits:
|
| - In high-density, you share everything. Therefore,
| everything is closed for public access during Covid, but
| also when there is wind, rain, hot weather or risks of
| terrorist attacks (talking from experience of my life in
| cities). The rulers of the city have effective control on
| your ability to see the sun.
|
| - Cities are suitable when politically leaning towards
| collectivization. And when you're over with your youth
| ideas that everyone will fit together and do peace and
| love, you start starting at the poster in the hall of the
| building that says "Let's fit together" as, not only an
| injunction, but shoving in your face that people here, in
| fact, are different, don't fit, and their kid is racketing
| your kid, you end up despising the people who keep telling
| you to "livetogether" (vivrensemble). Given cities gather
| people who lean towards collectivization, you yearn to get
| your own lawns with friends who will understand this.
|
| - Also, the costs.
|
| So, it's not cultural love for lawns, it's a cycle of
| people moving by necessity.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| It's not an irrational value, but it is an American value
| pushed by society.
| Scarblac wrote:
| 6) Americans are allergic to central planning.
|
| In Europe cities like this would be _planned_ much more, and
| as this kind of city development would be seen as
| undesirable, the plans just wouldn 't allow it. In the US it
| just sort of happens because of a mass of choices by
| individuals.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| The best cities I've visited in America have been planned,
| ironically. New York City follows century-old grids.
| Savannah maintains park squares first laid out in the early
| 18th century. Washington DC was designed and built from
| nothing. Perhaps these don't match the definition of Euro-
| style central planning however.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I don't think it's ironic at all. I think the poster you
| are responding to is making the point that better city
| planning leads to better cities, but that America is
| opposed to central planning. You're pointing out the
| planned cities that made it in are great.
| [deleted]
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Isn't planning the same as the zoning people are
| complaining about?
| nemoniac wrote:
| > Our population density is 1/3 that of the EUs with a
| similar (but now smaller) total population. Only Sweden and
| Latvia are less dense as EU member states.
|
| USA 36 per Km2
|
| Sweden 22
|
| Latvia 30
|
| Finland 16
|
| Estonia 29
|
| Norway 16
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Europe#Populat.
| ..
| virtue3 wrote:
| he said EU:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_European_
| U...
|
| Finland 16.3 Sweden 22.2 Estonia 29.1 Latvia 30.2
|
| Not all of europe :). Just off by two. I think the point
| still greatly stands as the EU average is 105.3.
| zip1234 wrote:
| Mostly agree, but disagree slightly with number 5. In most
| places, it is illegal to build any denser. Town zoning laws
| are notoriously slow to change such that they do not keep up
| with the market and actually codify a lot of these problems
| in their regulations.
| majormajor wrote:
| The poster you're replying to still has the cause vs effect
| right. That gets encoded into law because _that 's what a
| lot of people want._ The law follows the demand - people
| know that there are developers out there with far more
| money to throw around then they have, so they fight money
| with law.
|
| So when you get densification in US cities, it happens in
| districts that were formerly industrial/commercial only -
| where people aren't giving up the form of their existing
| neighborhoods - or in poor areas with little political
| organization.
|
| (There's also a TON of underutilized land in
| industrial/commerical only districts in most US cities, so
| the focus on single family home zoning when all those lots
| are already there and similarly "underutilized" is foolish.
| Even if you abolished zoning overnight, a big industrial or
| commercial property is going to be much easier to acquire
| than a bunch of individual home lots.)
| nine_k wrote:
| I think this is covered by (3), the anti-city sentiment.
|
| This is why there are so few cities (in the European sense)
| in the US, and many of the largest 'cities' are just small
| downtowns in an ocean of suburban neighborhoods.
| Pxtl wrote:
| It's worth noting that Japan also has a depreciation-based
| model of housing construction, but in Japan they don't
| endlessly sprawl outwards - isntead they knock down the old
| depreciated homes and rebuild in-place. Their permissive zoning
| model allows this to provide intensification naturally without
| the kind of protracted legal and PR battles required for
| intensification redevelopment here we have here in North
| America.
| epivosism wrote:
| Background on japanese zoning which backs up these
| statements: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-
| zoning.html
| taneq wrote:
| The attitude to homes there makes an interesting contrast
| with Western perceptions of a home as an appreciating asset.
| As I understand it they treat houses more like cars - a
| valuable but depreciating purchase that will be replaced
| within 2-3 decades.
|
| (Also I find the conversation-framing interesting here - when
| discussing a U.S. neighbourhood a "diverse profile" is
| presented as self-evidently ideal, whereas when discussing a
| Japanese neighbourhood it's never mentioned.)
| speeder wrote:
| I am a fan of city building games, and one thing that greatly
| annoys me is the fact that all of them use the USA-only model
| of "Euclidean" zoning (named after Euclid, Ohio, that sued on
| the supreme court to be allowed to implement that kind of
| zoning now popular in USA).
|
| These games will never recreate brazillian cities for
| example... Sao Paulo, it has a neighbourhood that was a farm,
| and another that was a swamp. Some guy bought the swamp, and
| started to build offices on it, a ton of them. The
| construction workers then started to build their homes on the
| farm, back then intended to be temporary homes while they
| built the offices, but today the ex-farm is a full blown
| dense residential neighbourhood in the middle of downtown,
| and the swamp is a place full of towering glassy high-rises.
| Meanwhile in another area, a neighbourhood that was USA
| suburb-style full of big houses, that formerly belonged to
| wealthy farmers of the region, people realized that place was
| very easy to reach compared to some others, so perfect for
| offices, slowly the houses became offices, then torn down to
| have proper office buildings, then those got torn down and
| turned into towers, and then some towers had residential
| apartments built on them so people could live closer to work.
|
| None of that would been possible in US model.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| This probably has more to do with gameplay mechanics and
| the influence of the original sim city than anything else.
|
| This style of zoning allows a good middle ground where the
| player has input into the usage of the city without having
| to micromanage every building.
|
| A city builder that lacked that concept entirely would be
| interesting, but you'd have to come up with some other
| abstraction that feels vaguely reminiscent of city planning
| and also is engaging from a gameplay perspective.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| If I ever retire early to build city building games, I
| think it'd be nice to step back from the "series of
| rectangular lots" model and instead model the house,
| garage, driveways, and the like, as objects that a
| constraint solver can place. Then zoning becomes a series
| of specific rules: setbacks, fire codes, parking,
| accessibility, and the like. Bundle up zoning rules and
| apply them as you will. Make your agents look for a place
| that meets their needs, or renovate their own property.
| Have actual landlords, offer rent control if you dare...
| build civic capital with community organizations so that
| displacing people or gentrifying the neighborhood too
| quickly means a loss of stability, and urban conflict ...
|
| Mind you, this is a boatload of work.
| jtms wrote:
| I would absolutely love to work on building a simulation
| at this level of fidelity, but I feel like making it
| actually fun to play would be the largest challenge.
| Maybe if the scale of it was at a neighborhood scope it
| would be possible to make it engaging - somewhere between
| The Sims and Sim City in scale and granularity
| pontifier wrote:
| Sim HOA?
|
| There are some people who just love to be up in
| everybody's business.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Not all US locations have those zoning laws. Houston, for
| example, doesn't.
| zip1234 wrote:
| They still had minimum parking requirements last I
| checked.
| brandonhorst wrote:
| Very interesting discussion about exactly that
| misconception in this interesting video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxykI30fS54
| _jal wrote:
| That's more Texas-marketing than anything else. It has a
| lot of things that smell a lot like zoning, they just
| don't call it that.
|
| Deed restrictions to a lot of the work. There are also
| density restrictions.The city steers where it wants
| things with tax policy, a big chunk of the city is
| governed by airport (federal) rules, and then add in
| historic preservation, buffering ordinances, lot size
| restrictions and so on, and there is little surprise
| Houston looks just like everywhere else in the US.
| notacoward wrote:
| In some parts of the country - dunno about Houston
| specifically - a high percentage of the housing stock is
| governed by HOAs which make zoning boards look like
| anarchists by comparison.
| munificent wrote:
| _> These games will never recreate brazillian cities for
| example... Sao Paulo, it has a neighbourhood that was a
| farm, and another that was a swamp._
|
| The neighborhood I grew up in in Louisiana used to be a
| swamp before it was landfilled. My current neighborhood
| used to be a public dump. Most of Silicon Valley used to be
| farmland.
|
| I'm not sure where the claim that changing zoning or use is
| completely impossible in the US comes from.
| purple_ferret wrote:
| >How/why do you not promote the growth of denser, middle class
| inner city neighborhoods with a diverse profile? Is there a
| positive reason to not encourage it?
|
| More houses = more taxes. Development is promoted in less dense
| areas because it creates jobs and brings in money. New
| constructions are profitable, and the industry is basically
| dictated by builders that throw up cheap houses on plots of
| land they bought for 10k.
| cesaref wrote:
| A good book to read on the subject is Jane Jacob's The Death
| and Life of Great American Cities. It's 60 years old now, and
| is concentrating on cities rather than towns, but you can see
| the points she is making play out in scenes like the article
| mentions.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_Am...
| foxyv wrote:
| In the United States, 75-90% of all land is zoned for single
| family residences with maximum densities of 4-5 households per
| acre. This is a legacy from the era of integration of non-white
| Americans called "White Flight." White Americans, seeking to
| avoid living next to non-whites left urban centers and
| populated suburban centers which had been engineered to be
| unaffordable or inaccessible to black and non-white Americans.
|
| Houses were large and separated by lawns. They also required
| financing to purchase. Financing which was usually denied to
| non-whites by red-lining. In addition these neighborhoods were
| usually walled off and mazed to prevent people from walking
| through them. This made families depend on expensive cars to
| get where they were going, further increasing the burden on
| those living within and excluding poor and lower middle class
| Americans.
|
| Now we have these pointless laws that are slowly strangling us
| to death with expensive car infrastructure that is insanely
| expensive and deteriorating fast. Small businesses can't
| survive because of poor walkability, parking minimums and
| outside investors jacking up rent costs. People can't find
| homes because they are all too expensive.
|
| The legacy of racism is a death pact for America. I hope we can
| escape it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight#:~:text=White%20f...
| .
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
| leetcrew wrote:
| 75-90% of what land? the federal government owns 28% of the
| entire land area in the US, and that land is not "zoned" for
| any type of private residence.
| foxyv wrote:
| Incorporated city land. EG: Where most people live. An
| example would be Fontana here:
|
| https://www.fontana.org/DocumentCenter/View/28163/General-
| Pl...
|
| A little less egricious is Costa Mesa which serves as a
| commercial center.
|
| https://www.avenzamaps.com/maps/489436/city-of-costa-mesa-
| zo...
| jjoonathan wrote:
| > White Americans, seeking to avoid living next to non-whites
|
| Were they fleeing minorities or were they fleeing violence
| and landlords?
| nine_k wrote:
| To add to this, in 1950s the low density was seen as a
| protective measure against bombing, including nuclear. Dense
| cities like Dresden or Nagasaki were famously destroyed by
| firestorms from powerful bombing. Population of areas with
| semi-rural density had much better chances to survive a
| nuclear blast, hiding in a basement shelter.
| cherrycherry98 wrote:
| To blame this all on racism is to miss the true motivation
| which is safety of person and property. It is something I
| never truly understood until last year's protests/riots,
| which I think are also at least a factor in people moving out
| of urban areas again (though few will admit it). When there's
| unrest which results in arson, looting, and vandalism, those
| with means will seek safer locales and erect physical and
| institutional barriers to keep out potential threats. Venice
| is a historical example of this, built on the water for
| protection from barbarians.
|
| There are knock on effects such as dimmer prospects for those
| left than in the more integrated communities that proceeded
| as investment flees. People rightfully don't want to invest
| in areas deemed unsafe, where those investments would be at
| risk.
|
| To be clear, where such barriers manifest in ways where
| people are judged or treated differently based on immutable
| characteristics or group identity instead of their individual
| character, this is wrong.
|
| This is a pretty good take on the ramifications of race
| riots: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/racism-riots-
| economics-...
| bllguo wrote:
| safety of person and property.. from what? because if the
| answer boils down to racial/socioeconomic unrest, blaming
| racism seems justified, no?
| notacoward wrote:
| You portray this as a one-way relationship, but it's a
| cycle. Yes, perceptions of safety are part of the reason
| why people flee to the suburbs, but that flight is itself
| part of the reason so many inner cities are destitute and
| unsafe. Why put all of the blame on the people most
| negatively affected by this dynamic and least able to
| change it?
|
| > People rightfully don't want to invest in areas deemed
| unsafe, where those investments would be at risk.
|
| That's exactly the rationale behind redlining, food
| deserts, infrastructure funding (especially schools) and
| other kinds of systemic racism. I suggest you read up on
| what that term means. It does _not_ mean that everyone
| participating in the system is racist. It means that our
| institutions and economy _themselves_ perpetuate racial
| injustice even without further racist intent. Framing this
| entirely in terms of "rational" choices by those who flee,
| as if those who stay don't exist or don't matter, is
| perpetuating a false narrative. So, again, why?
| munificent wrote:
| _> To blame this all on racism is to miss the true
| motivation which is safety of person and property._
|
| I think this sentence is much closer to the mark if you
| say: "the true motivation which is _perceived_ safety of
| person and property. "
|
| I think you are right that people seek out less density and
| more personal space when they feel insecure or under
| threat. But in the modern journalistic landscape that
| sensation can be quite decoupled from the reality of their
| actual risk of harm.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > How/why do you not promote the growth of denser, middle class
| inner city neighborhoods with a diverse profile? Is there a
| positive reason to not encourage it?
|
| How do you do that?
|
| The US has the luxury of space that other countries don't and
| that space mostly is owned by the public and not federal,
| state, or local governments.
|
| - In the US, zoning and land use are typically managed at the
| micro level, not the macro level (city < county < state <
| country).
|
| - There's also a persistent threat of competition both at the
| state and county level. So most policy is about attracting
| residents and jobs, maintaining property values, etc.
|
| - Proximity to a major city impacts price so the further away
| you travel, the more home you get for the same price.
|
| - When people don't like how the local government is behaving,
| they'll hold a referendum and form a new city to escape
| regulation.
|
| If you look at a city like Atlanta, you see that upper middle
| class have moved further outward from the metro area with each
| decade to larger more expensive homes (e.g. Brookhaven -> Sandy
| Springs -> Roswell -> Alpharetta -> Cumming). They did this
| because as undeveloped property decreased it drove property
| values up so they were able to sell their homes and purchase
| larger but cheaper homes in undeveloped neighborhoods. The
| cycle repeats itself every 10 years or so.
| zip1234 wrote:
| Use taxes pay for less than half of road funding. Make it so
| that use taxes pay for ALL of road funding for a start.
| pwinnski wrote:
| Promote how?
|
| I'm in the Dallas "metroplex," and it understood here that you
| get more value for your money the farther out you go. There's
| the inner loop (Loop 12) and outer loop (I-635) inside Dallas
| city limits, and then there are suburbs which again can be
| described (at least in the north) as "inside TX-121" and
| "inside US-380." As you cross each "boundary," your choices
| provde more value--defined as less money for more space, or
| newer construction, or both.
|
| I grew up in San Diego, which is naturally constrained by
| mountains, ocean, an international border, and a military base,
| even before you add state and local laws. The Dallas area has
| no such constraints anywhere, nothing to keep it from sprawling
| until it reaches the state border to the north--and really,
| nothing to keep it from sprawling beyond that, either.
| checker wrote:
| Americans tend to value square footage over their commute
| time. So the cycle goes:
|
| 1. Hmm, I can get 2000 sqft inside the loop and 5000 sqft in
| the outer suburbs. Outer suburb for me!
|
| 2. Everyone else does the same thing and the area grows
|
| 3. The people in the outer suburbs starts loudly complaining
| about how horrible traffic has become (because they moved
| there when relatively few other people lived at and beyond
| the edge)
|
| 4. Roads are widened and new roads are built to ease traffic.
|
| 5. Now that there's road capacity, developers start building
| out even further.
|
| 6. Repeat step one with different people another layer out
| and the cycle continues.
| hamaluik wrote:
| The YouTube channel Not Just Bikes [1] explores this in a short
| series [2]. I'm not very knowledgeable in this area, but what
| he discusses rings true for my city at least.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes [2]:
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6...
| arethuza wrote:
| The episode that mentions the experience of walking 800m in
| Houston from a hotel to a shop reminds me of an experience
| where a group of us (drunken Europeans) were trying to get
| from a bar in one hotel to another bar in another hotel in
| that city... I'm surprised we weren't arrested.
| kuang_eleven wrote:
| We do in some places! Actual cities have exactly that profile,
| and have the opposite problem of this article; a dense city
| core that is so _expensive_ that it can be hard to live in.
|
| This article is really describing the failures of suburbia,
| that soulless monstrosity. By all rights, no matter what is
| legally true, this 'Appleton' is not a city, or a town or a
| village, it's just the vestigial growth of people who all want
| to live in suburbia.
| minikites wrote:
| >If local taxes were done at a uniform rate statewide, would it
| helps
|
| In general, Americans hate taxes because they hate the idea
| that "their" money might go to someone undeserving.
| mc32 wrote:
| It, in fact, is their money. There was a time in American
| history when income taxes were not a thing and still we got
| along.
|
| It's not a bad thing to pool money for common causes, but to
| claim it isn't their or our money is kind of odd.
| titzer wrote:
| It's your money like it's your water and your oxygen. Build
| some big tanks on your "property" and put machine gun nests
| around it to defend it.
|
| Everything in modern society is part of a social contract
| that includes thousands of people working to keep it from
| devolving into anarchist chaos of violence and subjugation.
| mc32 wrote:
| That's understood.
|
| But I have as much right to my money as I have a right
| not to be raped. Society provides for all this in our
| social contract. We can choose to include income taxes in
| that, but we don't have to. We didn't have them initially
| as a republic.
| titzer wrote:
| We can "choose to include them" until we discover that it
| is unviable to fund the necessary services and find out
| society is completely dysfunctional without them.
|
| As expat returning to the US after 7 years, it's clear
| that US is headed in the wrong direction because it has
| made decades of poor choices, particularly w.r.t.
| taxation and long-term investments, and is sliding
| rapidly into dysfunction. And the confusion that has led
| to those poor choices seems pretty well-summarized in
| your first comment.
| mc32 wrote:
| I'm not against taxes. There are things that can only be
| executed as a group.
|
| What I am against is the notion that it's not mine. That
| by default it belongs to the government and it's only out
| of the goodness of their heart they allow me to keep
| some.
|
| It's the other way around. We form a government and we
| decide what we want to contribute to it with taxes.
|
| We decide we need a school, a road, engage in war, etc.,
| and we contribute to those efforts via tax contributions.
|
| I don't want to contribute to never ending wars, I don't
| want to contribute to subsidizing companies that export
| jobs, etc. I want money to train inner city kids, rural
| kids, not some reconstruction in some place that has much
| less immediate effect on us.
| danaris wrote:
| I don't think any reasonable philosophy of taxes tries to
| claim that your money "belongs to the government" and
| "they let you keep some".
|
| We _pay_ taxes. It 's our money, then we pay some of it
| to the government to support the government, and pay for
| the myriad of ways in which the government supports us.
|
| It is not possible to live in this country and _not_ be
| supported by government services in a dizzying variety of
| ways, visible and invisible. Those services cost money.
| Therefore, we pay taxes for them.
| mc32 wrote:
| I was responding to:
|
| "In general, Americans hate taxes because they hate the
| idea that "their" money might go to someone undeserving".
|
| I'm saying it is indeed our money. Not the government's;
| we choose to part with some, but the taxed money was
| never the government's. It was always ours.
|
| It's like giving a kid an allowance, and then one day you
| say you don't have enough to give them that week/month,
| whatever, and they say, but it's "my" money. No it's not.
| danaris wrote:
| If you _don 't have enough_ to pay your taxes, then
| you're in a very unusual position, because the average
| American gets their taxes withheld from their paycheck
| regularly. It must mean that you own your own business,
| or are doing something fairly unusual, _and_ have failed
| to properly budget with taxes in mind. No one "doesn't
| have enough to pay taxes" just because they don't make
| enough money, because income tax is progressive
| _specifically_ to avoid that type of problem.
|
| As for it being "your money"....sure, one can say it's
| "your money", but you _owe_ it to the government for
| services they provide on an ongoing and pervasive basis.
| It 's like a subscription fee for civilized living.
| minikites wrote:
| >What I am against is the notion that it's not mine.
|
| Did you attend school at any point? Do you use any civil
| infrastructure? Does the public fund or buy your work? Do
| you use any tools made by others?
|
| The Jeffersonian idea of the yeoman worker who creates
| value solely through individual effort is a harmful one,
| because it ignores the importance of society in shaping
| the individual and it ignores all of the invisible inputs
| into the work of every individual. Nobody's salary is
| entirely "theirs" because nobody creates value without
| the involvement of others.
| nicoburns wrote:
| It's only their money because the economic system assigns
| it to them. If the economic system was different then it
| wouldn't be theirs.
| mc32 wrote:
| That's like saying it's only their house because we allow
| them to own a house. Or, those are their children because
| we allow them to keep their children and not assign them
| to the state.
|
| It's as if in lawless lands with tribal warfare suddenly
| people don't earn a living.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Children are a bit different because they are actually
| created by the parents (and the personal relationship is
| of course super-important for the child's development).
|
| But generic economic resources: yes. Ownership of pretty
| much anything including houses relies on social
| acceptance of the rules of private property ownership and
| market value. And that social acceptance can be
| conditional on things like taxes to fund social goods. If
| you don't want to play by the democratically determined
| rules, then you shouldn't expect the state to defend your
| property.
| mc32 wrote:
| I think that property-children is on a continuum. When
| you have raiding parties and tribal warfare, children
| were taken as slaves. From that PoV then children are in
| the same basket where they are protected by the norms of
| society, same as property.
|
| Saying you only own your money or house because we allow
| you to is like saying the only reason you don't get raped
| or killed is because we have a structure of laws against
| it. Yes?
| jes5199 wrote:
| yes true. property, especially real estate, is a legal
| construct created by the state. In older eras this was
| more explicit, property existed "at the pleasure of the
| Queen" or whatever. Now we rely on a nebulous social
| consensus reinforced by the courts and legislature.
|
| Money is only a token within this game - it has no
| reality other than the rules. The rules are whatever
| society decides they are. There is not a "real" ownership
| that the rules are interfering with.
| mc32 wrote:
| But that's true for any rights. The right to feel safe,
| the right to safety and not be harmed, raped or killed.
| Without society, sure, real-estate, personal safety are
| out the window and we could expect expropriation, rape
| and death.
| frockington1 wrote:
| In the US property is also governed by ones rights to
| defend your property. We have castle doctrine for a
| reason
| jes5199 wrote:
| yes, there is always the option to return to violence,
| for anyone who'd prefer to be nasty, brutish, and short.
| defaultname wrote:
| You have "Castle doctrine" because it was deemed
| politically beneficial to a politician at some point.
| That same politician that would happily turn your
| neighborhood into a strip mall through eminent domain if
| that was beneficial for them. You have banks literally
| foreclosing on the wrong homes, or through simple errors,
| making people homeless in the process, and those same
| politicians are "so sad".
|
| If you're in a Western nation and you "make" money, it is
| very much a partnership with the state, and your ability
| to "make" money would very likely disappear without the
| state. For someone to go on about "their" money has no
| correlation with actual reality, and I'd encourage them
| to ply their trade in Somalia. I'm sure the income tax
| rates are great.
| mc32 wrote:
| This is kind of circular reasoning. You might as well say
| you are only alive because the state lets you live.
|
| It's my life as much as money is my money. Yes, they can
| be taken away.
| minikites wrote:
| The first US income tax was in 1861, I find it hard to
| believe "we got along" when we held a significant portion
| of the population as literal slaves.
| mc32 wrote:
| That's very true for the south. Yet, the north still got
| on and did even better than the south.
|
| Never the less, you can go to any other place which
| didn't have slaves and they still got on without income
| taxes.
|
| And, if you go to parts of the middle east where slavery
| exists today, income taxes have not prevented it, so it's
| beside the point.
| nicoburns wrote:
| It's just a theory, but I'm somewhat convinced that half the
| reason Americans hate taxes is because of how inconvenient
| and in your face they are in the US: IRS requires you to fill
| in a complex form with no help and punishes you if you get it
| wrong, and sales tax is not part of the advertised price of
| goods. I reckon if you got rid of that then people would care
| about taxes a lot less.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > I reckon if you got rid of that then people would care
| about taxes a lot less.
|
| Which is precisely why the party that is ideologically
| opposed to taxes will never let that happen.
| mindslight wrote:
| Americans hate taxes because we see little benefit from
| them. Federal taxes make up the brunt, and they mainly go
| to the military and corporate welfare. The biggest federal
| benefit is social security, and people don't see that until
| they retire. Even the benefits that do trickle back locally
| (eg highways, schools) are more of an end-run around state
| sovereignty rather than a respected benefit.
|
| Local taxes mainly go to the domestic military and schools.
| You only see the main benefit if you have kids in public
| school.
|
| State taxes are the most useful - large enough scale to
| accomplish things, but small enough scale to remain
| somewhat accountable. But since people can easily move
| between states, these become subject to intense
| politicking. For example, "Taxachusetts" even though its
| overall income tax rate is only 1.2x that of New Hampshire
| (32% vs 27%, for incomes $22k-$52k).
|
| I'd personally love to see a flip of the magnitude of state
| and federal tax rates, money flowing between the two in the
| opposite direction, and a way for individuals to earmark
| what their tax money goes to. Some ability to steer taxes
| towards things they value would go a long way to making
| people feel enfranchised.
|
| edit: lots of downvotes, but no counterpoints. While there
| are many things government does that I do value, I don't
| think their costs add up to anywhere near what is being
| paid in. What value do you feel you personally get from
| your taxes, apart from longing for some sort of social
| contract?
| nradov wrote:
| People should care about taxes a lot more. I want to know
| exactly how much money the government is taking from me by
| force. It's a good reminder that we need to be vigilant
| against uncontrolled government growth, and vote
| accordingly.
| frockington1 wrote:
| That's the point, every year you are aware of how much the
| government is taking from you. If citizens weren't aware of
| exactly how much taxes they paid they would be more
| inclined to want more tax increases
| minikites wrote:
| Absolutely, and it's set up this way on purpose by people
| who believe that filing taxes should be as painful and
| difficult as possible so people associate the idea of taxes
| with the artificially difficult process. It doesn't have to
| be this way, the rest of us are just held hostage by anti-
| tax zealots.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| You seriously think that people want less taxes just
| because they are difficult to file?
|
| Don't you think that paying 10-40 percentage points more
| (like in Europe) of your wage each month has something to
| do with it?
|
| The typical educated European makes 30k a year. 40-45% in
| taxes right off the bat. That makes the take home to be
| around 18k.
|
| Sales tax is around 20% throughout Europe. That takes it
| from 18k to 16k.
|
| Gas is double the price solely because of taxes
|
| Property tax can increase the housing cost by 10%
|
| Automobile property taxes are outrageous compared to the
| US. New vehicle registration tax can reach 150% in
| Denmark (if the car costs 30k, pay 45k to the state), but
| are pretty high everywhere. In Romania, to register a 10
| year old car with a 2.4 liter engine you have to pay 6000
| euros. In a country with the average wage 1000 a month.
|
| I find it so amusing that people think taxes are just an
| inconvenience.
|
| By the way, if you want to pay more, you can just donate
| your money to charities: you have a higher impact than
| giving it to government, much better directed at what you
| care about, very easy to do. Donate 10-20% of your raw
| income to an ngo, then talk about doing that for
| everyone, compulsory.
| Y_Y wrote:
| I'd like to see a citation for those income numbers,
| they're much lower than the figures from e.g. Eurostat:
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
| explained/index.php...
| raverbashing wrote:
| > makes 30k a year. 40-45% in taxes right off the bat
|
| Pretty much _nowhere_ in Europe you 're paying
| (effective) 40% on a 30k/yr salary. Nowhere. You're most
| likely not even reaching that tax level.
|
| > New vehicle registration tax can reach 150% in Denmark
|
| > Private cars: 25% of DKK 65,000, 85% of DKK
| 65,000-202,200 and 150% of the rest.
| https://skat.dk/skat.aspx?oid=2244599
|
| So again you don't know how tax bands work (and Denmark
| is kinda of an exception)
| flavius29663 wrote:
| > It's not "sales tax"
|
| Sure, it's "VAT" - but it's essentially the same thing.
| You pay it for almost everything you buy. There are some
| lower rates for food in some places. But guess what, US
| has that too.
|
| > Nowhere
|
| Try this https://accace.com/payroll-calculator-romania/
| raverbashing wrote:
| Thanks for the link, but again you're taking the
| exception as the rule. Most countries _don 't_ work like
| that.
|
| (it's also possible that social security is deductible
| before income tax is levied as per this site but I'm not
| looking too deeply into it: https://expatcenter.ro/tax-
| guide/ )
| 988747 wrote:
| Romania also don't work like that, in principle. They are
| simply much poorer country than Norway. 30k EUR salary in
| Romania is upper middle class income, so it is heavily
| taxed. People making average wage pay much lower taxes.
|
| Also, if I get the linked calculator right, then it
| expects you to put MONTHLY salary, in RONs, not EUR. So,
| just putting 30000 there you get a monthly salary of over
| 6000 EUR, or 72k per year. And that's taxed at 41%.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| Romania is much poorer than Norway, but the tax is the
| same - it's a flat tax rate. Play with the calculator and
| you'll see. The numbers are in RON - which is 5 times
| smaller than the dollar, and the value is implied to be
| monthly - but it makes no difference because of the flat
| rate.
|
| In other countries you might have tax brackets, but I
| know from experience that it's very easy to reach 45%
| total tax rate (not marginal).
|
| e.g. try Belgium, at 100k the state gets 50% https://www.
| belgiumtaxcalculator.com/?salary=100000&average=...
|
| Try UK. At 50k you pay "only" 26%, but then in the US you
| pay almost nothing, if you have a family with kids and
| use the deductions smartly.
| nicoburns wrote:
| From what I've read, US tax burden is pretty similar to
| Europe if you include health insurance costs, you just
| get less for it. Property prices are the main thing that
| seems much worse in Europe, but that doesn't have
| anything to do with taxes.
|
| Donating my income is besides the point, as it's the top
| income brackets that really need to be taxed. I would and
| do happily vote for higher taxes on myself when the
| option is available.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _US tax burden is pretty similar to Europe if you
| include health insurance costs_
|
| The U.S. collected 10% of its GDP in taxes in 2020 [1];
| France and Italy did about 25%, Germany 11.5%.
| (Switzerland and "communist" China clock in below 10%.)
|
| There is sufficient variation in tax policy across the
| EU, let alone Europe, to make broad-based comparisons
| meaningless.
|
| [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.Z
| S?most_... _a more-expansive definition from the Fed
| raises this to 16% [a]_
|
| [a] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > The U.S. collected 10% of its GDP in taxes in 2020
|
| This is incorrect (despite the citation).
|
| Federal tax collection in 2020 was about 16% of GDP
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S
|
| The OECD reports "The tax-to-GDP ratio in the United
| States has decreased from 28.3% in 2000 to 24.5% in
| 2019."
|
| https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-united-
| states.pd...
|
| For comparison, the weighted average in other OECD
| countries is about 34%.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| There is no way German tax as part of GDP is just 11.5%
| Maybe just some subset of taxes
|
| Overall it's 38%: https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-
| statistics-germany.pdf
|
| For the US you're missing some taxes, too because the
| overall is somewhere near 30%, 10 percentage points lower
| than Germany. I think your US link does not include state
| and local taxes etc
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > The typical educated European makes 30k a year. 40-45%
| in taxes right off the bat.
|
| Drivel.
|
| Here in Norway (widely reputed to be heavily taxed) a
| single person earning 30 kUSD and having neither debts
| nor savings would pay 4752 USD in tax, about 15%. You
| would then pay up to 25% VAT on things you buy (less on
| food and rent).
|
| See https://skattekalkulator2018.app.skatteetaten.no/?aar
| =2020&a...
| snakeboy wrote:
| Same principle as Cookie Banners. Wanting basic browsing
| privacy is being associated with an annoying,
| artificially difficult process.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Tax hate didn't really begin in it's current form till
| Reagan as a backlash to the Civil Rights Movement. When
| black Americans were excluded from the programs that taxes
| paid for, resistance was minimal.
| jhawk28 wrote:
| I think you can go all the way back to the Boston Tea
| Party for tax hate.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| That doesn't explain the difference between the opinions
| on taxes and it's change before and after the Civil
| Rights Act.
| wwweston wrote:
| There are certain actors in the US political system who
| _definitely_ believe the complexity /pain of filing is a
| feature, not a bug, as it leads people to associate taxes
| with pain instead of the benefits of living in a successful
| modern industrial democratic state.
|
| Combine that with a tax prep lobby whose incentives are to
| sell you a solution.
|
| The IRS could have made things as easy for most Americans
| as places like New Zealand did two decades ago.
| ghufran_syed wrote:
| Property tax payment is very easy in the US, because it is
| usually done as part of your regular mortgage payment -
| people still dislike paying it.
|
| The IRS is also a lot more helpful than commonly advertised
| - I once had a several thousand dollar expense
| reimbursement from work that my employer wrongly classified
| a miscellaneous untaxed payment to me. They didn't attach
| any penalties, just sent a letter essentially saying "we
| think you forgot to include this in your income for YEAR,
| we think you owe $X + $Y interest."(and the interest amount
| was very reasonable, like 3-4%)
|
| I just emailed them a copy of the receipts and email I had
| sent to my employer when claiming reimbursement, and noted
| that I had not claimed those expenses on my tax return, if
| I had done , then it would have exactly matched the tax
| owed.
|
| They replied a few weeks later telling me thanks and that I
| owed nothing extra.
|
| I do worry about arbitrary abuse of government power in the
| US, particularly against those guilty of WRONGTHINK, but my
| personal experience was exactly what I would hope for as a
| citizen, professional, clear and timely.
|
| I still would still like taxes to be lower - but if you
| told me I had to make a mandatory charitable donation of
| the same amount every year to a real charity, I would be
| fine with that. So in my case at least, it's that I expect
| the unionized middle class government workers to get most
| of the benefit of my extra tax, not the poorest people in
| society who need it most (and who are usually presented as
| the need for such increased taxes)
| atmartins wrote:
| Maybe a lot of people are struggling to get by? "Their money"
| represents the ability to pay for food and housing so I'm not
| sure it's only about wanting others to suffer, as you imply.
| I think it's at least partially about their own sense of
| security.
| pwinnski wrote:
| A government that provides nothing to support feelings of
| security in exchange for the taxes they collect is... not a
| good government.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >the idea that "their" money might go to someone undeserving.
|
| I'm also pretty miffed at how much money has been wasted in
| Afghanistan and Iraq. The federal government gives heaps of
| money to other nations to spend on frivolous projects while
| our own infrastructure decays. My frustration at taxes and
| spending goes beyond the trope of Americans not liking the
| idea of giving money to the poor.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Foreign aid is tiny, like less than one percent of the
| budget. Foreign wars are definitely huge, however.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I want to clarify that I am okay with foreign aid and
| disaster relief. The "foreign aid" that acts like soft
| bribes are the kind I really detest.
| Karsteski wrote:
| Is that really the general consensus? If anything, so much of
| taxation goes to waste on bureaucracy and inane or downright
| criminal nonsense in the US. I live in Canada, and I
| basically consider it to be theft that my taxes that are
| taken from me forcefully go to places such as giant
| corporations, and military applications that I do not want to
| happen.
|
| OTOH, I think that taxation is important, and I'm happy that
| my taxes go to health services, something that Canada does
| relatively well, even though I don't necessarily benefit in
| the same way compared to people less fortunate than I am.
| Same for social services, for example.
|
| My point is that I don't think such feelings can be boiled
| down to "my money is going to people who don't deserve it".
| It's a complex topic and complex feelings which should be
| treated as such
| [deleted]
| D13Fd wrote:
| > All of America's institutions are focused exclusively on churn.
| Crank out new stuff, sell it fast, cash out, and move on to the
| next project. Blighted neighborhoods aren't an accident. They're
| baked in to every facet of how we do everything.
|
| I'm surprised there isn't more pushback here about the author's
| central premise, which is very flawed in my view.
|
| I've never found what he is saying to be true at all, even in the
| real estate market. I live in a 40-year-old house that I bought 5
| years ago, and its value has only increased. Before that I lived
| in another 40-year-old house in a thriving and busy market. Some
| of the most expensive places to live in my area date to the
| 1930's-1960's - I know, because my realtor showed them to me last
| time we moved.
|
| The author states that this is some kind of universal truth about
| America, but it's not.
| charles_f wrote:
| I'm in Canada so with a grain of salt. My house is 45y old, and
| it was a cheap house to begin with. All the maintenance is
| done, roof replaced, stucco redone, we've done renos, elec is
| up to code. However when you look at the yearly appraisal, the
| house value keeps dropping year by year. They add a little line
| here and there to keep into account the renos done in the last
| 5 years. The only thing that grows is land value, which more
| than makes up for the house.
|
| I can totally see that were we not in a pressured market, value
| would go done; and America is not at a saturation point where
| land is a big concern _as a rule_.
| D13Fd wrote:
| Do they break out the value of the home vs. the land in your
| jurisdiction? Here we just get an appraisal.
| charles_f wrote:
| Yeah, and everything is public on bcassessment.ca
| mikestew wrote:
| "Here" where? In WA it's broken out by house/land
| appraisal. For King County (which includes Seattle), see
| for yourself with the parcel viewer:
|
| https://gismaps.kingcounty.gov/parcelviewer2/
| epivosism wrote:
| Maybe he's being inaccurately hyperbolic by saying "all" and
| "exclusively". I'd agree that your disagreement there is
| reasonable. But I wonder, if he said "90% of our institutions"
| instead, how would you feel about his claims?
|
| It seems that core areas sometimes go the way you're
| describing, but no peripheral areas do, and we're building a
| lot more of them, but no more cores.
| pard68 wrote:
| My previous house was built in 1902. It had lots of issues. We
| lived in it for almost six years, loved the place and its
| character. I sold it for 50% more than I bought it. It never
| made it on the market before the contract was signed.
| endisneigh wrote:
| > I've never found what he is saying to be true at all, even in
| the real estate market. I live in a 40-year-old house that I
| bought 5 years ago, and its value has only increased. Before
| that I lived in another 40-year-old house in a thriving and
| busy market. Some of the most expensive places to live in my
| area date to the 1930's-1960's - I know, because my realtor
| showed them to me last time we moved.
|
| There's no contradiction between an area being blighted and
| expensive. I've seen incredibly crappy neighborhoods in Boston,
| Chicago, Dallas and New York that were extremely expensive and
| clearly was in need of work.
| D13Fd wrote:
| > There's no contradiction between an area being blighted and
| expensive.
|
| I'm not sure what kind of "blight" you are talking about, but
| the author was focused on real estate values for older
| locations being very low:
|
| >Half the original structures were so devalued that they were
| torn down and replaced with surface parking lots
|
| >The building had been on the market for a very long time
| with no bids. It eventually sold a few months ago for
| $65,000. For comparison, here's a review of a $65,000 luxury
| 2021 Ram pickup truck.
|
| Yeah, if you define "blight" as "I don't like how the place
| looks," then there are probably a lot of "extremely
| expensive" places that are "blighted." But I don't think
| that's what the author was talking about.
| baxtr wrote:
| _"These older places (the homes being built today) will then be
| populated by lower class people with fewer resources and less
| status thereby reinforcing the perception that it's best to move
| on if at all possible. These are fungible, forgettable,
| disposable places that rapidly age and are then left to quietly
| decay."_
| m3kw9 wrote:
| This is a similar trend if you were in the metro, except things
| change right at the spot. Small towns change at a different
| scale. But I'm not so sure towns get abandoned like that
| regularly unless it was mismanaged by the economic development
| centres.
| minikites wrote:
| >But aside from the fact that I didn't care for any of these
| homes and was never going to buy in these locations, I realized
| the truth of the Appleton model. Thirty years from now all the
| new homes she's selling will slip into the "old" category and
| will gradually fester as taxes rise and the middle class migrates
| to new greenfield developments.
|
| Capitalism consumes limited resources (land) for temporary gains
| (poorly built structures that nobody wants after just one
| generation). This is not a sustainable model to build a strong
| society.
| closeparen wrote:
| Suburbia is centrally planned in extreme detail. American
| voters understand that when it comes to housing, capitalism
| must be marginalized to a small box, otherwise the places we
| live would be "too crowded" with "the wrong kind of people" and
| "not enough parking." So it is. And we get out parking, and our
| open space, and our socioeconomic segregation. And this is what
| it looks like.
| mastax wrote:
| I'm convinced that suburbia is popular enough that it would
| survive pretty well without government intervention, just not
| indefinitely in the same locations.
| Steltek wrote:
| Strong Towns disagrees with that. Suburbia is expensive and
| only survives by siphoning off money from cities via state
| grants.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Strong Towns is just one perspective with a strong
| agenda. I began doubting everything they publish when
| they got all the important details completely wrong in a
| story about my home town.
|
| The money that goes to cities is paid by the employers of
| people who commute from suburbs, and the businesses those
| commuters buy from. The mental and physical space of
| living outside the city is essential to maintain the
| productivity and sanity of the urban workforce. Cramming
| all those people into cardboard "luxury" apartments where
| their kids have to listen to their neighbors fighting or
| banging sounds like a great way to end a population by
| ending parenthood. Which is exactly what is happening.
| closeparen wrote:
| We could easily make the same contention about sitting in
| a car for 1-3 hours/day.
| scythe wrote:
| >Cramming all those people into cardboard "luxury"
| apartments where their kids have to listen to their
| neighbors fighting or banging sounds like a great way to
| end a population by ending parenthood. Which is exactly
| what is happening.
|
| It's really hard to take your post seriously when you
| diverge into paranoid conspiracy theories like this one.
|
| _Nobody_ is being forced to live in an apartment. Nobody
| is even being asked to live in an apartment (except by a
| few politically inert eco-activists). We merely want
| people to be _allowed_ to live in apartments! In many
| areas, families compete for houses with groups of adult
| renters, the latter having 3-4 incomes, because
| apartments are so underprovisioned. This of course is no
| good for people 's ability to raise children, but my
| faction isn't loony enough to pretend it's a secret
| genocide.
|
| Meanwhile, urbanists are in fact aware of and regularly
| lament[1, 2] the low standards for sound insulation and
| build-to-code reality of contemporary multi-family
| construction. But when we propose raising the standards,
| we get complaints from conservatives that "the free
| market will take care of it" (even though it obviously
| doesn't).
|
| 1: https://reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/oivn68/sou
| nd_pro...
|
| 2: https://reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/kk1m1n/tow
| nhouse...
| zacherates wrote:
| > But when we propose raising the standards, we get
| complaints from conservatives that "the free market will
| take care of it" (even though it obviously doesn't).
|
| The free market approach would rely on drastically looser
| zoning and other land use restrictions so that tons more
| housing gets built resulting landlords actually have to
| compete and thus start caring about a wider range of
| issues.
| Steltek wrote:
| A false dichotomy that persists because typical US zoning
| encourages only those two outcomes: single family homes
| until the pressure bursts, leading to a high rise
| apartment some place.
| colonwqbang wrote:
| Capitalism tends to produce more of the thing that people
| demand. I would wonder why people want this kind of home. I
| myself am not a US person, don't understand why.
| closeparen wrote:
| These places offer a level of perceived safety [0] and
| measured public school performance that are somewhere between
| outrageously expensive and impossible to replicate in an
| urban setting. Not many people are _excited* about living
| here and don't choose it in their 20s, but in your 30s it's
| understood that you're not going to walk your child past
| needles and homeless encampments to a 2 /10 school. It's also
| understood that doing anything about the needles and homeless
| encampments would be a human rights violation, even if
| somehow the money were available, which it's not. Mechanisms
| which once allowed upper-middle-class urban families to put
| their kids in _good* public schools, like testing-based
| admissions, are also being recognized as unjust and
| dismantled.
|
| [0] The absence of threatening humans makes them _feel_ safe,
| but what we should really be worried about are all the
| vehicle miles traveled.
| watwut wrote:
| > in your 30s it's understood that you're not going to walk
| your child past needles and homeless encampments to a 2/10
| school.
|
| You don't need to live in suburbs to achieve that, really.
| And in suburbs you dont walk child to school all that
| often, you drive them anyway.
|
| > It's also understood that doing anything about the
| needles and homeless encampments would be a human rights
| violation, even if somehow the money were available, which
| it's not.
|
| I mean this 100% seriously: you can actually do things
| about homelessness that are not human rights violations.
| Big amount of homelessness is literally consequence of
| policies - and not the ones that seek to help people.
| closeparen wrote:
| We can surely do a lot more to mitigate the suffering
| that is mostly invisible to begin with.
|
| But as long as there exists a right to decline drug
| treatment or behave unacceptably in shared housing, then
| go camp out in the main pedestrian thoroughfare, at least
| a few people are going to do it, and the city will feel
| like that kind of place.
|
| Even in SF with a massive homeless population, it's fewer
| than 10 faces I see over and over. I still want to help
| the thousands living in their cars, crashing on friends
| couches, or sleeping in out of the way places. But it's
| the 10 dudes being aggressive in very public places who
| are why it's unpopular to raise kids here.
| watwut wrote:
| Fun fact: New Yourk does not have all that lower
| homelessness. They however have more shelters and
| generally systems so it not as acute.
| bombcar wrote:
| SF just needs to build up a bit and have connected
| walkways between each building that the homeless are not
| allowed into.
|
| It's effectively what we end up with.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| Because it's regulation in the form of zoning that produces
| these homes, not capitalism.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| Capitalism wants to build high density in city centers that
| lasts hundreds of years. Zoning is collusion between landowners
| to stop other landowners from producing housing - it's a legal
| (sadly) monopolist practice that requires government.
| mastax wrote:
| Communism is even better at doing that: Khrushchyovkas. At any
| rate, extrapolating a trend from a single society to be an
| indelible part of an economic system is specious.
|
| Transitioning from a property tax model to a Land Value Tax
| model would encourage rather than discourage development, and
| ensure society is compensated for granting someone a monopoly
| on an area of land.
| debrice wrote:
| Would making illegal to discount taxes a solution? It seems that
| businesses jump on the next tax discount according to this
| article.
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