this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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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.
Sprawl is awful, too, and SFH is a luxury.
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.
Yabbut it will attract the poors. That's the real reason.
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.
It honestly feels like someone is just running a sockpuppet operation, or it's run of the mill brigading
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
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.
I live in a dense area and around me is not nature but farmland. So nature goes to shit anyway.
Do you like food?
Yes, but 90% of our production gets exported anyway. just lessen it to 50% and give us forrests.
Let's be miserable and live tortured lives for the environment, yay
#doingmypart
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.
I don't quite understand the take about privacy. I lived in a house as part of family of 5 people, sometimes we got visits from another three relatives and they stayed overnight. The house provided more space than the apartment, sure, but it was nowhere near 'privacy', you can hear everything and everyone, the only advantage is that there's no drilling unless there is a renovation going on, and if someone shouts or listens to the music loud you can go and ask not to do that. Also, you can probably do that in the condo, so the problem with condo is really just the amount of renovations that will inevitably start here and there because of the amount of apartments.
I guess there is some middle ground where the building is comfortable even if you're not the only family living in it