[HN Gopher] Spain lives in flats: why we have built our cities v...
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Spain lives in flats: why we have built our cities vertically
Author : altilunium
Score : 399 points
Date : 2023-11-08 13:08 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (especiales.eldiario.es)
(TXT) w3m dump (especiales.eldiario.es)
| ttfkam wrote:
| Love the visualizations.
| unwind wrote:
| Yes, it was very beautiful.
|
| As someone up in the dark pre-wintery Sweden, it would have
| been awesome with some floating photos of each neighborhood
| too, to convey the feel of each a bit better.
|
| The 3D maps were initially very impressive, but photos would
| have made the various housing forms come to life even more, at
| least for me.
| digitalsushi wrote:
| I agree it would have been more immersive but I believe real
| photos would distract from the information they were
| conveying; their use of color coded building shapes was an
| easy way for me to follow along with the points their graphs
| were making. This presentation made me feel like I was
| walking into a dark corridor of a new science museum and
| feeling captivation
| whalesalad wrote:
| Different strokes for different folks. I'm a very happy single
| family home dweller. Living in a dense city feels claustrophobic.
| capableweb wrote:
| Indeed :) Living too far away from any metropolitan area makes
| me feel claustrophobic as there is usually very little social
| groups active in my favorite hobbies/niches unless near a city.
| jansan wrote:
| You really should look up the meaning of "claustrophobia"
| capableweb wrote:
| Maybe isolated is a better word then, for me they feel just
| about the same.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| It is two sides of the same coin I think. People are
| horrible and wonderful, and museums and forests are both
| wonderful. If we invent spatial warps I want a front door
| in one of these big Galician high rises and a back door
| in a tiny house somewhere forested mountains meet the
| sea. I'm up for learning Galego.
|
| Edit: I am aware green spain has places where forested
| mountains meet the sea, so I guess it could be a really
| short spatial warp, but there is something about standing
| somewhere you can sing as loud as you can, and knowing no
| one could hear you but the squirrels.
| prmoustache wrote:
| As do the original commenter. Agoraphobia may be a better
| word in both cases.
| marssaxman wrote:
| Claustrophobia feels like the right word to me; suburban
| life feels like being trapped in whichever tiny little
| patch of land is yours, hemmed in on all sides by not-
| yours, not-welcome, keep-out places belonging to other
| people. Such places feel especially confining to those who
| cannot drive.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Indeed. I'm very happy I can live in a large house with a lot
| of land for next to nothing. Please all stay in cities, but
| don't complain about the housing crisis and housing prices;
| it's quite obvious that if you want to all live together
| prices will rise.
| bitwize wrote:
| The Anglosphere is more car dependent and more prone to NIMBY
| policies and housing shortages than continental Europe, because
| continental Europeans are more comfortable with density.
| Density is the solution to many land management problems.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| I would love to read more on that. It would also be
| interesting to look at the places in former english colonies
| that do have higher residential buildings to see if
| continental immigration there might have been involved. It
| sounds like spain had a brief love affair with sprawl as
| well. Perhaps some of it is just that when the population
| boom arrived for the US sprawl was in style and we had the
| room?
| dotcoma wrote:
| Yes, but they got many things right in the Netherlands even
| with an incredibly low percentage of people living in flats.
|
| Bikes, not cars, please.
| VancouverMan wrote:
| The feasibility of widespread bike usage doesn't just
| depend on density. It depends a lot on a region's weather,
| too.
|
| Amsterdam, for example, happens to have weather that's
| relatively compatible with biking, all throughout the year.
|
| On the other hand, for four to six months of the year, most
| areas of Canada, and even a good portion of the US,
| definitely don't.
|
| While a very small handful of people can handle biking when
| it's consistently -10 degC (14 degF) or colder out,
| possibly through 10 cm (4") or more of uncleared
| snow/slush, and possibly on ice, the vast majority of
| people can't and won't.
|
| The summer isn't necessarily any better. The cities in
| southern Ontario, for example, where many Canadians live,
| can become surprisingly hot and humid for weeks at a time,
| and biking isn't pleasant then.
|
| Given those conditions, people will definitely try to drive
| instead of biking.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Even in perfect conditions there's a lot of reasons not
| to bike.
|
| Distances are more difficult, you can't bring someone
| with you, your carrying capacity is much smaller for
| shopping trips. It also just plain takes longer to get
| anywhere and people just don't like spending more time
| than they have to on errands.
| Mawr wrote:
| - Ebikes let you cover great distances with little
| effort.
|
| - You can have someone ride on the backseat or in the
| cargo space of a cargo bike. [1]
|
| - You'd be hard pressed to come up with a shopping load
| that won't fit on a cargo bike. [1]
|
| Then there's the cost vs a car [2], which will likely
| make up for any inconvenience.
|
| Of course, you do need at least decent bike
| infrastructure for this to be realistic.
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/rQhzEnWCgHA?t=470
|
| [2]: https://youtu.be/rQhzEnWCgHA?t=321
| bluGill wrote:
| My car is a lot less effort that my ebike. And the car is
| faster as well. I ride my ebike for the trips too long
| for the acoustic bike, but there are still a lot of trips
| not in reasonable ebike range that I make.
| Mawr wrote:
| Sounds great, that's pretty much the goal - limiting car
| trips to the ones that actually require a car.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Imo, you are no longer talking about cycling once you're
| talking about ebikes and other motorized vehicles.
|
| You're talking about convincing people to buy worse cars.
|
| Motorbikes and mopeds and scooters already exist and
| people largely don't choose them over cars. Changing it
| to "electric scooter" or ebike doesn't suddenly make it
| more appealing.
|
| And you certainly lose the "it's better for physical
| fitness and health" aspect once you're talking about
| motorized vehicles.
| estebank wrote:
| > And you certainly lose the "it's better for physical
| fitness and health" aspect once you're talking about
| motorized vehicles.
|
| > Because electric bikes are less physically demanding on
| joints and muscles, they not only bring in riders who
| might otherwise be inactive, but they also offer the
| opportunity for people to ride longer periods of time and
| go greater distances. That leads to more folks using
| e-bikes as an option for commuting or running errands.
| Although users won't find themselves doing the sort of
| vigorous physical activity uphill mountain biking or even
| hot yoga entails, e-bike use has been shown to deliver
| the sort of moderate physical activity most doctors
| recommend.
|
| https://www.peopleforbikes.org/news/the-health-benefits-
| of-e...
|
| The exercise provided by ebikes when all things are equal
| is lower than regular bikes, but all things are not equal
| as people with ebikes tend to ride more day to day (on
| aggregate).
| Mawr wrote:
| This depends on legislation, but in a lot of countries
| ebikes that don't require pedaling are illegal. From
| personal experience, riding on an ebike still provides
| plenty of exercise, certainly more than the literally
| zero that you get when driving.
|
| In any case, I only brought up ebikes in the context of
| arduous journeys. Most people will not travel by ebike,
| they're too expensive.
|
| It's not about trying to persuade people in car-dependent
| places to go against the grain and bike everywhere.
| Rather, a network of bike infrastructure should be built,
| making biking a viable choice. In time biking would
| become normalized, nobody would need to be explicitly
| persuaded. After all, Americans don't drive everywhere
| because they've been convinced to, they do it because the
| ever-present car infrastructure makes it the most
| convenient option.
| estebank wrote:
| > You'd be hard pressed to come up with a shopping load
| that won't fit on a cargo bike.
|
| There's a side effect of car prevalence and land use in
| the US: everyone can be "expected" to have a car, so
| grocery shops tend to locate in places further away with
| cheaper land, which make it more convenient to make big
| shops, which require a car...
|
| I find that most Americans are not comfortable or even
| familiar with "I'll pop into the shop to buy milk a block
| away". Some neighborhoods in _cities_ don 't have local
| grocery shops. So if you're used to that built
| environment your first thought is "I can't fit a month's
| worth of food in a cargo bike, let alone ride for 10
| miles!?"
|
| But if you propose letting a grocery shop in the
| neighborhood people think "parking, traffic and noise are
| gonna be terrible!"
| Qwertious wrote:
| >On the other hand, for four to six months of the year,
| most areas of Canada, and even a good portion of the US,
| definitely don't.
|
| Myth.
|
| Why Canadians Can't Bike in the Winter (but Finnish
| people can): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| No, it's really not a myth. Biking in the winter is not
| fun unless you have completely enclosed paths. Finnish
| culture means that people do it anyway, but that wouldn't
| fly in American culture, no matter how good the snow
| removal and bike lanes are. I say this as someone who
| bikes year round in a northern city, the vast majority of
| people have no interest in biking in the cold.
| bluGill wrote:
| In general the farther north you go in North America the
| more people on bikes you find. Most people do not bike
| when it is near freezing or below, there are a few.
| dotcoma wrote:
| Calling Amsterdam an ideal city for cycling is a stretch.
| It's coldish, it rains quite a lot and it's very windy.
|
| Things would be a lot easier for people on bikes here in
| Milan, Italy where I live... except that they are not.
|
| It's not so safe during rush hour, and it's full of
| people who would rather take their stupid car instead of
| walking half a mile.
|
| Distances are larger in North America, but climate-wise
| people cycle more in NYC or in Minneapolis than they do
| in Atlanta or in Dallas.
|
| To sum it up: make cycling as safe as possible, and
| discourage car use, and especially car abuse -- picking
| up kids from school with an SUV, for example.
| jorvi wrote:
| Except our distaste for flats has plummeted us into one of
| the worst housing crises of the entire world. Literally
| grinding our entire society to a halt, from students to
| young couples to prisoners to elders to cured long-term
| patients, everyone is trapped.
| rangestransform wrote:
| I don't actually think americans have a distaste for
| flats in general, but that some of them felt the need to
| impose their distaste for flats beyond the borders of
| their own land
| jorvi wrote:
| I'm talking about The Netherlands haha
| bluescrn wrote:
| It's not about being 'comfortable with density', it's about
| having a society where neighbours respect each other, behave
| decently, and keep noise/mess under control, don't keep
| setting the fire alarm off, etc.
|
| The noise problem isn't limited to loud music and parties,
| just the noise of kids playing loudly and running around in
| communal areas can become infuriating to neighbours.
|
| Even if you've got good neighbours, there's other downsides
| with flats - a lack of parking/EV charging, often nowhere to
| safely store a bicycle even. No space to install personal
| 'green tech' such as solar or a heat pump. No garage/shed to
| store tools/bikes/hobby equipment.
| huytersd wrote:
| It isn't. If all my neighbors were angels I still wouldn't
| want to live densely.
| t-3 wrote:
| Ah, yes, Americans are uncivilized barbarians who fight and
| are raucous at all times. Great to see that European
| colonialist spirit alive!
| rangestransform wrote:
| compared to japanese, yes, definitely, 100%
|
| how much piss and shit and trash and grafitti do they
| have in their public transit system
| t-3 wrote:
| How about compared to Europeans? Japanese have a totally
| different nearly pseudo-feudal culture that enforces
| submission and conformity ("the nail that sticks out gets
| hammered down"). Among western states which share a more
| individualist culture with the US, I don't think there's
| all that much difference in behavior.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I suggest that the cause of the anglosphere housing crisis is
| a shared legal system, which sucks, and which is not
| practiced by anyone else.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Singapore and HK had or have close relatives of it, and
| don't have similar issues with density.
| pif wrote:
| Well, do they have any alternative to high density?
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I think it's more about the political system, first past
| the post is looking archaic now. Not that proportional
| representation solves every problem but it would be a giant
| leap in the right direction.
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| Spain also has a housing crisis though.
| jbellis wrote:
| OTOH continental Europe seems to be more prone to try to
| solve housing affordability with rent control, which
| basically results in NIMBY through the perverse incentives it
| imposes.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| IIRC Spain's rent control is just 5 years, which means that
| building newly required density is delayed by 5 years at
| most.
|
| It's a nice stabilizing mechanism because nobody wants to
| move every year just to get the best rent, but most people
| can handle a move every 5 years.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Nice way of saying your proposed transportation system
| doesn't work without forcing people to live in cities.
| estebank wrote:
| It doesn't seem like cities need to coerce anyone to live
| in them. But when visiting cities it is better for the
| city, it's inhabitants _and their visitors_ if they don 't
| bring their negative externalities along from elsewhere.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| They do need to coerce people for funding, which might as
| well be the same thing. That's like saying "people aren't
| forced to attend public schools" - well yeah, but by
| forcing them to pay for it anyways you leave many with
| little other option. Meanwhile a quarter of American
| roads are private. Private transportation would exist
| with or without force. And in anything other than a big
| city, private transportation continues to be superior
| than even the most well funded public transport.
| caskstrength wrote:
| Care to provide link proving your assumptions? Every time
| I checked stats for that for some particular country it
| was always cities subsidizing countryside/suburbs, not
| vice versa.
| travisb wrote:
| Care must be taken when evaluating those statistics
| because all the ones I've seen are done only in dollar
| terms and entirely discount the economic beneficiaries of
| the movement of people and goods.
|
| For example, consider a paved rural road into farmland.
| In dollar terms paving that road is a subsidy from the
| nearest city to the people living in that rural area.
| However, in part the road is paved rather than gravel
| only to support heavier trucks to more efficiently
| transport agricultural products destined for the city. It
| is also paved in part to support larger, faster, heavier
| agricultural equipment which brings economies of scale to
| agriculture and reduces the per-unit price of the result
| -- again destined mostly for the city.
|
| Residents themselves don't need the more expensive paved
| and it isn't their relatively light private vehicles
| causing most of the wear on the road in the first place.
|
| Considered this way, a not insubstantial fraction of the
| cost of non-city areas is the city indirectly subsidizing
| itself. The full costs could be incorporated directly
| into the goods sourced from the supposedly subsidized
| areas, but that would be less efficient overall. For
| example, good roads reduces the cost of agricultural
| products for, say, three months a year. Instead of
| directly paying capital costs to pave the rural road the
| city could pay operational costs in higher food prices
| while missing the other cost advantages of the paved road
| the rest of the year in reduced recreational costs,
| policing costs, education costs, etc. If those other
| costs were higher there would be less of them and people
| would be less willing to live in those areas, increasing
| wage and commuting costs.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Which assumptions? I said nothing about subsidizing
| cities or suburbs. I said cars and roads would exist
| without the government, but anything resembling public
| transport would not.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| No, we just hear more about the anglosphere's problems
| because... we sadly live in an anglosphere obsessed world :).
| English being the dominant language means that we all hear
| about their problems but it's harder to internationally hear
| about say, France's problems.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Everyone on the receiving end of a tacit subsidy is pretty
| happy about it.
| whalesalad wrote:
| not sure what this means
| kdmccormick wrote:
| It means that when you look at government revenue vs
| expenditure per square mile, urban dwellers are massively
| subsidizing surburbanites. It's mainly because maintainence
| of roads, parking, and utilities for a spread-out surburbia
| is vastly less efficient than it is for a tightly packed
| city.
| whalesalad wrote:
| We all pay taxes, I don't see an issue. I pay
| significantly more taxes than people who are living in
| more affordable/dense housing in the city - both in
| property taxes as well as the fact that I earn a higher
| income. I am subsidizing lots of other people in my
| community.
| jeffbee wrote:
| There are loads of people who believe this but who are
| mistaken. Typically they are underestimating the value of
| services delivered to them for free at the point of use.
| We don't know your individual situation of course, but
| it's true in the aggregate.
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| Living in a single family home may be nice, but it's resource
| inefficient to the point of wasteful. Among the resources
| wasted are energetic and spatial resources. There is a reason
| per capita energy consumption in the US dwarfs that in other
| countries. The society bears a huge cost for the individual
| decision to live alone.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Yes, takes all sorts, and probably a lot of it comes down to
| what you're used to. Paradoxically I find being down the
| country claustrophobic; in truly rural areas (and in places
| with particularly poor provision for pedestrians, like most of
| the US, this often manifests even in outer suburbs) you can't
| really get anywhere without driving, and you may not be able to
| leave your house at all without driving (probably no footpath,
| narrow unsafe road).
|
| I'd never consider living somewhere where I couldn't, at
| minimum, walk to supermarkets, bars, restaurants, parks, etc.
| nerdbert wrote:
| Same here. If I can't walk to things I want to do and people
| I want to see, I feel like a prisoner.
| stetrain wrote:
| More dense construction in urban areas will probably help make
| single family homes affordable for those who want them.
|
| I imagine people who own single family homes in nice suburbs
| are pretty happy about it, especially if they bought it when
| prices were half of what they are currently and are paying <3%
| interest.
| Axsuul wrote:
| > More dense construction in urban areas will probably help
| make single family homes affordable for those who want them.
|
| Probably the opposite effect for SFHs in the urban areas.
| People usually prefer living in a detached house, especially
| when raising a family, and those are gradually being replaced
| by these multi-family dwellings, so the supply of them is
| actually going down.
| stetrain wrote:
| Well yes. There is more demand for housing in urban areas
| than there is room for detached single family homes. Either
| prices will continue to increase beyond the affordability
| of those raising families, or density can increase.
|
| That's why they are urban areas, not suburban or rural.
|
| > People usually prefer living in a detached house,
| especially when raising a family
|
| I also think this is kind of a US-centric experience, or at
| least doesn't take pricing and location into account. I
| suppose most people would prefer a single family home in
| central Manhattan but that doesn't exist, and if it did it
| would be unaffordable.
|
| Now a single family detached home with a convenient transit
| commute into the city would be great. The US isn't great at
| building those either.
| ska wrote:
| > People usually prefer living in a detached house,
| especially when raising a family,
|
| I don't think it's that simple. I mean, everyone would love
| a big house on a big yard that is close to _everything_ ,
| but approximately nobody gets to do that. In reality there
| are always tradeoffs, and the the tradeoffs build in
| incentives - sometimes intentionally, sometimes not, that
| people respond to. In a lot of the US those incentives have
| skewed pretty hard recently to exurban singles but that's
| not universal.
|
| These sorts of things are hugely affected by infrastructure
| planning and subsidies, etc. At the end of the day people
| choose between the options they have, not the ones they
| wish they had.
| jjav wrote:
| > More dense construction in urban areas will probably help
| make single family homes affordable for those who want them.
|
| That seems highly unlikely. Let's look at how SFH have become
| very affordable in the densest area in the US, Manhattan. Or
| the second densest, SF.
| stetrain wrote:
| Why would there be single family detached homes in a city
| center?
| matsemann wrote:
| I feel being trapped in a suburb more claustrophobic. Can't
| walk anywhere, entirely car dependant for even the smallest
| things.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Same. I grew up in a house, but I've lived in apartments and
| buildings in the city. When it came time to buy, I bought a
| house. I can't ever see myself not living in a house ever
| again.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| Have you ever lived in a city?
|
| There's also a pretty big variance between a European city for
| example which usually doesn't have very tall high rises, and
| living in midtown Manhattan.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Yep - SF and Honolulu were frustrating places to live.
| Waiting for elevators. Shared laundry spaces. No privacy.
| Noisy neighbors. Noisy parking garages. Noisy street traffic.
|
| I spent 6 months in Sweden and have traveled to a handful of
| other European countries.
|
| The quiet suburban/rural life is for me. After growing up in
| LA, bouncing around SF, DC and HNL I have settled in Michigan
| and really enjoy it here. Plenty of room, not very congested,
| progressive policies. Life is good (albeit sometimes very
| cold)
| j_heffe wrote:
| Single family homes are fine. The problem in the U.S. is that
| it's illegal to build anything _but_ single family homes in the
| majority of suburbs. Wouldn't it be better if people had access
| to a walkable grocery store, coffee shop or park? Or if kids
| could safely walk or bike to school? Many communities have
| absolutely zero options and are completely reliant on cars in
| order to go about daily life.
| bluGill wrote:
| Most suburbs also have higher density zones where you can
| have apartments. The single family homes get the majority of
| the land space, but there are also apartments and townhouses
| which are more dense.
| munk-a wrote:
| Those high density zones suffer economically by being
| forced to subsidized the extensive infrastructure for
| single family homes - and in the US it's quite difficult to
| find an area to inhabit that actually prioritizes
| pedestrians over cars.
| mikebenfield wrote:
| There are sometimes apartments spotted around in a suburby
| area, but due to the nature of US suburbs they don't really
| get many of the advantages density should bring -
| everything you might want to go to is still at least a
| moderate car ride away, there's no people out and about
| because there's no reason for them to be there, etc. Any
| time you leave your apartment you go straight to the
| parking lot and get in your car. It's pathetic really.
| jjav wrote:
| > due to the nature of US suburbs
|
| The US is a big place. Lots of different suburbs.
|
| > everything you might want to go to is still at least a
| moderate car ride away, there's no people out and about
| because there's no reason for them to be there
|
| Can you point at specific places like this? Google street
| view links?
|
| Every suburb I've lived in the US I can walk to just
| about everything I need, kids walk to playground and
| parks, friends houses, etc.
|
| I'm curious to see these suburbs where one can't walk
| anywhere.
| jjav wrote:
| > The problem in the U.S. is that it's illegal to build
| anything _but_ single family homes in the majority of
| suburbs.
|
| This is always repeated, but could you point to studies
| documenting in which cities it is illegal? All around I see
| townhouses, apartment buildings, 2/4/6-plexes and other
| variants being built, none of which are single family homes.
| Maybe it takes a bunch of paperwork (I don't know) but
| clearly it isn't illegal.
|
| > Wouldn't it be better if people had access to a walkable
| grocery store, coffee shop or park? Or if kids could safely
| walk or bike to school?
|
| This is a false dichotomy. One can also live in a SFH and
| walk/bike to all of these things and more. I do, and I do, so
| does my kid.
| csnover wrote:
| > This is always repeated, but could you point to studies
| documenting in which cities it is illegal?
|
| You don't need to look at a study, you can just look at
| zoning and land use maps for basically any city in America.
| Areas zoned single-family are not allowed to build anything
| else. There are multiple articles on Wikipedia[0][1][2]
| about this topic with literally hundreds of citations to
| primary and secondary sources. What a frustrating question.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-family_zoning
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning_in_the_United_States
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| Different strokes indeed. As a very happy apartment/flat/condo
| dweller, the suburban home life feels to me like being trapped
| in a tiny deserted island (the cartoon ones, with a single
| coconut tree), just a tiny personal plot surrounded by endless
| nothingness, with nowhere to go within reach. When in the
| suburbs I end up just staying in the couch all the time,
| because I can't be bothered to face the big journey necessary
| to go places, feels very isolating.
| whalesalad wrote:
| > just a tiny personal plot surrounded by endless nothingness
|
| Truthfully this is the dream.
| jjav wrote:
| > As a very happy apartment/flat/condo dweller, the suburban
| home life feels to me like being trapped in a tiny deserted
| island (the cartoon ones, with a single coconut tree), just a
| tiny personal plot surrounded by endless nothingness, with
| nowhere to go within reach. When in the suburbs I end up just
| staying in the couch all the time, because I can't be
| bothered to face the big journey necessary to go places,
| feels very isolating.
|
| This sounds like a cartoon version of suburbs! Can you point
| at actual suburbs (google map links) where you might be
| surrounded by endless nothingness and can't walk anywhere?
|
| I've lived most of my life in suburbs in the US and have
| never experienced this. The only time I lived in a place I
| couldn't walk to any destination was when I lived in a quite
| rural area. But that was rural, not suburban.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| > Can you point at actual suburbs
|
| Not the OP but when I lived in the US as an exchange
| student I lived in a suburb that looked exactly like the
| one in this video[1], which seems to be a fairly typical
| middle class neighborhood.
|
| Like him I had the same experience of barely being able to
| walk anywhere, given how little space there even is for
| pedestrians.
|
| [1]https://youtu.be/39QOw4IL0Gk?t=509
| RicDan wrote:
| Great way to tell a story and bring data closer to the reader.
| Educational pages could learn a thing or two from this one.
| lelima wrote:
| Great point, imagine learning about Roman history and some 3d
| models of the Roman cities pops up.
|
| Work environment have changed so much in the latest years and I
| feel school remained the same. Last week a young family member
| asked what does excel do? and she's about to enter college, and
| we're talking about Ireland that it supposed to have a good
| school system
| pantulis wrote:
| Spaniard here, I expected to see an infographic basically based
| around Madrid and Barcelona but it seems that special care has
| been taken to cover the whole country, kudos to El Diario team.
| serial_dev wrote:
| One thing that annoyed me is that I constantly had to pause and
| Google all the locations. They really could have put some
| images about the different places and buildings so that it's
| easier to imagine what they were talking about.
|
| ... and I think I'm about to throw up, but that's a smaller
| issue, I take one for the team to encourage creative web
| development.
| coldcode wrote:
| Great analysis. I wonder if Spanish town planners have different
| powers than we do in the US. Town layouts are generally
| historical, you get to today by the sum of decisions potentially
| made decades or centuries or even millennia ago. It's very
| difficult to change a town layout drastically.
| bertil wrote:
| Powers are comparable, but people's expectations are
| dramatically different for many reasons:
|
| * Climate: a shaded courtyard is pretty much necessary given
| the weather, for instance;
|
| * History: not only most city centers in Spain were built in
| the Middle Ages, but they were also built in the Arabic
| tradition of having fountains, slated blinds;
|
| * Economic: Spain grew economically a bit later than the US and
| the rest of Europe: 1980 rather than 1960, they had a similar
| wave of car adoption, but a decade after rebuilding the country
| after the Spanish war.
|
| * Ecology: most of the country is pretty arid: there are
| beautiful vistas, but it's not the place where one wants to
| stay out, baking in the sun, as much.
|
| Spaniards want to be outside, but not in a sea of green grass.
| They much prefer a table in the shade.
| anthk wrote:
| Not all Spain has a Mediterranean climate.
| bertil wrote:
| No, of course - Galicia famously doesn't, but they still
| have tall buildings and courtyards to shelter from the
| unspeakable wind.
| Maken wrote:
| Outside of the areas in the Cantabrian Coast and the
| Pyrenees, Spain is basically a dessert.
| mbroncano wrote:
| That's awfully inaccurate
| anthk wrote:
| Castilles are not a dessert. Even heard of Picos de
| Europa? Mountains from Soria? Sierra Nevada?
| anthk wrote:
| No, Spain it's basically an elevated plateau (> 600m!)
| surrounded by _mountain sierras_ everywhere. Thus, you
| can have bipolar climates in the Castilles, (both
| scorching Summers and ice-freezing Winters), more rain
| than the UK in the North (really), sun and touristy
| places at the Mediterranean zones, and microclimates all
| over the place.
| cracrecry wrote:
| >Spaniards want to be outside, but not in a sea of green
| grass. They much prefer a table in the shade.
|
| If you want to talk about Spain, you need to live in Spain
| ALL YEAR long, not just the summer.
|
| Almost the entire country but the north(in the north it rains
| in summer) is arid in Summer, because of the Azores'
| anticyclone, three or two months, depending on the place, but
| the rest of the year it rains.
|
| Also the arid place is Murcia and Almeria, some part of
| Alicante and Monegros. There is a lot of rain in Extremadura,
| or places near the Ocean, like Galicia, Asturias, Pirineos,
| Huelva.
|
| In august you are going to see anything yellow, but it gets
| green in Autumn, Winter and Spring.
|
| That is, 9 to 10 months a year it rains. There is sun too and
| it is a good thing because it is cold, specially inside.
| Madrid is very sunny and cold in Winter so the sun is great.
|
| I was born in Spain, I live and work in Central Europe but I
| go to Spain in the Winter as it is a much better Winter
| there. In Central Europe anything is burned by the cold and
| then you have snow everywhere.
|
| So it is actually much more green Spain in Winter than in
| most of Europe.
| capableweb wrote:
| Very nice visualization, bit slow animations but overall it was
| informative and looked well!
|
| It seems they're getting the data from the catastral (official
| goverment data), I wonder how accurate this is? Not sure how it
| is in other cities around in Spain, but in Barcelona there are a
| ton of illegal atticos and other addons to buildings, which would
| add more height to the building in real life compared to the
| visualization.
|
| After a quick look, I could see at least two buildings I know are
| taller than what the visualization says (the building next door
| is the same height in the visualization, but has one more floor
| when you see the building in real-life).
| vanderZwan wrote:
| I wonder if Barcelona's "ventilation-oriented" architecture from
| the cholera period had a measurable effect on the spread of
| covid. Of course the article itself notes that a lot of the
| architecture was "speculative", and that modern-day Barcelona is
| very densely populated, but still.
|
| IIRC Spain was also one of the first countries during the
| pandemic to publish research on the importance of keeping rooms
| well-ventilated, so now I'm wondering if there is a connection to
| history there (meaning: more likely to look at the importance of
| ventilation due to cultural history).
| jvican wrote:
| Keep in mind Barcelona and Madrid are some of the densest
| cities in the whole Europe. It's one of the reasons why COVID
| took such a big hit at the beginning of the pandemic.
| flagged24 wrote:
| I'm okay with these high rises so I can enjoy the quiet
| tranquility of rural Spain. Everytime we do stay in an apartment
| in Spain the lack of sound proofing really stands out. Perhaps
| even more so because everything is tiled, no carpets.
| bedobi wrote:
| was gonna comment the same :melting face: I'm an armchair
| urbanist and all about density, and in well built buildings
| it's fine, even with tiled floors you can't really hear your
| neighbors
|
| but in Spain it's as if the buildings are built with zero
| soundproofing - you hear every single neighbor in the whole
| building and their tvs, radios, conversations, footsteps...
| it's maddening, I don't understand it
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Noise is the largest complaint my spouse has with dense
| buildings. I tune things out easily, but I also found myself
| self conscious about walking softly when I lived above
| people.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Me too. What's annoying is it seems hard to tell what it's
| going to be like before you actually move in.
|
| I've lived in a few different flats in the UK, all purpose
| built flats. I already knew flats in converted houses are
| generally terrible. I've been in some where you can hear
| _everything_ your neighbour is up to. I 'm not sure what's
| worse: hearing them or knowing they can hear you too.
|
| In two of them I could never hear a peep from the
| neighbours apart from footsteps on the floor upstairs. But
| seriously wondered if the neighbours ever made any noise at
| all, or whether it was just that well soundproofed.
|
| In my most recent flat, though, it's terrible. You can hear
| conversations through the floor but what's worse is when
| people make direct contact with walls/ceilings, like
| closing curtains or closing doors, it's like they are in
| your room. And this is despite the building having solid
| concrete floors that appear to be over a foot thick.
|
| I do also wonder if it was really an illusion as the first
| two flats were in noisier areas. But, whatever the reason,
| it's so hard to tell what it's going to be like before
| moving in. I wish there standards so you could guarantee
| what it's going to be like.
|
| But until then, I will be seeking detached housing because
| I just can't stand the noise.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > And this is despite the building having solid concrete
| floors that appear to be over a foot thick.
|
| The noise is coming in through the holes made to put
| plumbing - especially district heating.
|
| In my current apartment the owner wanted to conceal the
| piping, so he hid it behind an enclosure made out of
| plaster with a service hatch.
|
| The whole thing is currently a resonance chamber that
| lets me follow my dowstairs neighbour's conversations.
| randsp wrote:
| I can confirm this. I am from Spain and I have lived in a few
| cities all around the country and the lack of soundproofing
| in every building is a common thing, regardless of town or
| area, it seems like all buildings from 1970 were built
| ignoring any sound proof.
| pja wrote:
| The Spanish just don't seem to care about noise at the
| institutional level. I spent a week in a small Spanish city
| last year & the local rubbish collection went down the street
| outside the door, pouring bins full of bottles from the local
| bars in the back at midnight. Midnight! Just when even the
| Spanish are trying to get to sleep.
|
| Co-incidentally, there was an article in the Spanish national
| press that week detailing all the ways in which noise in
| Spanish cities was deleterious to health & wellbeing and
| asking why no-one ever did anything about it. Constant noise
| just seems to be accepted as being an inevitable part of
| life, rather than something to be fixed.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I am living in south of spain and not only spanish do not
| care about hearing noise, I think they actually do like
| being noisy and hearing noise. They are basically shouting
| all the time instead of talking for example. At the
| beginning I almost felt I should have interrupted couples
| in the middle of their conversations. I thought they were
| arguing and were about to become physical against each
| other, shouting mere inches from each other face with arms
| throwing all over the place. But no, you quickly realize
| they are just talking about trivial things, agreeing on
| something or just complaining about something external.
|
| Living there you kind of get used to it.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| Chileans have "spaniard" jokes reflecting this (or they
| used to in the 80s anyway)
| rewmie wrote:
| > They are basically shouting all the time instead of
| talking for example.
|
| That's my experience as well. Sometimes it's hard to tell
| apart if there's a bar brawl happening on the pub down
| the road or if it's a grou having a good time. It also
| doesn't help that in both cases Spaniards curse like
| crazy.
| prmoustache wrote:
| >Spaniards curse de puta madre
|
| corrected for you :)
| rewmie wrote:
| Touche
| KAMSPioneer wrote:
| I am living in Andalucia (originally US) and have had the
| _exact_ same experience. I have gotten used to
| it...except for when my upstairs neighbors decide to make
| a glorious racket every night at exactly midnight, right
| when I'm trying to sleep.
|
| Other than that though...!
| pantulis wrote:
| > Midnight! Just when even the Spanish are trying to get to
| sleep.
|
| I had to chuckle when reading this, although I would point
| out that not all neighbourhoods are the same. Still, every
| spaniard knows that trying to call the local police because
| there is some idiot throwing a party at 1AM is pointless.
| pja wrote:
| This was midweek in the autumn after the bars had all
| shut & everyone had gone home. It might even have been a
| bit later! Either way, my point is that it was the worst
| possible time to be upending bins full of glassware in a
| residential area. That noise was far louder than the
| people in the bars had been an hour earlier.
| Maken wrote:
| Noise is not the biggest problem: Cheap apartment buildings
| from the 60s and 70s has such thin walls what they have no
| thermal isolation whatsoever. In poor neighborhoods you will
| see air conditioner machines everywhere because there is no
| other way to keep the flats livable.
| outside1234 wrote:
| The Spanish love the noise is my theory. They are a very
| social people. They probably think of it as comforting versus
| annoying, and like the person that lives next to the
| waterfall that can't hear it, it probably fades into the
| background of their consciousness.
|
| (I lived in Spain for two years.)
| switch007 wrote:
| > The Spanish love the noise is my theory
|
| Totally. I think to them it represents and demonstrates
| liberation, freedom, fun, family and community. Loud means
| fun to them.
|
| People complaining about noise are seen as serious party-
| poopers.
| anthk wrote:
| Spaniard here. No, it depends. The Castilles can be
| pretty silent/quiet/calm compared to Andalusia and the
| Eastern coast.
| LegitShady wrote:
| >it's maddening, I don't understand it
|
| Costs less to build, sells for the same money, more profit
| made.
| Tade0 wrote:
| As someone who grew up in a commie block, I think density
| over a certain point just sucks.
|
| Cities in southern Europe are generally denser than what the
| communists built and to me this is simply too much.
|
| I remember staying in Bilbao and the garbage truck waking me
| up on each garbage day because its sound bounced back and
| forth between the walls and some genius thought it would be a
| good idea to have it do its run during the night.
|
| Meanwhile back at home if it weren't for a construction site
| that propped up recently there would have been at least 70
| meters to the building next to mine.
| Havoc wrote:
| Possibly also cultural. Noticed that some cultures tend to talk
| louder.
| brvsft wrote:
| One time when I was younger, my mom was talking to my
| grandmother on the phone, in Spanish. I could hear my
| grandmother on the other end too. They're both yelling. No
| idea what they were talking about, but I had to ask,
| something to the effect of, _" Mom, are you angry? Why are
| you and grandma yelling?"_
|
| Nope, nothing was wrong. That's just how they talk to each
| other in Spanish. Weird. It also never occurred to me why I
| didn't notice until whatever age I was, a teenager in high
| school. It never really occurred to me that they were always
| 'yelling' while talking to each other until that moment.
|
| There is the possibility that they really were upset and
| yelling, but my mother didn't often keep things from me (at
| least not as far as I know). I also noticed the yelling
| afterwards, so I'm confident that was me simply realizing
| that's how they talked after years of not noticing.
| mathieuh wrote:
| I live in northern ireland in an actual house and the walls are
| thin enough I could dip my bread into my neighbours' soup.
|
| It is the number one reason I could never see myself living in
| an apartment, I'm very sensitive to noise and I get
| disproportionately angry at even low levels of unwanted noise.
| I'd be too worried about noise from neighbours.
| matsemann wrote:
| I live in a modern apartment in Norway (2019). I guess some
| of our heat insulation demands make it so that we get extra
| thick walls and floors, but I've never heard any noise from
| neighbors. No tv sounds, no stamping feet etc. Maybe twice a
| year someone drills a hole to mount something on the walls
| and I hear that for a few minutes. Even have a train passing
| by outside I can't hear with the windows closed.
|
| Point being that it depends.
|
| Edit: modern fire safety also dictates a bit how contained
| each unit should be, I guess.
| kraig911 wrote:
| Norwegians are also some of those most quiet people I've
| ever met.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Not disagreeing with your point but I'd like to support
| what the op said regarding "modern" buildings often
| having excellent sound deadening. My previous Dutch
| residence also had those "fake" (non concrete) walls but
| I couldn't hear others in their rooms even when they
| played loud music (and they had different nationalities).
| But if no effort goes into soundproofing, it can be
| unsurprisingly pretty bad.
| matsemann wrote:
| Yeah, before living where I live now, I lived for a while
| in an building from the late 1800s. The smaller units
| were of course added cheaply in modern times, and didn't
| align well with how it was originally built.
|
| One example is the original thick wooden beams that was
| the floor went through the unit walls. So they same piece
| of wood I was walking on was also being walked on by the
| neighbors. That was a great transmission of vibrations,
| especially when their kid were playing on the floor hehe.
| J_Shelby_J wrote:
| I live in a modern mid-rise in Dallas.
|
| Same experience. Most noise comes from people in the
| hallways because a solid wood door does not insulate sound.
|
| Traffic noise could be improved with triple pane windows,
| but really it's just un-restricted mufflers that penetrate,
| and that should be handled by the city.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Just a tip for anyone dealing with noise in a multi-
| tenant situation. Get yourself a white noise machine.
| It's a life changer. I thought I was going to murder my
| neighbor with his own leaf blower until I got it.
| ajb wrote:
| I find that a thunderstorm soundtrack hides external
| noise better than white noise. It also seems
| psychologically more relaxing, but YMMV
| yardie wrote:
| I just discovered the white noise generator in iOS/macOS.
| It's in Accessibility settings under Audio Visual. It's
| been a gamechanger for me.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| I envy anyone this works for. For me, white noise is just
| even more noise.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| The most important thing is that it be 'non looping'. I
| hated white noise until I ponied up for a machine that
| generated non looping white noise. My mind would
| automatically latch on to any repetition.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| Anecdotally, I've heard the opposite about a lot of the
| new 5-over-1's going up in the bay area. Several people I
| know that have moved into recently-built units have
| complained that they can hear far more neighbor noise
| than they used to in their old units. This also seems to
| track with my experience -- I live in an older unit and
| can only hear my adjacent neighbors when they slam their
| front door, or when they're having a very loud party on a
| weekend. Yet when I visit friends that live in newer
| units, sometimes I can hear the neighbors talking at
| normal conversation levels through the walls.
|
| I'm completely speculating, but maybe in newer
| construction, they can now use insulation materials with
| a very high R rating that are still fairly thin, so while
| you get the good thermal insulation, sound transmission
| is increased because there's less material in the way
| now. Older buildings that made up for the materials not
| being as high R-rated tended to do so via volume, which
| also helped with sound deadening. I think in a lot of
| places, you also need to have firewalls between units so
| that fire in one unit doesn't easily spread to others,
| but I expect those materials have also improved over the
| decades to where they still provide the same fire
| protection, but no longer have the mass to offer as much
| sound deadening.
| hadlock wrote:
| A lot of units use 1/2 inch or in many cases less.
| Upgrading to 5/8" makes a big difference, and installing
| another 1/2" on top of that gives impressive noise
| dampening via additional mass. As does fiberglass
| insulation, and filling gaps around the edges. If you
| don't have to meet firewall code for certain walls, you
| can go a lot thinner and noise reduction goes down
| dramatically. We had an apartment that was converted from
| condos and noise dampening was significant. Noise was a
| major consideration (closely after neighborhood) when
| doing selection.
| bombcar wrote:
| There's often not much insulation requirement _between
| units_ because the entire building envelope is what
| carries the main insulation, so it 's builder's choice if
| they want to _noise_ insulate above and beyond the
| firewall requirements.
|
| The worst in my experience has been units originally
| designed for rich quiet people that now are being rented
| by families.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| The problem is that while the shape of single-family home
| suburbs are meticulously controlled (e.g. minimum width
| between each house, minimum width from the street to your
| home), the world of apartments are conversely very
| lightly regulated. California building codes added an
| _optional_ appendix for noiseproofing standards for
| multi-family units that cities can opt-into and yet the
| cities with some of the strictest /most expansive SFH
| zoning in the Bay Area refuse to opt into this standard.
| I live in a multi-family unit where the HOA meticulously
| controls R-value of the units and puts up a huge
| process/review phase when changing any flooring material,
| but the end result is that unless kids are screaming at
| the top of their lungs we hear nothing. We've held
| karaoke parties past midnight and our neighbors have
| heard nothing (we've asked.)
|
| In other words, the problem is politics. Cities need to
| want to make multi-family development appealing to
| encourage their residents to live there. There's a bit of
| deliberate neglect going on for multi-family housing
| specifically to encourage single-family living.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| > California building codes added an optional appendix
| for noiseproofing standards for multi-family units that
| cities can opt-into and yet the cities with some of the
| strictest/most expansive SFH zoning in the Bay Area
| refuse to opt into this standard.
|
| Why am I not surprised? This is why we need more city
| council members who rent. Renter issues are completely
| invisible to those holding political power.
| bluGill wrote:
| Renters are generally much less likely to vote and so
| their issues get less attention.
| ignite2 wrote:
| I viewed an apartment recently that had _quadruple_ pane
| windows! The aparment faced a noisy freeway. They worked
| quite well.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Having stayed in Norwegian houses many times, I can attest
| they've really sorted their insulation out. Similarily my
| Swedish sister-in-law always complains about British houses
| when she visits, saying their cold and draughty
| bluGill wrote:
| British houses have a worldwide reputation of bad
| insulation. They live in a mild climate where you don't
| need to heat the entire house to ensure the pipes don't
| freeze, and don't really need much AC to be livable in
| the summer. As such it is really common for people who
| live there to only heat the room they are in.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Also a lot of them date from the XIX century or earlier
| and can't be touched.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Nonsense. Most of the 19th century buildings are
| perfectly ordinary brick terraced houses and the later
| ones have cavity walls. I lived in one built in 1890 in
| Southampton for four years. Solid house but not of any
| kind of historical importance. They can be insulated by
| blowing fibre into the cavity or filling it with
| expanding foam..
| SilasX wrote:
| Oh wow. Norway and Sweden sound like heaven for apartment
| living. (Or Valhalla, as the case may be.)
| carlosjobim wrote:
| It's because of heat insulation, like you guessed.
| f6v wrote:
| It also depends on a neighbor. I heard my previous
| downstair neighbors only when they had guests. Now, there's
| a single person who is a god damn elephant. They way she
| always stomps and throws things on the floor...
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > even have a train passing by outside I can't hear with
| the windows closed.
|
| My wife and I lived in a top floor flat in Drammen for two
| years. We swore we would never, ever, live that close to
| neighbours again. In the summer it's nice to have the
| windows open until your divorcee neighbour downstairs comes
| home and argues with her umpteenth boyfriend and her sulky
| teenage daughter and then the three of them each try to
| drown out the others with loud music and television.
|
| It didn't matter that I couldn't hear them through the
| floor.
| harry_ord wrote:
| I lived in a relatively old apartment block in Austria.
| Only time I heard my neighbours was when they did drilling.
| The sound outside echo'd a lot so I could hear things in
| the courtyard (3 floors down) and people in nearby blocks
| louder than my neighbours.
| browningstreet wrote:
| I live in northern Nevada in an exurb. I go for a walk
| everyday that requires me to go on a road for half a mile
| before I get to the dirt path. On that half mile road the
| traffic is so constant and so loud (from my small gated
| community) I can't hear whatever I'm listening to on my
| headphones. The clamor is so aggravating I'm usually a bit
| angry by the time I hit the dirt path. My exurb neighbors
| (multiple) have loud grinding ACs and they run them all
| night. I can't leave my windows open while I sleep even when
| it's in the 50s outside, because of their grinding noise.
|
| I recently walked about 20 miles back in SF again. It was
| comparatively pleasant. Road traffic was slower. The
| materials they use to make the roads reflect less of the
| sound than here in Nevada. I wasn't triggered by vehicles or
| traffic or trucks. I stayed in the Panhandle and could sleep
| with the bedroom window open.
|
| There's a way to make heaven or hell in both cities and rural
| areas.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I am just curious- why did you opt for a place that is so
| out of sync w what matters to you ?
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Not OP, but there's so many general reasons someone buys
| this place:
|
| - They didn't opt for the place, someone else in their
| family did
|
| - This is where the jobs were
|
| - What matters to them changed over time
|
| - The place changed over time
|
| - A lot of things matter to them, this is just one, and
| the place delivers on the others
|
| - When they were looking for a place, this was what was
| available
|
| - etc.
| browningstreet wrote:
| Yes, most of those apply in some form/fashion to current
| set-up.
| gosub100 wrote:
| If he's from reno he probably works at tesla. NV has no
| state income tax which lures a lot of people. The AC-at-
| night gripe seems off to me, you only need AC in northern
| nevada about 3 months of the year (they could be heat
| pumps for the 50F overnight lows). Reno changed a lot in
| the last 8 years, mostly for the worse. A lot of people
| who bring their big-city aggression and driving style to
| a medium-size town that has no infrastructure to support
| it. A lot of people ended up there against their will due
| to all the crazy covid-era migrations.
| torton wrote:
| Construction methods and quality vary a lot. Older concrete
| and brick multistory apartment buildings generally have
| excellent soundproofing. Wooden apartment buildings, like
| five-over-one or 3-4 story all wood apartment buildings, not
| so much. Low rise wooden hotels, built as cheaply as
| possible, are at the lower limit of "I can know exactly what
| my neighbours are doing if I pay attention".
| sampo wrote:
| I live in Finland in a modern apartment building. Walls have
| good sound insulation, and triple pane windows insulate for
| both heat and sound. I am next to a busy road, but can not
| hear it inside, unless I open some windows.
| mocha_nate wrote:
| > I could dip my bread into my neighbours' soup.
|
| What an expression. I love that
| xivzgrev wrote:
| Me too! Do you ever hear music from neighbors that goes on
| for hours? But the problem is, it's not so loud that they're
| having a party and you can complain. No, it's just loud
| enough to hear, but not loud enough to record or for others
| to easily hear.
|
| I had one set of neighbors who fell into this range for about
| a year. I suspect their place was sparse, I could even hear
| them push their chair out from dining table. I felt happy
| when they moved out!
| arethuza wrote:
| I lived in flats in the New Town of Edinburgh (i.e. fairly
| old buildings) for ~30 years and never heard a sound from
| neighbours - probably because the walls appeared to be ~1m
| thick sandstone!
| mirsadm wrote:
| I've lived in 3 flats across New Town and Stockbridge and
| every flat was horrible. I could hear the footsteps of
| people upstairs. Most flats have floorboards and they are
| not kind to the neighbors below. I'm not living in a flat
| ever again.
| arethuza wrote:
| Admittedly we only lived in two flats - maybe we were
| lucky?
|
| Edit: we lived in two flats for a total of nearly 25
| years!
| stevekemp wrote:
| I lived in the Leith colonies for twenty years, and while I
| never heard my neighbours from above, or the sides, I would
| always hear people running up and down the stairwell, and
| the maindoor slamming shut.
| JCharante wrote:
| I've lived in multiple modern apartments and never heard my
| neighbors. One time I did hear someone playing music loudly,
| but my watch measured it at 35dB
| jmartrican wrote:
| I thought you were going to say, "I live in northern Ireland,
| and I can hear Spain from there."
| gyre007 wrote:
| I want to second this. Living in flats sounds cute for most
| of the people who never lived in ones that are being built
| with cheap materials and thin walls. It's all nice and dandy
| until a sill neighbour moves in and then you've got nowhere
| to hide.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Living in a poorly built flat is a bad experience, sure,
| but there are well built flats out there, where you can
| only hear your neighbors if they're actually being loud--
| really not that big a problem.
| userinanother wrote:
| The incentive is always to build them poorly
| anotherhue wrote:
| Had that in Dublin, moved to NYC in a modern building in the
| freaking centre of the city and it's remarkably quiet.
|
| Shitty construction hurts.
| hzay wrote:
| > I get disproportionately angry at even low levels of
| unwanted noise.
|
| I also suffer from this problem. Is there a name for this?
| s_dev wrote:
| I live in an apartment in Dublin -- noise is not a problem
| for me. I'll concede there is a bias in Ireland against
| apartments. I suspect it's because of the perception that
| 'flats' are either like the Ballymun flats or Luxury
| apartments no one can afford with little room in between.
|
| It's a real shame this bias exists in Ireland it really does
| little to help the housing crisis or the egregious amount of
| one off housing in rural Ireland does little to help
| infrastructure connections.
| romafirst3 wrote:
| Just to chime in on apartment living in Dublin. There was a
| period during the late 80s and 90s when awful apartments
| were built in dublin (private buildings as well as social
| housing). Really bad sound insulation, build quality and
| design. They had mold problems, were poorly ventilated
| always too hot or too cold and were extremely grim. Even
| thinking about them now grims me out.
|
| This really poisoned the well in Ireland towards apartment
| living.
| Arctic_fly wrote:
| Same. I try to rent exclusively on the top-floor (next to
| impossible in a big city) because of a memorable experience I
| had with a an overweight upstairs neighbor who favored
| jumping jacks as his primary form of exercise.
| ska wrote:
| This _really_ depends on the build.
|
| I have lived/stayed in places in the middle of dense urban
| areas where you essentially never hear anything (occasionally
| sirens if the windows are open, that sort of thing), and
| others where you can tell when your neighbor is stirring tea.
|
| One of the factors is cost, yes, but also age of the building
| and materials/techniques matter. I suppose it also matters if
| any of your neighbors are 23 and like powerful stereos - but
| that holds pretty much anywhere that isn't very rural.
|
| Oh, and in dense urban/busy areas, height matters too. Living
| on the first 5 floors is far different than say 15+, in terms
| of how much street noise etc. you will hear with an open
| window (or even without).
| throwaway8877 wrote:
| Nowhere else I have seen a conversation to constantly erupt
| between total strangers than in Spain. They just can't. So I
| can imagine that this constant involvement in the lives of
| others might be not a problem for them.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| That's fascinating! I've lived in apartments or condos most of
| my life and it just wasn't an issue. Possibly structural,
| possibly cultural - people tended to live a quiet life, unless
| you were unfortunate and got a real party neighbour. I live in
| a house right now and in some ways my life is louder (closer to
| the loud streets, neighbour's barking dogs and lawnmower and
| snowblower machines and constant little constructions etc).
| astronads wrote:
| There's evidence that constant unwanted noise can negatively
| impact our health: https://archive.ph/5mvYQ (nytimes)
|
| I don't mind visiting cities, but I certainly would never live
| in one.
| rickydroll wrote:
| When I live in rural low noise areas bp is 125/75 range. high
| noise areas bp is 155/105 range. BP drugs only drop it a
| little.
|
| Unfortunately just bought a house in a rush hour high noise
| area. wife loved in the house, I loved the visible sky, and
| we both loved the yard/garden. we saw it on a Sunday (very
| quiet day. :) Now I have a hard time being outside or taking
| my scope out for observing.
|
| Waiting for a stroke or kidney failure from the high BP.
| dijit wrote:
| Cities aren't loud.
|
| Cars are loud.[0]
|
| I live in Malmo on the southern edge of Sweden opposite
| Copenhagen, it's quieter here (pop: 350,000~) than my friends
| home _village_ in Northamptonshire (Thrapston; pop: 6,239 as
| of 2011).
|
| This was largely because of the sheer volume of cars on the
| road, because you essentially have to drive to get anywhere.
| London is similar, despite not everyone needing a car there
| is traffic _everywhere_ , you can notice that there's back
| streets and they tend to be very quiet until there are _lots
| and lots_ of people, think >200 in a 100sqm area.
|
| Having the ability to escape noise is the most important part
| of noise management. Cities like London have almost no
| respite from the noise and thus it can be physically draining
| for many people to experience it. Including myself.
|
| [0]: https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8
| treespace8 wrote:
| I feel that's why many people, especially families prefer
| detached homes. Sound proofing is guaranteed by the air gap.
| And if there is a problem with soundproofing you can solve it
| yourself by making changes.
|
| Perhaps row houses are best? Good density, and with a solid
| concrete wall seperating units to stop sound and fire from
| spreading?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Dunno about Spain, but in France, a relative in a ?9 story
| building basically gutted their place.
|
| Unlike North American condos, in France they own their windows
| and can replace them.
|
| They also built out a "frame" to install noise insulation on
| top of the shared walls, losing a bit of interior space (and a
| huge free bonus to the neighbours). Can't remember if they did
| the ceiling too.
|
| Unfortunately, no flooring standards are an issue. In my
| Canadian condo, if you redo the floors, there's some noise
| insulating requirement for your choice of flooring as it's
| against concrete.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > Only in South Korea more people live in collective dwellings
| than in Spain.
|
| I... have doubts.
|
| (Looks like they're only looking at OECD countries, so Singapore
| and HK, the most obvious counter-examples, are excluded.)
| alephnerd wrote:
| Singapore and HK are outliers in general as they're city states
| (and the latter won't be a separate government in 23 years
| anyhow).
|
| Also by OECD standards it definetly tracks.
| bertil wrote:
| I'm tempted to think that the author saw those two examples
| (and Monaco) as cities more than countries, which, for an
| analysis of urban density makes sense. That would be like
| excluding the Vatican from an analysis of immigration.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Ah, yeah, I think it's fair enough to leave them out; they're
| very much special cases.
| hbarka wrote:
| I agree with you. Also, comparing by countries is intuitively
| not a good measure due to the averaging out of highs and lows.
| It would be absurd to compare Spain versus Alaska or Texas but
| these are two US states larger than Spain. How about comparing
| by cities? How does Madrid fare versus New York City or Chicago
| or Hong Kong?
| rsynnott wrote:
| You then get into messy definitional stuff; what's a city,
| anyway? :)
| dghughes wrote:
| Population is one thing but density of people per sq km is
| another. For these cities people must be crammed into
| apartments I can't imagine that density would mean people are
| in single homes.
|
| Mumbai India pop. 23,355,000 density 24,740
|
| Hong Kong Hong Kong pop. 7,347,000 density 25,254
|
| Dhaka Bangladesh pop. 15,443,000 density 33,852
|
| Density is almost a pun "dense city"
| medo-bear wrote:
| One of the worst things about new development in post-socialist
| urban areas (high density vertical) are lack of public and green
| spaces in neighbourhoods.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Socialist housing has schools and kindergardens on large plots
| of land, lots of kids playgrounds between houses, a small park
| here and there. "Microraion" planning deprioritizes public road
| so every apartment house is a part of a superblock a-la
| Barcelona.
|
| The downside is often that places of commerce are lacking. They
| have to be built separately or have first floors repurposed for
| commerce. I've heard that capital city of Brasilia had this
| problem too.
| rambambram wrote:
| One of the first websites with all kinds of Apple-like scrolling
| effects that doesn't slow down the scrolling experience. I'm on a
| RPi4 by the way. Good job of the dev!
| jmyeet wrote:
| Americans have a very skweed view of what apartment living is
| actually like, in part because the construction of such buildings
| in America (outside of the ultra-luxury market) is generally
| terrible.
|
| Lumber is abundant in North America and cheap so everything is
| timber-framed, which is awful for noise. I actually do not
| understand how people can live in two-story houses in the US.
| Such people complaining about noise seems crazy to me. Only
| drywall separating rooms. Only a plank between floors pretty
| much. Awful.
|
| Anyway, a lot of apartments in the US are what's called 5-over-1
| construction. That's 1 concrete framed floor, often commercial
| and then 5 floors of timber-framed apartments above that.
| Terrible.
|
| Live in a decently built apartment and it's a completely
| different world. Actual high-rises tend to be decent because they
| have to be concrete and steel framed (although they may have
| cheap walls). Any pre-war apartments in NYC are generally
| amazing.
|
| It's also worth pointing out that complaining about noise and
| wanting things to be quiet isn't universal. Whenever you hear
| such complaints, make a mental note of their demographics and see
| what patterns you notice.
| ernestrc wrote:
| Spaniard living in the US here. I grew up in apartment
| complexes and don't ever remember worrying about noise. I think
| there's definitely a component of just being used to it. Agree
| with your point on construction materials in the US, in
| relation to noise levels: the only time in my life that I was
| bothered by my loud neighbors was when I lived in a multi-
| family home unit in San Mateo, CA. It was a 4-unit home and I
| could literally hear all my neighbors whereabouts 24/7.
| bluGill wrote:
| You have a very incorrect build of what modern American
| construction is like. Yes it is mostly timer-framed, but we
| have fire codes which means walls are not as thin as you seem
| to think. Sure if you look at an apartment built in 1950 your
| summary is valid, but that isn't done anymore.
|
| 5 over 1 refers to section 1 and section 5 of the building code
| and not the number of floors built for each. It is coincidence
| that with section 5, five floors is about the max you can have
| - but that is an about (sometimes 4 is all, sometimes you can
| get 6 - see a proper civil engineer for details). Section 1 is
| a lot more expensive to build, but it is also higher strength
| (and other features that make is useful for a parking garage)
| fragmede wrote:
| it's still cheap and shitty and doesn't isolate sound,
| causing all sorts of problems with the neighbors that don't
| need to exist.
|
| thick concrete walls might as well be hypothetical,
| theoretical building material given how much not expensive it
| is, and thus how much rarer it is.
| kube-system wrote:
| 5-over-1, 5-over-2, 4-over-1, and 3-over-1 are all often used
| terminology and they're referring to the number of floors in
| a podium-constructed building, not different sections of IBC.
| All of these podium construction styles are a product of
| section 510.2 of the IBC which allows for these to be treated
| as two separate buildings for fire purposes.
|
| https://www.woodworks.org/resources/code-path-and-
| requiremen...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-over-1
| Vinnl wrote:
| What's interesting is that the Netherlands is pretty low on the
| list of countries with the highest percentage of people in
| collective dwellings (at 21% vs Spain's 65%, only the UK is
| lower), even though it's one of the most densely populated
| countries in Europe. I suppose that's the result of the mentioned
| "mushroom neighbourhoods"?
|
| Great visuals btw.
| itointegral wrote:
| That's what surprised me too. I think it might be because for
| every big, dense Dutch city there are n farmhouses in
| Friesland, Groningen, etc. Also I'm not sure whether they
| categorise semidetached houses as houses or flats, given how
| common they are in the Netherlands the 21% would be no surprise
| if they're considered houses.
| user_7832 wrote:
| From what I've seen while cycling between cities in the
| Netherlands, the "rural" areas still have houses frequently
| (and even more in "urban" areas - for example between The Hague
| and Rotterdam you probably won't be able to go 500m without
| finding a house/building).
|
| However, the density of most cities isn't _that_ high (most
| /median residential buildings are probably 4-5 floors or less,
| except Rotterdam). For comparison Mumbai has way more taller
| buildings than almost any city in the Netherlands except for
| Rotterdam, and Mumbai hasn't had a lot of high rises due to FSI
| limitations.
| pxndx wrote:
| Lots of deserts and mountains in Spain, while the Netherlands
| is mostly flat and it's a bunch of small villages that are
| really close together.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| Smaller plots of land, also. UK family homes (at least until
| the 70s or so) tend to have large gardens, Dutch seem to have
| less private outdoor space but put more effort into making the
| street-scene nice in residential areas, which UK is terrible
| at.
|
| On the flip-side, the Dutch attitude to their countryside (or
| let's say, non urban land) is pretty brutal outside of the
| national parks. There's not the fetishization of "country"
| living that you get in the UK.
| j-a-a-p wrote:
| In the Netherlands an exceptional high percentage of houses are
| social - so they should not be expensive. But most of them are
| single family houses connected 'rijtjeshuis'. Think of them as
| flat buildings flipped over. I can imagine with the countries
| muddy soil it was the cheaper solution to build this way.
|
| About weight, you can see the strength of the soil in the
| historic buildings. Like Delft: 3 stories high. Zaandam: 2
| stories where one is build from wood. Amsterdam is build on
| wooden piles allowing for 5 stories.
|
| And you can also see wealth in the height of the building. The
| Hague is most famous for that (as they say you come from clay
| or from sand), poor areas were build on clay -> low buildings.
| Rich areas were build on sand, high ceiling heavy buildings.
| Living on sand was/is healthier also, another reason why the
| rich flocked there.
| em500 wrote:
| > But most of them are single family houses connected
| 'rijtjeshuis'. Think of them as flat buildings flipped over.
|
| Usually known as terraced houses, townhouses or row houses in
| English.
| spaintech wrote:
| What a fantastic site! Wish more titea were build this way. It
| was an awesome experience! I'm an outsider living in Spain for
| the last 22 years, I think that while the content portrays a
| reality of the high rise movement in Spain, there is an angle
| that was missed. It is important to say that the at time
| draconian land laws pay an important role in the urban landscape.
| Not to mention that Spain relative young democracy ( we won't
| talk about that the today ) also plays am important role into
| shaping the urban seen. Lots of change in the government parties
| have also lead to constrains and or retains during several
| periods. Ok his has mean that different areas would grow
| artificially dependent on the "favoritism" at play at the moment
| through favorable zoning changes or subsidized public housing.
| Albeit and thankfully at the moment, Spain has not discovers
| property taxes like the US, it contains growth with little
| planning and driven by massive speculation which has been an
| economic driver for major cities even with relative low
| occupation rates. There is also the fundamental culture of buy vs
| rent that drives for more flats been built to keep up with the
| demand. On the plus side, one the the biggest differences I have
| seen in Spain is a relative wide spread economic demographic in
| the cities, where you don't see the major changes like most other
| major city across the world, it happens but it's neither common
| or as drastic as the rest.
| wackget wrote:
| Unpopular opinion but I hate the design of the site. The
| transitions are too slow and the entire site is inaccessible to
| anyone with vertigo, visual processing or balance disorders.
| Needless to say it also doesn't respect the browser's `prefers-
| reduced-motion` preference.
|
| A massive case of style over substance for me.
| Narishma wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| Another downside is that it consumes huge amounts of memory.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Anyone know more information about how this was built?
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| I find the ideal building height to be up to 6 floors at most -
| anything more makes the streets start to feel a bit too
| claustrophobic and the area less "neighborly".
| elric wrote:
| ~6 floors is sometimes referred to as the goldilocks zone of
| building density. Treehugger has some good articles on it [1].
| Horizontal navigation is much easier than vertical navigation
| (gravity and all that). Having a bunch of ~6 floor buildings
| next to each other makes for great walkability, while still
| allowing for ample daylight (and trees and whatnot), without
| attracing the windy conditions of all towers.
|
| [1] https://www.treehugger.com/search?q=goldilocks
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Building comfort is really a function of height divided by
| roadway width and surrounding open space. What makes a single
| lane road claustrophobic might be light and airy on a six or
| eight lane road. Central Park is surrounded by skyscrapers but
| is plenty airy.
|
| There are also strategies, like setbacks, to make the building
| massing less imposing and obvious to the person at street
| level, who at the end of the day is walking with their head
| straight, not craning up to the sky.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Believe this is called the "missing middle." AKA, low-rise
| apartment buildings.
| dvt wrote:
| A bit ironic how the first example is of La Coruna and literally
| _everyone_ from there absolutely hates the fact that the ugly
| brutalist Franco-era flats absolutely destroyed the vibe of the
| coastal cities in Galicia (e.g. Cayon, O Grove, Baiona, etc.). My
| sister lives in Santiago de Compostela and her in-laws are from
| the area so I 've had a lot of conversations with them.
| kdmccormick wrote:
| So talking with your in-laws is enough to make you sure that
| literally _eveyone_ from there absolutely hates them?
| mathverse wrote:
| Condos are absolutely atrocious, inhuman way of living. If I
| could I would move to a villa or a suburb house.
| willio58 wrote:
| By condo you mean apartment right? Condos are usually just
| apartments you own.
|
| Apartments are not inherently bad. They allow for density
| which, if you went through the tour this site provides, you
| know allows for cheaper public services. I've lived in many
| great apartments and a few bad ones. It's not the style of
| building that's bad, it's the owners and the laws they are
| forced to or not forced to follow.
|
| Suburbs are _heavily_ subsidized. They require _a ton_ of money
| from taxpayers to sustain their existence. So much so that many
| North American cities are essentially permanently in a state of
| insolvency because they can 't sustain the infrastructure
| needed for suburbs. Think about this, for a suburb you have
| inherently more roads and more distance to cover for things
| like sewers, power/cable lines, water mains, etc. Plus you just
| take up more space so suburbs don't tend to be walkable in
| terms of productive travel. You can walk your dog in a suburb,
| but if you need groceries you'll be driving. So you pay more
| for suburbs even if you don't live in them AND they require you
| to pay for a car which depending on circumstances can total a
| few thousand dollars a year, especially if you don't have the
| money to drop on a car that doesn't require a lot of
| maintenence.
|
| As mentioned in this website, suburbs should always be
| considered a luxury. The vast majority of people should live in
| more dense areas. It's better for the environment, personal
| finances, city economies, physical and social health (ever
| wonder why Europeans live longer?), etc. If you want to live in
| a suburb, good for you! But I believe we should fully stop
| subsidizing them. Start making suburb communities compensate
| cities financially for the imbalance they impose on our
| systems.
| mathverse wrote:
| I always feel bad not replying or replying with a short
| sentence to such long comment.
|
| Anyway I have never lived in NA and while I understand your
| concerns I dont think they are valid.
|
| I am not a cattle that you need to optimize.
|
| In Europe we subsidize many, many things and I dont see a
| reason why living like a human should not be one of them.
| willio58 wrote:
| No reason to feel bad! I like taking opportunities like
| this to respond with facts I've learned through heavy
| research in this area in the past few years.
|
| I also don't want _anyone_ to feel like cattle. When I talk
| about apartments I want to be clear, I'm not talking about
| shacks with thin walls, 50 stories, and no greenspace. The
| ideal apartment has almost all the benefits of living in a
| suburb (good amount of space for yourself and others,
| greenery, privacy, sturdiness and soundproofing,
| cleanliness etc.) with the added benefit of allowing you to
| potentially not own a car, and without the extreme
| requirement of subsidies from any level of government.
|
| These ideas are growing in popularity, in part led by
| content creators like Not Just Bikes, City Beautiful,
| Climate Town, and thought leaders like those at Strong
| Towns. If you have a chance, please check any of those out.
| I think you'll find what I found after learning about this
| stuff which is that no way of living is inherently evil,
| but some ways of living such as suburban sprawl are just
| more expensive in many ways. We just haven't done a good
| job at making those costs clear to those who live in
| suburbs, because governments absorb the cost and collect
| increased taxes from all to make up the difference. And as
| is so common worldwide, people tend to hate taxes, so that
| isn't even enough and it leads to cities with budgets that
| will never be healthy and simply cannot provide the
| services everyone wants such as regular cleaning, better
| education, solid public transportation, etc.
| imiric wrote:
| > Suburbs are _heavily_ subsidized. They require _a ton_ of
| money from taxpayers to sustain their existence.
|
| That's highly relative. Urban areas have high maintenance
| costs as well, precisely because of the higher density. The
| infrastructure requires more maintenance, higher sanitation
| costs, law enforcement, etc. Not to mention that cramming
| hundreds of people per km2, surrounded by concrete and no
| vegetation, in small and dimly lit apartments, is awful for
| mental health. I know where I would prefer to live during the
| next pandemic.
|
| > It's better for the environment
|
| How is it better for the environment, exactly? Cities destroy
| the environment just by existing, and they hardly have enough
| green areas to sustain wild life.
|
| > physical and social health (ever wonder why Europeans live
| longer?)
|
| This has nothing to do with the urban lifestyle. Europeans
| live longer on average because of less socioeconomic
| inequality, healthier diets, and better healthcare systems.
| willio58 wrote:
| > Urban areas have high maintenance costs as well,
| precisely because of the higher density.
|
| Urban areas cost more in total, but less per capita. If you
| don't take that per capita measurement into account, it's
| pointless to claim things like this.
|
| Here's a good infographic on this:
| https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-
| publ...
|
| See specifically the massive (4-10x) increase in costs for
| things like roads, sidewalks, water, sewers,
| transportation, etc. when we talk about suburban
| environments.
|
| > Cities destroy the environment just by existing, and they
| hardly have enough green areas to sustain wild life.
|
| Do you have a source for this? Living closer to the things
| you need in life such as energy, food, water, friends,
| family obviously leads to less waste of energy in getting
| to those things or having them come to you. Around
| wildlife, guess where they could and used to live before
| suburban sprawl? Right where the suburbs popped up. Your
| solution to increasing wildlife is continuing suburban
| sprawl? I highly recommend you research and provide sources
| before making claims like that.
| jjav wrote:
| > more distance to cover for things like sewers,
|
| I don't know which one becomes more expensive per capita, but
| "more distance" is very simplistic metric.
|
| Think of how much money and time and coordination it requires
| to dig a 200ft trench somewhere in Manhattan. Street
| closures, permits with multiple organizations, coordinate
| with tons of utilities and other underground facilities,
| engineering surveys if you're digging near high rises, etc.
|
| Meanwhile in the suburbs one guy in a pickup shows up with a
| digger and gets it done before lunch.
|
| Density also bring in enormous complexity, so it's not that
| simple.
|
| > You can walk your dog in a suburb, but if you need
| groceries you'll be driving.
|
| I live in a suburb and I walk to one of three nearby (< 10
| min walk) grocery stores.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > I live in a suburb and I walk to one of three nearby (<
| 10 min walk) grocery stores.
|
| That is an outlier, though. Not only are suburbs less dense
| and, obviously, services are not as close, but county
| and/or city regulations across the US are notoriously anti
| mixed use developments, which make things even worse.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Try living in a damp victorian house in Bimingham, with
| unfixable mould problems, where the floor has 6 carpets from 6
| generations stacked on top of each-other and the bathroom is
| all weired because originally toilet was designed to be
| outside.
|
| That's like half of UK housing.
|
| The people who would rather live in an old 50 sqm house than a
| modern apartment must be abusing some serious substances
| Lolaccount wrote:
| Excellent site ... except for the UI nit of not being able to
| judge how long the article is ... on my browser, at least.
|
| Saved for later as I had no idea how long it will take to read it
| ...
| treis wrote:
| Spain also has the lowest fertility rate in Europe at 1.28. Not
| sure how much apartment living is cause or effect on that but
| it's a grim number. Every generation is only 60% the size of the
| one that came before it.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| That was shocking so had to look it up, and it seems to be
| true.
|
| UN article on it here:
| https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/events/pdf...
| alfonsodev wrote:
| Does it take in account population age ? Spain absorbs a lot of
| European elderly that decide to retire in Spain.
| foliveira wrote:
| The UN report shared by the sibling poster, has a graph that
| distinguishes the rates between Spanish and non-Spanish
| nationals, so I think that's a positive answer to your
| question
| codr7 wrote:
| You'll find similar patterns in many countries.
|
| The population explosion isn't happening very much, quite the
| opposite.
| Lord-Jobo wrote:
| This is slightly aside, but the concerns over fertility rates
| in the first world really seem REALLY misplaced to me.
| Population growth concerns are easily mitigated with
| immigration which will stay in demand until the rest of the
| worlds fertility rates catch up(40+ years), and the population
| growth concerns themselves are a reflection of an outdated (or
| soon to be outdated) economic model that we should probably
| focus on replacing or phasing out? Im not sure why THAT isnt
| the next step, and instead we have so many whackos in
| government trying to force pregnancies and other wild policies.
| Yeah, its a hard, big, complex problem and will probably
| require a decade of modeling/testing like what is happening
| with UBI testing in small cities. Maybe its just a reflection
| of the times when the people we elect reach for the most insane
| heavy handed solutions for every problem, and proceed to
| publicly fill their pants at the very concept of change.
| Unearned5161 wrote:
| I'm curious to hear what sort of economic models you have in
| mind that works with a non-growing or declining population
| cies wrote:
| We can look at "prosperous" (let's find some happiness
| index) countries that have seen declining population for a
| while. Japan comes to mind.
|
| It's not like Japan deteriorated into some extreme poverty
| because of it, right?
|
| So maybe it's not that bad, "to be in decline" (in
| population number, or related GDP), as we are meant to
| believe?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Japan comes to mind.
|
| I think it's a little too early to draw conclusions.
| Japan reached their peak population in about 2010, and
| the decline since has been mild.
| luckydata wrote:
| give it time, they will have issues taking care of their
| aging population without a sufficient number of people of
| age that can provide economic output and care. It's a
| problem that eventually fixes itself but until we work
| through the "backlog" it will be pretty painful.
| cies wrote:
| Do we have examples of this? I know these arguments, but
| I wonder if that will really happen. Maybe public care
| will shrink, but still many of the aging boom generation
| will afford private care, or not need much of it.
|
| > ...pretty painful.
|
| How will the subjected population notice that you reckon?
| Prices change, sure, but many of us on earth also live in
| a lot more luxury than 200 years ago: so we have some fat
| on our bones.
| analognoise wrote:
| "We made it terrible for our own people to make families, but
| don't worry! We can keep the party going by importing loads
| of people due to economic forces!" Sounds so incredibly
| shitty.
|
| If an economic system works so poorly for people they have to
| be imported (I.e. locals who want to form families can't) it
| should be dismantled.
|
| I care about "global capital" far less than I care about my
| compatriots ability to form strong families. We should
| absolutely be worried by terrible birth rates.
| cies wrote:
| > If an economic system works so poorly for people they
| have to be imported
|
| Interesting thought. The notion that GDP _population has to
| grow comes comes from that economic system. The problem is
| that the economic system dictates policy to such a large
| extend that democracy is a farce.
|
| > I care about "global capital" far less than I care about
| my compatriots ability to form strong families.
|
| +1
|
| > We should absolutely be worried by terrible birth rates.
|
| Why? What's the daily life/ human problem with becoming
| less humans? (I know the economic GDP_population reason,
| and I know why militarily that IS very important)
| cies wrote:
| i meant "GDP x population"; messed with the formatting.
| caskstrength wrote:
| > If an economic system works so poorly for people they
| have to be imported (I.e. locals who want to form families
| can't) it should be dismantled.
|
| Most of developed countries have bad fertility rate, some
| developing and/or poor countries have good fertility rate.
| People in rich countries don't have children not because
| they can't afford to, but because they don't want to.
| analognoise wrote:
| You're right, it's not that a standard wage can't even
| get you an apartment, medical care is astronomical, and
| the capitalists are ruining everything.
|
| It's that people stopped wanting kids. How silly of me.
| We undid all the evolutionary programming of our species
| to play XBox and rent.
|
| ...or it's that the system is broken and we should cease
| importing people because the only people that "win" in
| that situation are those connected to global capital.
| caskstrength wrote:
| > You're right, it's not that a standard wage can't even
| get you an apartment, medical care is astronomical, and
| the capitalists are ruining everything.
|
| Did you somehow miss word "Spain" in the title and
| immediately proceeded with US-specific rant?
|
| Additional info from Wikipedia[0]:
|
| > As of 2020, according to the World Economic Forum and
| to Bloomberg, Spain has the most efficient health system
| in Europe, and also ranks at the top worldwide along with
| Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore.
|
| > Due to universal health care coverage, inequality is
| reduced substantially. Inequality in Spain is even
| further reduced in that co-payments do not usually apply,
| limited to special medicines and services that are not
| covered by the National Health System.
|
| And yet socialist Spain has fertility rate of 1.3
| compared to 1.7 of dystopian capitalist-driver
| privatized-healthcare-only US [1]. I'm sure everyone
| buying a house every year and enjoying even better health
| care in such countries as Niger, Chad and Somalia that
| somehow on top of the fertility list though.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Spain
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_t
| otal_fer...
| Lord-Jobo wrote:
| There are no nations that currently have a both modern
| living and population growth, i think there are definitely
| some fundamental failures to make having children an
| attractive option in many countries like the US, but even
| countries that give a billion hours parental leave, tax
| breaks, etc. have declining populations.
|
| your solution requires a dismantling of the entire global
| system of governments and economies and the implementation
| of something new and poorly tested. which may be in our
| future regardless, and may be necessary at some point. but
| massive change on that scale only happens in response to
| horrifying levels of war or unpredictable changes in
| technology(changes on the scale of a power positive fusion
| revolution). You either dont want or cannot force those
| things.
|
| the immigration solution is a stop-gap and still a big
| change for most, but one that buys nations 40+ years and is
| no harder than simply opening the door that millions are
| banging on right now, and billions will be banging on as
| climate disaster grows.
| analognoise wrote:
| "your solution requires a dismantling of the entire
| global system of governments and economies and the
| implementation of something new and poorly tested."
|
| So the system we currently have, which we already agree
| is failing people here, but we're worried changing the
| system is bad?
|
| Why take 40 more years if it's already failing?
|
| Letting millions of people in is NOT GOOD for the people
| already here. I say we just don't do that.
|
| The only people benefitting are part of a global capital
| class and not regular workers. We were sold that it would
| bring worldwide peace and better living conditions. It
| was a lie and we know it - why continue?
| cies wrote:
| > population growth concerns themselves are a reflection of
| an outdated (or soon to be outdated) economic model that we
| should probably focus on replacing or phasing out?
|
| I have the same sentiment. Though I take that "reflection"
| means that it was the economic model we live in/under is what
| gave rise to the "population growth concerns".
|
| That's part of why it's so hard to think of alternatives from
| within this model.
| Joeri wrote:
| I agree that immigration is a quick fix for a low fertility
| rate. But the people worrying about fertility rates fear
| cultural displacement by immigrants. They want less
| immigration, not more, and instead see a return to family
| values as the answer to the fertility rate problem.
|
| Anyway, the problem is not the current decline in population,
| it is a fertility rate that remains far below a replacement
| rate. That means there is no bottom to the population
| decline. The immigration solution would need to be applied
| again and again.
| mkaic wrote:
| I want more immigration AND more fertility, personally.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| People worrying about cultural displacement in europe need
| to crack open a history book and understand the movement of
| people is just how the world works. Its like the movement
| of air from different pressure areas. Most spanish people
| are actually a mix of moors and visigoths, other
| mediterranean people through history, and even celtic or
| germanic peoples who by and large displaced some earlier
| occupant of the iberian pennisula, who displaced some even
| earlier people, and so on and so forth until we get to
| whoever displaced the neanderthals. And all of this
| displacement involved assimilation too. Acting like
| migration should stop now would be like asking the wind to
| stop blowing or the tides to stop. Its like a natural law
| that people will go where theres better opportunities for
| them.
| strken wrote:
| I suspect a return to the family home values of the 90s and
| before, somewhere around 3x the average income, would be
| more effective than family values in the abstract.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| > That means there is no bottom to the population decline.
|
| The only reason I still don't have a kid is expensive
| housing (i.e. too many people for too little space). My
| partner is more or less tied to the capital because of her
| job and our apartment literally (and I mean literally)
| can't fit one more desk, much less one more person.
|
| A population decline (with the society kept running by more
| automation) should make things a bit easier, shouldn't it?
| kubb wrote:
| It's ideology. People living in religious communities often
| worship fertility, and try to make breeding as widespread as
| possible. Blood based nationalism is obsessed with the "race"
| (unscientific term) not dying out. For both, having children
| and raising them in the same ideology is crucial for
| preserving their existence.
|
| For the global liberal capitalism, the only way it can
| maintain its egalitarian promise is for it to rely on
| infinite growth. You can promise to the exploited that they
| will have even more people to exploit in the future if they
| keep their head down and stick with the status quo for long
| enough. It's starting to hit external limits given by the
| environment, and available space only recently.
|
| Meanwhile, some societies are aging and doing fine. The
| economy can be fine tuned to prioritize basic needs, and
| sustainably supply the people regardless of their age. For
| example automation in agriculture means that we'll need less
| and less people to produce food. UBI is just one tool that
| could be useful here.
| harperlee wrote:
| Not positioning myself here but ideology is one of those
| partisan despective words that have another-side-of-the-
| coin words ("culture" in this case, but see religion vs.
| cult, indoctrination vs. education, etc.). Several spanish
| regions are very keen on maintaining their particular
| culture.
| kubb wrote:
| Ideology is just a system of ideas. Of course I don't
| like religious fundamentalism and fascism, but feel free
| to s/ideology/neutral equivalent/g
| csharpminor wrote:
| A government's source of revenue is working age taxpayers.
| Its biggest cost is the social safety net for the elderly. It
| seems natural for them to care about population growth? Where
| would they get the money for UBI if their tax base is
| contracting every year?
|
| Immigrants (at the scale Spain needs) don't want to move to a
| shrinking economy. Spaniards themselves are leaving the
| country to look for work. As an example, Central American
| immigrants will immigrate through multiple low growth
| countries specifically to get to the U.S. for work.
|
| To GP's point though, I think Spain's population problems
| aren't all that related to dense apartments and more tied to
| economic opportunities.
| ShrigmaMale wrote:
| you're acting as though an immigrant from any of the dense
| population centers has the same impact as a native-born child
| on the culture and economy. that is false. sometimes it's for
| the better (in America, we have many well-educated immigrants
| from India and China). sometimes it's for the worse (see
| Europe's struggles with uneducated muslim immigrants from
| north Africa and the Middle East).
|
| importing large groups of people sometimes works; we did it
| pretty well in America because we had so much room to grow.
| transportation and communication were also much harder, so it
| was less easy for people to maintain ties to their former
| country and family there; they adapted a little more, though
| ethnic ghettos were still a problem.
|
| it's not an intractable problem but saying "just get
| immigrants bro" isn't really a good solution. we are
| sometimes biased in the US because we are selective (too much
| so, I think). we bring in the best from high-population areas
| like Africa and India and we see benefits for that. on the
| other hand, while migrant working and a moderate level of
| illegal immigration are fine and even economically
| beneficial, it would be silly to deny that the current levels
| are causing severe problems. when you lose that selectivity
| and control, things don't turn out so well. and to import
| enough people to make up for falling birthrates we would have
| to broaden our horizons beyond skilled workers.
| Lord-Jobo wrote:
| >you're acting as though an immigrant from any of the dense
| population centers has the same impact as a native-born
| child on the culture and economy. that is false
|
| I am not, i am acting like immigrating literally anybody is
| going to be massively better than a declining population.
| If they live in a country, they are paying for housing,
| food, and services, and almost certainly have a job. taxes
| on top of all of that. I think the attitude of being picky
| is fine and wise, right now, but eventually you are really
| going to just want anyone instead of going inverted.
| btbuildem wrote:
| You omit the masses of working poor immigrants that do a
| lot of the manual labour North Americans do not want to do
| -- predominantly in agriculture, construction, small
| manufacturing, and healthcare. They're the de-facto
| essential workers.
|
| Europe's struggles seem to be caused more by a culture
| clash. Immigrants will always bring their way of life with
| them, and group together - it's a constant of human nature,
| this is how we preserve identity. Moving to a different
| country is a traumatic experience when done voluntarily;
| imagine having to permanently leave home under duress and
| on short notice.
|
| As an immigrant myself, what always struck me as
| paradoxical is the nationalist / cultural pride that a lot
| of immigrants tend to display. I'd sum up my knee-jerk
| reaction to it as "Bro, if X is so great, why did you
| leave?" -- again, this is spoken as a person who left their
| homeland, with first-hand experience of some of the complex
| issues that surround all that. I still don't quite
| understand what drives that "flag-waving", but I hope to
| one day.
|
| Having said all that, I would encourage my adoptive country
| to be proactive in their immigration policies. Putting it
| harshly, "get the good ones before they go somewhere else".
| The geopolitics of the world will only become more chaotic
| as the impacts of climate change cause hardship in the less
| habitable areas of the planet -- big migrations are
| inevitable. If you want your country to arrive in the 22nd
| century while preserving most of your way of life, you
| can't be clinging to outmoded ideas.
| strken wrote:
| The idea that immigrants are a good idea because they do
| labour your existing population won't do is quite
| socially destructive and the cause of technological
| stagnation. It separates people into a de facto caste
| system where unpleasant jobs are also underpaid, prevents
| automation from becoming cost effective, and can block a
| country from reaping the benefits of skilled migration.
| lappet wrote:
| > what always struck me as paradoxical is the nationalist
| / cultural pride that a lot of immigrants tend to
| display.
|
| Also an immigrant, and I have observed that some
| immigrants tend to be become more conservative when they
| move. Or perhaps they have stopped evolving when their
| peers in the home country have moved on. I think this
| might be partly due to dealing with the trauma of
| displacement, and partly due to lack of diversity in
| thinking. I have mainly noticed this in a generation
| older than mine.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > world really seem REALLY misplaced to me. Population growth
| concerns are easily mitigated with immigration which will
| stay in demand until the rest of the worlds fertility rates
| catch up(40+ years)
|
| The population of prospective immigrants who completed 12
| years of education or more is already largely gone, because
| the fertility rates in countries with this level of
| development are either already below replacement or on the
| way to it at a rapid pace.
|
| And you need at least that to contribute to an advanced
| economy.
| 3seashells wrote:
| Worked for Beirut, herzigovinah etc.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| This concern over fertility vs immigration seems REALLY
| misplaced to me. The goal is not to maximise the tax revenue
| of an abstract entity called "country". It's about people,
| their values, their desires and their abilities to achieve
| them.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > This is slightly aside, but the concerns over fertility
| rates in the first world really seem REALLY misplaced to me.
|
| Since the early days of humanity, we've relied on children
| taking care of us in our old age. I haven't seen a solution
| for that.
|
| Nursing homes are not a solution. I listened to some grim
| statistics from my state recently. In many nursing homes, the
| ratio of staff to patients is 6:1. It takes 6 full time
| employees to take care of 1 patient. Now I'll grant that
| these numbers were outliers, because the population was
| challenging - many/most of these patients had dementia, etc.
| And they were handling rural areas - you'd get better scaling
| in the city. Still, I'm sure in a major metropolitan area
| it's at least 2:1.
|
| And that doesn't account for the poor existence in those
| places (abuse by employees, abuse by fellow residents -
| you're screwed if you don't have family members advocating
| for you).
|
| And that's for patients who get to go. Many elderly will have
| chronic conditions which are bad enough that you can't live
| alone, but generally not bad enough for Medicare or health
| insurance to pay for assisted living. Examples are things
| like mobility issues - only long term health care insurance
| covers this, and it's way too expensive. I don't own such a
| policy and likely won't ever be able to afford it.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| i don't see why that should be grim. having more people around
| isn't beneficial in and off itself.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| It might be "grim" due to demographic skew in terms of age
| over the long term.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| you don't like old folks?
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Contemporary societal culture _is_ biased against old
| folks--little respect, not valued for their wisdom and
| experience--but the problem with more older people is
| higher costs for retirement, healthcare, and a smaller
| pool of tax payers.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| i'm sure the oldies will figure something out and it can
| be assumed that societal culture will shift in their
| favor if demographics change towards them.
| cies wrote:
| Where I live I feel old folks make the rules, and make 'm
| well for their home-owning, investment portfolio having,
| pension fund living, selves.
|
| Look in the US? Pressie is near senile, senate is full
| grey. Not all countries are this bad, but where I live
| it's similar.
|
| But culturally oldies need more respect?
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Both of these things are true.
|
| Your first paragraph is most relevant. The thing about
| the pressie and senators is only relevant to the
| miniscule minority of the most powerful people.
| pb7 wrote:
| Your mistake is thinking that with age automatically
| comes wisdom. Most old people have no more wisdom to
| offer than they did when they were young.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Maybe. Or maybe you're proving my point.
| rangestransform wrote:
| nope, a recent example is the covid19 pandemic response
| ShrigmaMale wrote:
| not particularly, no. while the "boomers ruined the
| economy" trope isn't all right, neither is it all wrong.
| they effectively mortgaged much of the future value of
| the country and extracted it.
|
| now "old folks" in question are demanding a lavish
| retirement at the expense of me and those who are
| currently young despite the fact that when they funded
| something similar for their grandparents, the
| proportional burden was radically lower. a society that
| would significantly burden the future of its young (and
| therefore its own future) to cash out the olds smacks of
| a ponzi scheme and is hideously distorted.
|
| what's more, elder care sucks dollars from investing in
| interesting industries (colonizing space, growing our
| industrial base, new computing technologies) to mindless
| nonsense. instead, those dollars will go to building
| bingo halls.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| It's also far from the most densely populated European country
| so your interjection seems out of left-field.
|
| (But: it might be pretty "urban" for that matter since some
| countries have a lot of empty spaces which bring down the
| population density.)
| rewmie wrote:
| > Spain also has the lowest fertility rate in Europe at 1.28.
| Not sure how much apartment living is cause or effect on that
| but it's a grim number.
|
| Spain's economy is very screwed up. Unemployment rate tends to
| hover above 20% and I think it has the highest rate of students
| dropping out of basic education.
|
| To top things off, cost of living in urban centers is way way
| above the median income, specially nowadays. Young families
| have to make do with either sharing apartments/renting rooms or
| living way outside city centers in small apartments. In some
| cases the only affordable option is renting rooms way outside
| the urban centers.
|
| So the average Spanish couple has to make very hard decisions
| on if/when to start a family. Quite often the decision tends
| towards "not right now, we can't afford it."
|
| Marketing brochures tend to emphasize Spain's "terraza"
| lifestyle, as in people hanging out in cafes/bars/restaurants
| in the afternoon, evening, and even night, and brag about the
| fantastic social life that sprouts from there, but the ugly
| truth is that one important factor of that pattern is the fact
| that housing is very expensive and very low-quality to the
| point that staying indoors in one of those flats can have a
| huge detrimental impact on your mental health, and the only way
| to avoid that is to minimize the amount of time you spend
| indoors.
| jvican wrote:
| > Unemployment rate tends to hover above 20% and I think it
| has the highest rate of students dropping out of basic
| education.
|
| The first claim is true, but there's a lot of under-reported
| economic activity, and a lot of fraud (people claiming they
| don't work when they actually do), so the unemployment rate
| figure can't be trusted.
|
| Your second claim around the highest rate of students
| dropping out of basic education needs a citation.
| tspike wrote:
| Grim from an economic perspective, perhaps. Meanwhile, the
| biggest thing you can do to impact climate change is have fewer
| children.
| simple10 wrote:
| I love sites like this! Instead of reading them, it's an instant
| switch to code view and looking through their javascript
| libraries. It's built on scrollama and d3. Excellent
| implementation with very smooth scroll behavior... at least on
| desktop.
| bluGill wrote:
| On a fast desktop. I have a slower desktop (pinebook pro
| laptop) and it was not smooth.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| The site is beautiful, and yet I ask myself questions like:
|
| What is the hydrological impact of urbanization?
|
| This can both impact hydrological cycles (see millan millan's
| papers "greening and browning in a climate change hotspot") and
| possibly subsurface in karst and aquifer life
| bluGill wrote:
| Don't forget when asking this question that a higher city is
| less wide (probably) and so while it affects the area it covers
| more, there is less area affected at all.
| anovikov wrote:
| Poverty, that's how. They live in flats because they can't afford
| US-style houses (climate would allow them easily), and can't
| afford 70km average commute radius - car-only because sprawl
| can't be covered by public transport.
|
| They live in apartments not because they are so conscious about
| urban planning, but because they can't afford to do otherwise.
| Give people money and they want to move to single-family houses
| in suburbs.
| Darmody wrote:
| That's far from the truth.
|
| People want to live near the city center. They want to be able
| to walk and get anywhere easily and that's means they want to
| live in an apartment in a city.
|
| Actually, nowadays is cheaper to buy a house with a garden than
| an apartment and guess what people are trying to buy?
| electrozav wrote:
| It's much more expensive to live in the center of a big city.
| And not just in Spain.
| anthk wrote:
| No, buddy, it's the reverse. The sparsest provinces with rural
| backgrounds (the Castilles [except for maybe Zamora-Salamanca-
| Leon] , Aragon, Extremadura)... are the poorest. The most
| populated ones are the ones with the most quality jobs and
| people has much better salaries and ofc the cost of everything
| it's on par: Bilbao, Valencia, Barcelona, Madrid...
|
| Also, as they stated owning a flat in the center of your city
| or town it's expensive as fuck, while owning a 'villa' in the
| outskirts in the middle of nowhere in Ye Olde Farmtown it's
| dirt cheap.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > ... and can't afford 70km average commute radius
|
| Do we consider this abomination a _luxury_ now?
| germandiago wrote:
| It is true. One of the things that stroke me the most when I
| first visited England is that, at least in Hove and Brighton and
| Eastbourne, all streets had houses, no flats at all.
|
| This also made distances longer.
|
| Written from a flat :)
| nologic01 wrote:
| Excellent storytelling, fluidly integrating geospatial data and
| other visual elements and statistics in a smooth flow.
|
| Who knows, maybe one day such a "visual space" inside a browser
| would be interactive, a Google Earth type of thing as far as
| navigation goes, but with data queries that allow on the fly to
| populate various widgets. An expert could livestream a story or
| "save" it for later publication.
| subpixel wrote:
| Journalism presented as some sort of CD-ROM experience was
| quite neat when we were all a little bit interested in what web
| browsers could do.
|
| Today I assume a web browser and/or the device it is on could
| kill me and eat my lunch given the proper input.
|
| I just want to read an article with illustrations, a format
| that will never cease to be effective.
| j-a-a-p wrote:
| The New York Times regularly have this flowing style of
| stories. It is often quite impressive. Once they did a simple
| flowless scroll type of story called 78 long minutes, about a
| scared police force during a school shooting. Very impressive,
| you keep thinking _do something!_ while reading and scrolling.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/05/28/us/school-sho...
| bluGill wrote:
| I don't have a large enough sample to make a statement, but my
| impression is apartments in Spain are larger than in the US. Even
| if you want to live in an apartment, if you want more space you
| are forced to buy a house. You can't get a 4 bedroom apartment (3
| kids? separate office? hobby room?...) You can't get an apartment
| with two "living rooms" (music room, tv room, rec room...). You
| don't need any of that, but if you are not poor you may want
| those things and be willing to pay if it was available.
| davidw wrote:
| Not sure about Spain, but in Italy, you definitely find a lot
| of 'family size' flats. We had a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom flat in
| a 6-plex, and that is a pretty common sort of living
| arrangement.
| balfirevic wrote:
| What's the area of those flats? Where I live there are plenty
| of 3 bedroom flats, but they are usually under 100 m^2 (often
| smaller) and almost always under 150 m^2.
|
| 3 bedrooms in 100 m^2 is pretty cramped.
| epolanski wrote:
| It really comes down to your wallet.
|
| There's plenty of 150/200/250 m^2 flats in Italy (Rome and
| Milan especially), but they are very expensive.
|
| Here's a non comprehensive list of actual apartments above
| 250m (I didn't filter by flat, but you can see plenty are)
| and this is only the core center of Rome (what would you
| call downtown), not the entire city.
|
| https://www.immobiliare.it/vendita-
| case/roma/?criterio=rilev...
| bombcar wrote:
| 100 sq meters is about 1000 sq ft, and that's definitely on
| the small side for a 3 bedroom. 150 at 1600 is much more
| "normal" even in the US (for apartments, houses are usually
| bigger now).
| siquick wrote:
| One of the major problems with apartment living here in Sydney
| (or Melbourne) is the lack of 3 bedroom apartments - there just
| isn't any. So once you have a family you either stay in a 2
| bedroom (most of which are pretty small) or move miles out to
| the outer suburbs which have zero amenities and commute for
| over an hour each way.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| I live in a high rise condo now, love that basically everything I
| need is one elevator trip away. Grocery delivers in under 15
| minutes, like a charm. Maintenance takes me one hour a month,
| mostly changing various filters. Building is of higher quality so
| no noise issues. No steps to climb. But I'm a lazy retiree. For
| young people with children and dogs math is different.
| glitchc wrote:
| One should not discount the impact of climate/weather on the
| style of construction. Buildings enclosing gardens or a common
| area open to sunlight in an internal square is a great idea in
| moderate climates, but would work poorly in heavy snow regions.
| rewmie wrote:
| In Spain, most of those socialized residential housing projects
| were not designed with quality of life in mind. Instead, they
| are more in line with France's post-war operational urban
| planning approach mainly designed to maximize how many lower-
| class people could be stored in small areas. They might place a
| roof over your head, but apartments are extremely small with
| extremely small rooms, quality of life is very poor, and zoning
| didn't even allowed any type of non-residential use. Some
| neighborhoods are outright designed after prison blocks. In
| contrast, the middle/upper middle class residential areas often
| come in the form of locked up apartment blocks manned by one or
| more "conserges" (like a mix between a janitor and private
| security guard) with the ground and first floor completely
| locked up.
| omginternets wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree with your characterization of post-war
| urban planning in France. In particular, the "HLMs" of the
| 60's and 70's are known for their explicit interest in
| providing for quality-of-life in communal living. What
| happened instead is that these utopian plans didn't survive
| contact with reality.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Define moderate climate.
|
| I'm currently in a building from 1990 in Eastern Europe which
| apparently was inspired by those in Barcelona, because it's the
| same shape and we have a common area with greenery and trees,
| but the latitude is 51deg N and we used to have -30degC winters
| as recently as the late 90s, so I wouldn't call the climate (at
| least back then) moderate.
| glitchc wrote:
| Do you get a lot of snow? How do you deal with snow
| accumulating in the centre?
| stevekemp wrote:
| I live in Helsinki, Finland, and there are often clusters
| of buildings arranged around a garden - with space for
| parking, and childrens play-areas.
|
| Snow happens every year, and it is often pushed away by
| mini-tractors, into giant heaps, that the children love to
| climb and play on.
|
| Some parts of the ground are just left covered in ice/show
| for a few months though.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| The only way to deal with it is to make "mountains" in more
| open spaces (squares, large intersections, ...). You can't
| really take it out.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Fortunately, the courtyard itself is an open space, so
| long as you keep the paths to doors reasonably clear.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Montreal takes it out with huge trucks
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNqPtNO8B5A
| Tade0 wrote:
| The paved areas are plowed and the rest is just left there.
|
| It's not like you have a lot of snow blowing in there in an
| urban environment anyway.
| thebigman433 wrote:
| It really isnt that bad. I lived in an apartment building in
| Bozeman, MT for 3 years that had an enclosed courtyard. It was
| pretty small and didnt get a huge amount of use anyway, so it
| isnt the best comparison, but overall people just sorta make do
| if they want to use it.
|
| You grab a shovel and clear out a bit of snow in front of the
| doorway to it, and then do whatever you want outside in the
| snow. Snowball fights, build snowmen, even bring out a bbq if
| you want.
|
| I could see how people would imagine that things like this
| wouldnt work well in a wintery climate, but overall Ive found
| that people just make do. They live with snow everywhere else
| outside, so why wouldnt they do the same in a courtyard?
| layer8 wrote:
| I dream of a world where, given the data set, such a presentation
| would be straightforward to create with standard office software,
| or from a few interoperable ubiquitous software components, and
| easy to safely share online and offline, in a format that could
| be assumed to still work without issues 20 years later.
| ShrigmaMale wrote:
| i'm glad they're happy but that sounds actually terrible.
| infinitely worse than living on a large plot of land with trees
| and a garden, having a nice shop to work in, a comfortable home
| office, a spacious kitchen, plenty of space for cars. i honestly
| can't see how people prefer this; i am assuming at this point
| it's cope and/or people who are trying to gaslight everyone into
| preferring it for policy/environmental/political reasons.
| kdmccormick wrote:
| I don't live in Spain but I live in a reasonably dense city.
|
| * More things to do.
|
| * More people to meet.
|
| * More restaurants, which leads to the best restaurants being
| better.
|
| * More mom and pop businesses. I didn't know independent shoe
| stores were a thing until I moved here.
|
| * Live entertainment everywhere, both to enjoy and to
| participate in.
|
| * Walking to get coffee is very nice. Walking to get groceries
| is super nice.
|
| * Huge freedom of movement on a bike. OK, rural rail trails are
| cool, but they're lines. In a good city, I have trails but also
| the entire street grid.
|
| * Access to trains and buses which will take me to places I can
| drink without worrying about DUI.
|
| * Watching the innocent shenanigans that go on around makes
| life more interesting.
|
| The peace of mind of knowing that my living arrangements are
| reasonably sustainable, both environmentally and economically,
| is also nice.
|
| FWIW, I could afford to life in suburbia or the country, but I
| like the city better. I do love taking weekend backpacking
| trips in the mountains, so I'm not some nature-phobe.
| gumby wrote:
| > Between 1950 and 1975, thousands of Spaniards migrated from the
| countryside to the city. Franco's dictatorship Ministry of
| Housing promoted the construction of high-rise housing estates to
| accommodate them.
|
| The same thing happened in other countries like the US, UK and
| France, yet the outcome was negative rather than positive. What
| was different about Spain that it worked out well?
|
| (side point: I would rather have read an article with figures
| than a movie-like feature like this).
| sofixa wrote:
| How was the outcome negative in France?
|
| There were failures in ensuring the new high rising estates
| don't become ghettos due to lack of opportunities and self-
| reinforcing vicious cycles, which have been in large part
| corrected and have been taken into account for any new high
| rise / housing (re)developments. And there has been a lack of
| enough developments in the big cities for a variety of reasons.
| But overall I wouldn't say the outcome wss negative. Millions
| of people have somewhere to live which is more often than not
| with decent quality and availability of opportunities.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > Percentage (%) of population living in collective dwellings, as
| opposed to single-family houses and townhouses
|
| Love how they've included only advanced western/westernized
| countries there and not third world hellholes or post-soviet
| dumps.
| ska wrote:
| Love why? It's not the only comparison/analysis that can be
| made but it's an interesting one, to pick countries with
| roughly equivalent planning parameters.
| nzzn wrote:
| Outstanding--compelling presentation loaded with data. Perhaps
| the conclusion should be that the world should move to efficient
| 75% or so apartment living. UK at 15% is a huge outlier for a top
| 10 economy.
| RomanPushkin wrote:
| The website is ugly, this is exactly how you should NOT build
| websites, consumes CPU, and everything is lagging. Animation is
| like 0.1 FPS
| acchow wrote:
| Animation is smooth as butter for me (M1 Mac, Chrome)
| RomanPushkin wrote:
| Linux, Chrome. I can't even read the website, feels like it
| watching animated GIF loading on dialup modem in 1994. It
| jumps from one area to another randomly
| jupp0r wrote:
| Sounds like hardware rendering is not working for you. No
| need to blame that on the website.
| RomanPushkin wrote:
| Hardware rendering, lol? It's just a website, not a video
| game. My system is quite powerful. At least high-res
| OpenArena runs like a charm.
|
| Why do I need GPU to access the information - that's the
| question. What did they do so the website works worse
| than a 3D video game? Obviously I am missing something.
| pezezin wrote:
| OpenArena is really old by current standards, I don't
| know what you are trying to prove here.
| acchow wrote:
| The animated map focus actually helps convey geographic
| information.
|
| I think you just have some hardware-software conflict
| issue.
| dathinab wrote:
| not nice for skimming, but very nicely done, gave me a feeling I
| just made a trip to a museum, thanks
| kleton wrote:
| Isn't there an optimum of about 8-12 stories for any sort of
| building, before the cross section of plumbing and elevator
| shafts make it less economical?
| bombcar wrote:
| The optimum is based on land value, clearly, because in places
| where the land is effectively free or incredibly low cost,
| buildings don't seem to naturally get above 2 or 3 stories.
|
| So somewhere between 3 and 12 stories is a local optimum, and
| it's probably about where you need additional "machine floors".
| bluGill wrote:
| Where land is free 5 floors is the optimum just because
| nobody will accept more than 3 without expensive elevators
| (it may not even be legal if you would accept it!). Most
| people are willing to pay a little bit more for a larger
| foundation just for less floors.
|
| For car oriented locations 1 floor is optimal because the
| type of building that can handle more than one level of cars
| is so expensive you want to just build a large parking lot.
| (In theory the humans could be in taller buildings, but the
| space used for humans becomes a rounding error, and so you
| may as well avoid the expensive elevator)
| jupp0r wrote:
| This is obviously a function of the price of land, otherwise
| you wouldn't see very large high rises in Manhattan or similar.
| bluGill wrote:
| There are lots of different factors the come into play as you
| go higher.
|
| Above 3 floors you need elevators for the disabled, while
| shorter buildings often cant get by without. (check with a
| lawyer for what your local law says - I've been told that the 3
| floor isn't what the ADA doesn't actually say the highest is,
| just what most consider it to say). Even without disability
| laws, people generally want elevators to go higher.
|
| Conventional wood framing is the cheapest, but 5 is about the
| max floors you can get. Brick framing can apparently get you to
| about 10 floors. There are lots of other construction methods -
| check with a proper civil engineer for what the limits and
| costs of each are.
|
| Somewhere around 6-15 floors your city water will no longer
| have enough pressure and so your building will need booster
| pumps. Similarly, drain water needs special care to ensure the
| falling water doesn't burst the plumbing.
|
| You local fire may code allow for less strict standards if the
| fire department ladder trucks can just drive up to each window
| and rescue someone in a burning building. If that cannot happen
| people need to get down the stairs in case of fire (I've always
| wondering how the disabled will do this) so you need to ensure
| those stairs can be used in case of fire.
|
| Floor space per person is also a factor. Richer people tend to
| be willing to pay for more space than poor people, and poor
| people tend to have more kids. Thus if you make larger
| apartments you don't need as much elevator space. This one is
| tricky though as rich people tend to prefer newer buildings so
| you might discover that when the building gets old you can't
| rent some apartments because of the building max occupancy.
| Still, office buildings tend to have a lot more people per
| area, and they are more likely to leave at the same time, so I
| don't think space per person can be a big factor. (but school
| dorms need to consider all students going to class at the same
| time)
|
| As the person paying for a building you get to optimize those
| factors (generally for profit, but you can pick other
| considerations). Good luck.
| dzonga wrote:
| look at the anomaly that is the uk.
|
| no wonder uk property prices are crazy.
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