The only thing i can see on the right bad is that many people dont like beeing cramped in with many other people. + want to have a garden Balcony can be a “garden” but not as good. I have nothing against the right, but keep in mind not everyone is the same.
Buildings like the one on the right near me have something like community gardens, but exclusive to the residents.
I don’t know exactly how it works, but it seems residents who want a garden have one, and those who don’t aren’t forced to maintain exactly X cm high grass.
Right - unless you’re getting a custom home, builders do jack shit about noise control - at best, you’ll have some fiberglass batting inside an interior wall, but even that is usually not done. Take the same kind of standard cost-cutting and apply it to an apartment complex, and congratulations, you just created the projects. My point being is that if residential density is a desired social policy, then there need to be standards put in place that focus on quality of life, not just safety/environmental standards. But builders and developers have regulatory capture (in the US), and things like “quality of life” are marketing premiums rather than something everyone should enjoy.
The thing with developers is that they build that density, but over ALL of the land. Apartments kill more trees and create more impervious cover than any other type of housing.
Our city requires parkland dedication for development. Single-family developments build public parks and preserve trees wherever possible. Apartments just pay a fee in lieu for tree mitigation and parkland dedication and improvements because they absolutely will not have a millimeter of land not dedicated to housing.
That sounds like the sort of thing that could easily be fixed by making it not legal to do that lol
It’s not a problem inherent to apartments, it’s a problem with lack of regulation in your area.
But more importantly, if that many people need housing, it’s better to put them in apartments than single family houses. Less nature will get destroyed. What are we gonna do, not give them housing?
The point of the graphics is 100 homes vs 100 homes. If you say “well, in the second picture developers would just keep building” then you’re comparing 100 homes to like 1000 homes. It makes no sense.
Apartments kill more trees and create more impervious cover than any other type of housing.
Is this per-acre, per-person, or per-unit?
Per acre doesn’t make a lot of sense, comparison-wise, because people have to live somewhere. It seems more logical to compare on a per capita basis than anything else, in terms of the number of people who will on average live in those units.
People like ignoring per-capita analysis because it would force them to rethink the sustainability of their own lifestyle. There is absolutely nothing sustainable about every single person living in ultra low-density, car-dependent sprawl.
If you refuse to build dense communities to house people, they’ll just build sprawl elsewhere, and more forest and farmland will be destroyed for it, more cars will clog up the streets because of it, and more neighborhoods will have to be demolished to build freeways because of it.
Typical apartment density still results in a higher per-capita impact. Yeah - that home lot may take up a lot of space, but it’ll be maybe 20-30% impervious cover. So you get triple the density with an apartment, but once you account for the parking (no garages inside the apartments), the higher percentage of impervious cover, and the lack of parkland dedication for the neighborhood you actually have more impervious cover per capita for multifamily than single-family.
And that’s not even touching the extra traffic mitigation in the road network required to accommodate a dense development. Traffic isn’t spread out, so more infrastructure has to be built everywhere to accommodate the choke points created by apartments. You throw in a 400-unit apartment complex you have to add another lane to the road, plus decel and turn lanes at the site. You add 400 single-family homes along that same road and it isn’t a problem because you don’t have the stress-point on the network created by having hundreds of cars using the same access point. When your peak-hour trips for a site get over about 100, you’re gonna cause a lot of traffic.
The solution we’ve implemented with single-family to make it less impactful is a super strict tree ordinance. Any trees removed have to be double, triple, or even quadruple-mitigated (depending on tree size) and we additionally charge $500/inch for tree removal. We make it so fucking expensive to bulldoze nature they have to build around it.
If they “accidentally” kill a tree, they have to pay quadruple the fee, mitigate on-site, and development in the critical root zone of an improperly-removed tree is permanently prohibited. We’ve had million-dollar pieces of land made worthless when they tried to get around the rules.
Single-family builds around the trees and incorporates them into the neighborhoods. Multifamily just pays the mitigation fees and passes the bill to the residents.
Of course, not everywhere has the space for single-family. But if you’ve got the space, single-family can be way less-disruptive to the local environment than multifamily.
Triple the density sounds quite low. A five over one is going to be more like 6x or more the density.
It sounds like most of the rest of that is parking minimums and car-dependant roads. The last apartment I lived in just had on-street parking because it was in a walkable neighborhood and a couple min from the subway. I don’t know how many people living there even owned a car.
The reality is that in most of the US a car is a hard requirement. Building apartments without parking means nobody will live there. You can’t solve the parking problem without first addressing the need for cars. The US is sprea out enough that installing enough public transit to remove the need for a car would be the largest civil project in history.
You do both incrementally and simultaneously. Yes, this is a terrible idea in the middle of exurban sprawl. Don’t build them there.
The people most likely to move into these buildings are the people best served by existing transit. If you’re able to bike, train or bus to work, you’re more likely to get one of those units than if you drive 120 miles to work.
A number of cities already have decent to ok transit networks. So you make it so expansions to those networks result in transit-oriented development, and upzone existing walksheds of your transit to transform them into pleasant walkable mixed-use areas if they aren’t already. You improve things over time and people who prefer walkable, bikeable urbanism will move in.
Simultaneously simply isn’t realistic. A developer isn’t gonna drop 40 million dollars on a TOD complex without the transit being in place. Otherwise they’re throwing away the money when the transit project falls through (which 90% do).
Aren’t those regulation issues? What’s stopping the municipality (or whoever is in charge) to mandate a maximum of say 70% of the land to be built on? Or buying back land to preserve its natural state? Developers will work ruthlessly whether they are building individual or communal housing. At the end of it, i think it may just come down to greed and greasing the right pockets.
70 percent is actually a high number, and is actually the highest we allow anywhere. Single-family is usually limited to 50%, and a lot of our city is in the recharge zone of an aquifer and limited to 15%.
I’d argue that 100 houses and 1 playground is much more destructive to the land than 1 building with 100 apartments and no playground. Single family homes still have a massive amount of impervious ground cover ranging from their roofs, driveways and patios.
Its also not an inherrent problem to the denser developments themselves but moreso an issue its legal to pay a fine to get out of a building standard. The city could just refuse any development that fails to meet their public park and tree goals.
Multifamily development requires large buildings and parking lots that are fundamentally incompatible with low impervious cover and tree preservation.
Attached garages are what allow single-family homes to be so efficient when it comes to impervious cover. The cars are parked inside the building, with living space above and around it within a door of the parking space. It’s extremely compact, and with proper minimum setbacks in the code you eliminate a lot of pavement.
The average apartment requires 2.2 parking spaces. The average house requires 2.5. Multiply that out by 100 units and you’ve got 220 versus 250, but by having garages the driveways can be shortened to only 2 have room for 2 spaces. Now you’ve got 4 spaces’ worth of parking for the impervious cover of 2, so the parking requirements for single-family are more than twice as efficient while being lower in absolute terms.
A parking space requires about 100 square feet of IC, so for a 100-unit complex you’re looking at 22,000 square feet of IC just for the parking spaces. Plus another 1500 for ADA spaces. Throw in drive aisles (which due to emergency vehicle access are just as wide as a SF road) and that number more than doubles. Also put in fire lanes, hammerheads/turnarounds, etc and you’re quickly looking at 150,000 square feet of pavement just for the parking lot, plus the extra road lanes and decel lanes required to support its traffic impact.
The thing about SF roads is that they serve multiple purposes. They provide access to the site, as well as emergency vehicle access, fire lanes, etc. They also can do storm water detention under the roads to limit the required off-site detention, so they don’t have to clear-cut as large of an area for detention and water-quality facility as an apartment complex does.
So the road, drive aisle, emergency access, fire lane, storm sewer, and more can all be combined in a lower-density area in a manner that combines to decrease the per capita environmental impact.
There’s no additional ADA requirements because every parking space has open space on at least 1 side and they’re all close enough to the houses that reserving empty parking spaces for ADA isn’t required. And half the parking spaces are inside the house. And the occupancy rate of SF houses is half-again higher than an apartment, but with fewer drivers per capita (higher percentage of multiple-child households in SF).
You can’t just look at building sizes and get the full picture of a development’s impact.
I don’t know what houses you see that have garages but don’t have driveways long enough to park on. The drive up area of a multiunit can also allow emergency service access, often allowing full access to the perimeter of the building by using the sidewalks or lawns during emergencies.
As for stormwater it is very rare that it is detained underground or underneath the road, most developments have storm sewers that lead to a stormwater retention or detention pond and in some cases the sewers directly lead into creeks, lakes or empty land.
My concern with multi unit living is that your home is now dependent on the actions of others. You could lose everything because some dumbass next to you dropped cigarette burning on their floor, or overflowed their tub.
It also just gets messy having that many people try to manage a property together. I lived in a high rise for a year. There was constant bickering over who put the wrong thing down the trash chute or who was using the elevator to move furniture without checking it out first. Everyone had to all agree to building repairs, which was a nightmare, and getting them them done took forever. From my understanding our building was pretty well run, but it didn’t feel like it. I loved the idea of high rise life when I moved in but by the time we got out house I was ready to be done with it.
My concern with multi unit living is that your home is now dependent on the actions of others. You could lose everything because some dumbass next to you dropped cigarette burning on their floor, or overflowed their tub.
Loads of people in SFHs lose their homes due to the actions of others. An entire town burned to the ground because their power company was too cheap to trim vegetation.
And cockroaches and bedbugs and hoarders and rats and she died but had no family and never left her apartment so we didn’t know until she started leaking into the ceiling.
I won’t ever live in an apartment again after this.
Oh yeah, I use to work at a pest control company making their appointments.
Most apartment complexes just signed up for the year packages to keep the places free of stuff like ants cause that’s the big issue where I live. Roaches are rare but bed bugs are also common. Bed bug treatments are crazy expensive too, even for just a single unit of an apartment building, their prices were into the $1000’s.
And then for house calls where they got bed bugs, even more money. In fact, most people who had houses who called in for bed bug rates would back out half way through the treatment because they couldn’t afford to continue.
absolutely terrible to get caught with bed bugs. If you don’t already, get the plastic bed coverings to keep them out.
People attach a stigma to bugs without realizing - you don’t need to be dirty or live out in the woods, bugs are just out there and can and will get into your house. The only way to stop that is to be preventative.
Fortunately I’ve found a solution. I’ve been slapped on Reddit for misinformation, but anecdotally I can say with 100% certainty that what I’ve done worked in multiple apartments in separate buildings.
4 of those blower kerosene heaters. Blast those bastards until it’s just hot enough that it don’t melt your records and bam, problem solved.
Bedbugs are worse, but roaches are harder to beat when you’ve gotta get everyone on board.
Some people just consider living with them a part of normal life and they don’t even care.
4 of those blower kerosene heaters. Blast those bastards until it’s just hot enough that it don’t melt your records and bam, problem solved.
Makes sense because that’s how some places treat for bed bugs. The pest control place I worked at would partner with another company who did heat treatments on bed bugs for more intense invasions - think homeless shelters that are infested with them.
The issue with heat treatments is that in order to get it hot enough to kill them completely, you end up taking a lot of stuff out of the apartment/room.
I hated going over the lists with people on how to prep for bed bug treatments cause I had to basically ask them about everything in their home in case it would catch fire or just melt.
My concern with multi unit living is that your home is now dependent on the actions of others. You could lose everything because some dumbass next to you dropped cigarette burning on their floor, or overflowed their tub.
your entire life is dependent on the actions of others. see: climate change, pollution (air/water/noise/light), road safety, etc. etc.
in the first examples you give (cigarette leading to fire, overflowing bathtub leading to water damage), it sounds like you’re thinking of a complex with deeply inadequate fire safety and waterproofing.
for the rest, yes, communities are fractured – some would say as a deliberate means of social control through isolation – and little in the world is going to be improved without fixing that.
also, to reheat a comment from elsewhere in this discussion, calling housing “property” is doing free PR work for those who financially exploit others through control of land: consider finding alternative terms.
I feel you. But the same logic has our earth in shambles. Because I keep cleaning MY room / house /city /country by throwing it out to some other city /country /continent (and soon maybe another planet).
What the hell is going on in your apartments, that an overflown tub destroys everything? Is the floor in your bathroom not waterproof? In Europe water damage typically happens with bursting tubes and that can happen in your own home as well. You are typically insured against this.
Also I noticed people complaining about noise - but my apartment holds noise in really well. I leave my tv on blast and when I stand outside I can’t hear it even though there is a window open.
Also I noticed people complaining about noise - but my apartment holds noise in really well. I leave my tv on blast and when I stand outside I can’t hear it even though there is a window open.
Mine’s the opposite.
I can tell when my neighbor is on his treadmill, or when my other neighbors are having sex (and they’re not even vocalizing much).
Just depends on the property, and how well it was built.
i invite you to use the word “house” or “apartment” or “dwelling” or “land” instead of “property” in these contexts, to stop doing free PR work for exploitative real estate investors
i invite you to use the word “house” or “apartment” or “dwelling” or “land” instead of “property” in these contexts,
I used to word property as a generic term for any of the types of property one could live in, that you listed.
I’m specifically making the point that it doesn’t matter if it’s a house, or a condo, or an apartment, it’s how well the structure is built that depends on the noise you hear from the adjoining spaces that other people live in.
to stop doing free PR work for exploitative real estate investors
how is “property” any more generic than “home” or “dwelling”? and do you not see any additional meanings, beyond “place to live”, highlighted in calling it “property”?
They are all real estate properties. You rent or purchase a property. When that word is used for where a person lives long-term it’s not potentially meant to denote ownership, but just a place of residence that they spend some of their money to do so.
Honestly not purposely trying to stick a finger in someone’s eye over this, that’s just the generic term for a place that people live in/at.
I’ll tell you what though, next time I’ll try to remember the use the word ‘residence’ instead, though that’s not completely accurate either, because somebody could just be living at a friend’s place and not spending any money to do so.
I’m sure in the scheme of the world’s problems it’s a small thing, but I really think it’ll be easier to find stable housing for everyone who wants it if we can stop seeing it as primarily a marketable possession 🙏
I’m sure in the scheme of the world’s problems it’s a small thing, but I really think it’ll be easier to find stable housing for everyone who wants it if we can stop seeing it as primarily a marketable possession
A safe and happy living environment for every human being is no small thing, and a worthy goal to strive for.
I lived in an apartment for 3 months and had to tip toe as quietly as humanly possible after 6pm or the person downstairs would bang on the ceiling. And I’m alreat a really quiet person…
A lot of apartments aren’t exactly modern. And it doesn’t help that people are so eager to call these impractical living spaces “historical”.
I hate “historical” building bullshit. I went to go stay in Seattle for a day and a half so I got a room for the night and then the hotel calls me to let me know it’s a historical building so they don’t have air conditioning.
This was the middle of August so of course I’m like, why did you call me to tell me this instead of listing it on your site you psychos? And the bitch bragged to me about working at a different hotel that charges $600 a room with NO air conditioning.
I couldn’t cancel cause they didn’t tell me until last minute either.
I don’t WANT to own an apartment. I don’t WANT to share walls with my neighbors. I want space to work on my hobby projects like with wood and metal. To make noise without upsetting anyone. To have privacy, and the ability to get away from people. I need a shed, a garage, and some yard space. The only way I can swing it is fewer people and more space. Europe is too crowded for that in many places. It sounds unpleasant.
Shared wood/metal project places are awesome. There’s someone who maintains everything, and you get much better equipment. It’s not terribly expensive (cheaper than owning it all yourself), and can be local if density provides it. Look at places like The Crucible in Oakland (which is more tailored to art) or local trade schools will open their doors
I have a shed. I don’t have a garage. I don’t have any more room for any more tools. Most of my tools are things I’ve used for one or two projects and that’s it.
Personally I’d much rather have a maker space that has a tool library so I stop spending so much money on tools that I need for one project. Like a hardwood floor nailer. I’ve got full hardwoods in my house now. Wtf do I need that for? Every time I find out a friend is going to start installing hardwoods, it turns out that they already bought the nailer by the time I found out.
I’m not opposed to it, but there’s something nice about having your own workshop. Depends on what you’re doing. I also have fewer and worse makerspaces where I am now than places I’ve lived in the past - it’s a crapshoot.
In the US, if you own an apartment it’s typically called a condo or townhouse so an apartment usually does indicate that it’s a rental. Maybe that’s a good indication that these discussions need to change their language when talking to Americans to make sure to include the words condo and townhouse. I live in a condo and the HOA sorta sucks but it has a lot of other advantages and we have a huge yard.
@lagomorphlecture Ah, thanks. That explains a lot in this thread. But still, living in an apartment can be great. Maybe right now in the US it's hell. But it doesn't have to be that way.
The beautiful thing about America is we have enough space so that you could have the big house on the left AND the beautiful nature on the right at the same time.
Well, both of the islands in the picture will be underwater no matter what, but I doubt this will affect the nature where I used to live, the extra CO2 will probably be good for the trees.
Yeah I want to see option three where whatever imaginary number of people exactly comfortably fits into either 100 fully detached homes OR 100 apartments in a single block (realistically I don’t think there is a number of people both those things serve equally) intergrate into the natural environment of their new island home in a mutually beneficial way. The fundamental claim of this post is “we cannot coexist with nature. The only viable way for us to provide housing for humans is in a way that is in direct competition with the wellbeing of their environment” is foolish and the root of the issues it claims to be trying to solve.
What is going on in this comments section? Building dense is massively better for the environment than SFH, both in the construction phase and for the life of the units as far more residents can be served with less infrastructure sprawl. It also doesn’t mean that detached housing will suddenly stop existing if we let developers build densely packed housing. Doesn’t even need to be high rises, it can be townhomes, duplexes, five-over-ones, etc. You’ll still be able to get a white picket fence suburban home or a farmhouse on some acreage if you want. In fact, it will become cheaper because all the people who want to live in cities will actually be able to move there and not take up space in that low density area you want to live in.
It’s the same attitutes that cause drivers to oppose public transit, despite the fact that public transit means less traffic. More dense housing options mean fewer people competing for the same low-density sprawl and farmland. Everybody wins by allowing more density to be built, instead of continuing our current model of government-mandated sprawl for all.
From an ecological POV I’m not so sure on the word density. More dense buildings, yes, but even more dense urban areas (read: than Paris/London) can lead to sealing of soils, UHI, recreational under-supply.
There is a sweet spot in population density for cities. I am not sure about the exact number, but you get it, when building houses, that have four or five stories.
People want to live in SFH’s. I just noticed this post from the all feed but it’s not that surprising that people who enjoy living in privacy with space would prefer the status quo and then say as much.
If I had the money to afford a downtown apartment that was large enough for my 5 member family, I would. I don’t want to live in an apartment complex with nothing to do in the suburbs.
People want to live in SFHs because cities are currently full of overpriced shoebox apartments with almost no options between that and car dependent suburban sprawl. It’s not for me personally, but townhomes and other mid density developments are perfect for most families and far easier to serve with public transport (see: streetcar suburbs). You can still mix in detached single family housing in urban areas where demand is low enough to make the financials work too.
Well yes, it’s definitely great as a temporary means of housing, but realistically we all want some breathing room, some privacy, expandability… This is great for cities and Metropolitan areas, but you’re not gonna get people elsewhere to prefer this over, say, a foresty cottage with full privacy, solar energy generation, your own crops, maybe even a water source that you can clean up to provide for your water needs.
The problem isn’t that kind of house, the problem is the suburban hellscape with perfectly cut lawns that offer little to no biodiversity, little say in house designs, and an infrastructure design that promotes transportation by cars.
If we simply moved away from big cities, worked from home, and aimed for personal regenerative agriculture or at the very least a more simbyotic relationship with our environments, we’d be leagues ahead.
It will become cheaper because all the people who want to live in cities will actually be able to move there…
Except when financial incentives line up so that it’s more profitable to let an apartment go vacant than it is to decrease rent to an affordable level.
Just go to Seattle - you’ll see apartment buildings at less than 50% capacity with rent starting at $2500/mo, immediately adjacent to homeless camps.
The financial incentives don’t line up because there isn’t enough (affordable) housing supply. Build more and they will be forced to drop their rates or sit vacant forever losing money. Some areas also have ass-backwards tax schemes that allow you to write off lost income from a “vacancy” as a loss. I’m not sure if Seattle does this but that is another major driver of those obnoxiously high rent vacant apartments in some areas.
I think it’s just Muricans being Muricans, everything seems to be poorly constructed there so they think being able to hear other residents having sex is just an intrinsic quality of apartments and flats
If they can make an apartment where I cant hear my neighbors, cant smell them burning food, and 100% will not be damaged from other units flood/fire then I am all for it.
I live in one of these. They’re amazing, and totally changed my mind on apartments. I just wish I had an extra room and a lower floor. I can get a garage for $100/m which is not bad at all.
Anything cheap is going to be bad. We need to raise the standards to a minimum. The unfortunate thing I need to move to a house to be closer to my new job, otherwise an apartment like this would be fine.
I mean, yeah, apartments and such should be widely available. Awesome for high population areas, young folks, temporary housing situations, etc. Had a flat for years and will for at least a few more. However, as a drummer (and general loud music enthusiast) I am very ready to get out of the flat and get into a proper house with a basement, garage, patio for grilling with da boyes, etc.
A good mix of both is ideal. I sure wish we took better measures to mitigate the insane housing prices tho’. Sick of thin walls and and a single room trying to replace 4 rooms.
When I see the image what came to mind was that experiment where they had an overpopulation of rats in a cage and how all of the rats turned on each other and killed each other.
Too much human density is not good. You have to be sure to get the percentage of humans to a acre of land just right, to prevent the rats situation.
Part of the thing is humans aren’t rats, so we can’t necessarily extrapolate from rat behavior to humans.
And another thing is space is 3-dimensional. If people have spacious apartments and access to good parks and public spaces, we don’t necessarily need as much private acreage.
And a final thing is different people have different preferences. Some people enjoy and prefer those tiny houses. Some people prefer a homestead with acreage. Some people are happy with a condo in a high-rise. Some people want a rowhouse with a little space for a garden in the back.
But – at least in North America – we make it literally illegal to build anything but the houses on the left on the vast majority of urban land.
If we’re going to talk about forcing people into living conditions they don’t want to be in, we should be talking about how we’re systematically shoving most people into sprawling, car-dependent suburbia.
I know that, growing up in suburbia, I felt trapped like in a cage because I couldn’t get anywhere without getting a ride from my parents. The internet was the only escape really.
Their point is that developers are legally forced to build SFH even if demand says otherwise. Detached homes are a major tax burden on cities; their cost should reflect their real cost. If you want one, go ahead and get one (I will be doing the same!), but cities genuinely cannot be built to handle most of its land being single family, detached homes.
I may want a detached home for hobbies and space, but the most fun I’ve had to date was when I lived in a townhouse in the middle of the city and didn’t need a car to get anywhere. Exploration and discovery is impossible in suburbia.
Hell, you can have suburbia, but it should still be walkable. And you do that by increasing the taxes on them (rightfully), adding regular busses, having bike lanes, including businesses in the mix, and having them not be so sprawling so that you are closer to the city itself.
I don’t live in suburbia, I live in a tiny hamlet with cows for neighbours.
I agree that cities cannot be all detached homes, but likewise they cannot be all high-rise either. Where my wife and I come from ( France and UK respectively) high-rise experiments have always ended in poverty and decay.
I could buy a crappy little flat in a city with junkies for neighbours, or I could buy a massive house with space for a pool 40 minutes drive away. Which would any sane person choose? Am I saving the environment driving around in my SUV? Yes, because we hardly use it thanks to the internet and us being fit.
My feeling is the current status quo will continue:
Young people live in flats in town. Kid #1 comes along and it seems fine. Then #2 arrives (plus they start having a bit mor £€$) and things start getting a little tight. Also the downsides of city life start outweighing the upsides (people drinking and shouting at 2am is more annoying when you and your kids have work/school).
Obviously that is a gross generalisation, but I have seen the pattern all over the place.
Part of the thing is humans aren’t rats, so we can’t necessarily extrapolate from rat behavior to humans.
Actually the study was specifically being done to study humans. We are similar enough when it comes to the factors being studied to be able to be used for studying, as the scientists did.
The actual scientist who did the study were confident that the results could be correlated and used for human behavior.
I think it’s safe to say for all of us that we don’t like being crowded in. And when we’re crowded in for a very long time then we get cranky. It’s biological.
And another thing is space is 3-dimensional. If people have spacious apartments and access to good parks and public spaces, we don’t necessarily need as much private acreage.
The experiment actually had the rat cages set up with up and downs areas and small cordoned off areas as well. Some of what they found was just the congestion of moving around from area to area was enough to cause conflict.
And a final thing is different people have different preferences. Some people enjoy and prefer those tiny houses. Some people prefer a homestead with acreage. Some people are happy with a condo in a high-rise. Some people want a rowhouse with a little space for a garden in the back.
I honestly don’t think you can be confident in saying that long-term crowding would only affect a small subset of humans though, because of human nature, that affects, well, all humans.
You crowd us in too much and we don’t like it, and we act upon it. And that tolerance between the two ends on the bell curve of people’s crowding tolerance is not that great.
Right, but the experiment was in an actual, literal cage, right? With no ability to walk outside to get groceries or stroll through the park.
So long as we’re not cramming people into Hong Kong’s cage homes (which only happens because of a thoroughly fucked housing market in Hong Kong), I think our efforts should be spent on making there be abundant housing supply – particularly of dense, walkable urbanism – so that the most economically vulnerable amongst us aren’t left with no other option besides horrible, inhumane conditions.
Essentially, if we unfuck our housing market by legally allowing development denser than ultra low-density sprawl, there’s no reason to think the market can’t decide what level of density people are comfortable with. That is, if the poorest among us have enough money, and there are ample housing options available even at the price level affordable to them, too-dense development will disappear of its own accord from pure market forces. After all, if you feel cramped and miserable, and you have the means to leave for someplace better, you will.
But if we don’t legalize density, people will end up crowding themselves in with too many roommates, with abusive partners or overbearing family, in wholly inadequate quality housing, or just straight-up homeless.
Because if we set out at the onset to dictate what constitutes “too much” density, well, many of the commenters in here are of the opinion that even rowhouses are too dense. If we empower them to decide what constitutes “too much” density for the rest of us, we’ll end up with the laws we currently have on the books. The very laws that cripple the economy and exacerbate inequality. This will just create the conditions we have now, where a housing shortage and widening inequality push people into really sub-par living arrangements.
Because if we set out at the onset to dictate what constitutes “too much” density, well, many of the commenters in here are of the opinion that even rowhouses are too dense.
You’ve nailed the crux of the problem right there. And yeah, like with everything else with human beings, you’ll get a big range of people who have different tolerances for density.
But besides their own individual opinions of what is too much density, there’s a biological/psychological definition as well, that all humans in common have, and that’s what the scientists were studying.
This is EXACTLY the kind of point I’m trying to make. Humans keep packing more and more into the same forever-growing cities and it makes the formerly-pleasant harsh, foreign, and unwelcoming.
There exist nice places that have balance - green spaces, slow pace of life, nice local restaurants, uncrowded trails, minimal traffic and short commutes.
Then they become discovered, become popular, and become overcrowded in a way that ruins what made them special to begin with. But they still look small to people from the big cities, who keep moving there. Now increasingly expensive, congested, and losing their original character, the urban zealots who invaded start screeching about cars, walkability, bikeability, and transit. It was perfectly bikeable, and there was no traffic before everyone tried to pile in.
The enemy is GROWTH, and OVERCROWDING, not single family homes and cars.
This is a pretty terrible way to make this point. The pic on the left is neater and the one on the right leaves almost no space for the people living there to do anything. You probably want a little bit of cleared land for literally anything to do on the island.
Then again, there isn’t a dock. So I figure the island on the right has a better way of building boats to leave.
Thanks for the suggestion. I have actually hiking, mushroom picking, disposing of hunted animal guts etc. It’s fun for a bit but it’s really not my thing… like I said above, having some space for people instead of being super cramped is optimal. Good thing real life offers these options as opposed to the stupid binary of this post.
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