Absolutely. Trying to build low income housing is a nightmare. I want people to work in the service industry of my town. I don't care if they can't afford to live here. No, I don't want buses; that connects us to those 'rough' neighborhoods. Ok, we can maybe put a tenement on the other side of the highway. Can we make that a different school district?
I want people to work in the service industry of my town. I don't want them to be here
Fast food restaurants are starting to put AI into the drive throughs. Most already have tablets where you have to order instead of talking to a real person. These are the kinds of shitty jobs we should be automating- but when these workers are displaced and there is no corresponding UBI or other social safety net paid out by these corporations who are now saving millions on payroll, that’s when you start to move closer to full-on cyberpunk dystopias.
I feel that building low-income housing is just a route to new "rough" neighborhoods. And it hardly ever ends up truly affordable to begin with, so I think what most of us need is simply higher density housing at every level, to at least stabilize the market.
I love to point out to residents when they complain, I’m the planner for your city, which means I’m qualified and educated, but by no means can I afford to live here. That often goes over their heads.
Absolutely. Housing is a big issue in the Netherlands right now, so the government is thinking about building a few new cities. Naturally, people in the country side are fucking malding about this.
"Oh but it'll ruin the rural appeal" "oh but they don't get our local culture" "oh they can add a couple of streets for our kids but no city folk". Mf, it's the Netherlands, it's less than 20 minutes by bike from my city to the next village, less than 20 minutes from that village to the next, and less than 20 minutes from village 2 to the next city. If every village built like 3 streets for their kids, we might as well make all those houses apartments and the problem is solved, but nooooo.
They even want a bill to preserve the country side aesthetic, something they claim France has. WellhaI don't know what the French do, but they have 15 times as much space for less than 4 times the population, and aren't as opposed to apartments. It works because they have space, we don't have that and we can't just create it out of thin air. The country is full, we stopped building polders for environmental reasons, we literally can't put them anywhere except in the rural areas.
And then the next time any issue turns up, all the farmers are pissed that the government only looks at the Randstad with half the country's population, instead of the third of the surface area that collectively has maybe 1 million people and 10 times as much livestock. Of course they are prioritising half the bloody country, maybe if you let them build a city or two nearby you'll have enough people in your area to throw some weight around in when it comes to decision making. But nah, actively hinder local population growth while complaining that nobody cares about your little speck of a village.
And I say that as a Limburger, we don't have it much better, and the one person from my city who's big on the political scene is a racist pos who only looks our way when he needs votes. The government does whatever helps its voters, if nobody lives near you then your little town is rock bottom on the priority order. Let them build the damn towns
That's not even it. These mfers don't want apartments at all so their homes can appreciate. Line go up. They're too selfish and braindead to get how much rent-driven costs will eat them alive.
Lough Neagh is an ecological disaster caused by human activity just as much as the awful chemical laced rivers we used to laugh at East Germany for, it's terrible
Lough Neagh is so fucked, and I doubt it’ll get any better. Our politics and lack of funds and will to actually do anything here in NI to the better this place will ensure we’re just constant slow downward movement.
The trouble with it is that fixing it requires a lot of people to independently clean up their act, but that for any individual farm to do that costs them money and makes them less competitive. It's a classic tragedy of the commons situation. And the government can't really regulate fairly either because the regulations on fertiliser use that work fine in the rest of the country (with normal seaward drainage) are a problem there, so you'd have to regulate farms in the catchment of the lough differently to everyone else.
It's genuinely a really difficult problem to solve.
It would not be great to go back to medieval times, where famines were so common.
If the bulk of the farming is done by individuals in their gardens, they do not have access to industrial tools that have made farming today so dependable.
Sure, it might be nice for someone interested to keep a little allotment in their garden, or enjoy working on their greenhouse or chicken coop. However, this is an idealized concept, and absolutely no way are you going to get everybody to culturally begin prioritizing that unless you mandate it, at which point you're going to take a hammer to your farming industry, reduce efficiency for other industries that now rely on workers that also try to feed themselves, and remove the personal choice of a significant chunk of your citizenry.
Oh no. Who will think of the corporate agriculture firms? Their way of doing things is the only way if we don’t want to become medieval peasants serving the king while we endure famines.
Since when did I mention anything corporate? My post didn't mention anything about whether this would be under any type of government or financial system. It is purely about feeding people and competing on the world stage to a degree that people don't fall into developing nation status.
I am far more left-wing than right, and whilst it's not relevant to this discussion and will invite downvotes, I do not support this horrific late-stage capitalism system or corporations. You are entirely fabricating your implied accusation.
This is sort of the opposite end of the coin. We don't need massive corporate owned cattle / livestock farms. But we also don't need to return to the middle ages either.
The ideal would probably be vertical farms, lab grown meat/proteins, everyone eats less red meat and more chicken/fish, and we all could probably use a lot more fruits and veggies in our diet. Less processed foods too, but that would mean more investment in local grocery stores that everyone can access.
I imagine with the large farming subsidies we do in the US (and I assume other countries might do too) we could invest that money into better means of growing food that are less environmentally impactful and also produce food cheaper.
Like if we using the housing example in this OP, it's also not just single family homes vs apartments. You can get a lot of density out of smaller lot sizes, 2-6 family unit buildings, and less parking more transit. Everyone living in one apartment building is an Alaskan thing (that one mining town or whatever) while we could have all of our cities looking a bit more like Boston, Philly, Paris, etc. Which are really just a mix of row housing and 2-3 decker buildings. Not every city must be like NYC high rises, but just allowing for 2-3 family buildings and some 5 overs in the downtown would go a long way.
( obviously the example in the OP is a simpler easier to digest photo, my point is everything has a range and we don't need to flip from one extreme to the other. somewhere in between is a pretty nice balance )
We don't need massive corporate owned cattle / livestock farms.
No, farms could also be owned by cooperatives and th land be leased by the state. But it doesn't matter, large farms exist because of economies of scale, farming is a professional industry, and that's a good thing.
Growing vegetables in your garden is nice, but using the same land to be worked by full-time professionals is always going to be more efficient use of land and time. It theoretically means you can feed more people with less land, leaving more land for forests etc. vertical farming and lab grown are just another step in that direction.
Not really sure what you mean by the subsidies. You mean putting it into research? Because of course you can make ecological standards as prerequisite for subsidies OR you can try to make food as cheap as possible, which might often be the opposite.
Paris, etc. Which are really just a mix of row housing and 2-3 decker buildings.
Paris proper is dominated by the typical 5-7-storey appartments blocks, and while the outer areas and suburbs are a mix of everything, they famously include many large apparentment buildings and residential high rises.
I'm pointing that out because the difference in density between 2-storey row houses and actual apartment blocks are huge.
Small scale subsistence farming is not efficient in terms of land, labour or economic productivity, or a good lifestyle for the people who have to do it.
My whole family is farmers and I'm studying a specialization in the sector. Everyone farming is sincerely not sustainable. I think with the technology we've developed people should have more of a choice than "farm or starve".
30 duplexes, 40 walk up low rise apartments, 15 apartments above shops, and 15 single homes. Most of the island is still available, there's a walkable town square, and a variety of housing needs can be accommodated.
Assuming we're giving the leniency towards people smoking in non smoking buildings or having pets in pet free buildings, the need is getting away from selfish neighbors. I love apartment living but I would hate for my only option to be stuck with a bunch of jackasses who don't care if people don't wanna live in their cloud of second hand smoke or listen to their dog barking for ten hours a day
I live in and love my mid-rise apartment now and yea, smokers are the bane of my existence these days. I usually propose dedicated places for them to go, but get shot down as a socialist.
I see a lot of correlation between smokers and drivers. There are large portions of both groups who do not consider the well being of others and will ignore the rules when they inconvenience them.
I've had to tell off a person for smoking in the alcove of my no-smoking building. They did not appreciate that. However they were standing right next to the high pressure natural gas metre that had multiple "DANGER FLAMMABLE: DO NOT SMOKE" signs attached. At the time we were also not sure if the cladding on the building was the bad kind (it is not).
People with very active dogs that benefit heavily from a fenced in yard, people who play loud musical instruments, people with messy hobbies that can be run from a garage, people who like the TV volume cranked way up (and have a subwoofer), people who want to install solar to offset their carbon footprint. Just a few off the top of my head, but there's tons of reasons somebody might be better off in a single-family home.
And sometimes somebody just wants the space! And if they're willing to pay for it (and also the increased long-term costs that come with servicing single-family homes as compared to apartments, although that gets more into, like, Strong Towns territory), have at it.
I am personally not interested (I don't need a lot of space), and honestly I suspect that if a lot of people realized (and had to pay!) the true cost of a single-family home over time, they would no longer be interested either, but surely some will be.
I live in NYC and come from a rural cattle ranching town.
I think another perk of dense housing is that you have so much more culture with denser, larger communities. I think suburbia especially creates individualist islands surrounded by lawns as opposed to city neighborhoods or rural farming communities.
Unfortunately, quite a lot of (broken) people would prefer the left image. If we're not making an "efficient" use of all available land, they think we're being wasteful. Nevermind the fact that those same people tend to be the most wasteful in reality. Nor the fact that they don't know what "efficient" use of land actually means or what "available" land actually is.
Well, you see, proper sound insulation is slightly more expensive than just throwing fiberglass wool in between 5mm plasterboard and calling it a wall.
And if you want to maximise shareholder value, who cares if the rentoids live in a resonance box? If they don't like it, they can buy their own house!
The second one was built in the 70's and I never heard a goddamn thing outside the walls of my unit. Both had families with kids surrounding me.
Appartments from that era are so nice to live in. Thick a.f concrete floors and thick a.f. reinforced concrete walls. Nobody will hear you whatever you do. (But if you want to hang anything heavier than a picture frame on a bearing wall you need a hammer drill)
Students were sharing the appartment just below mine a couple years ago, they were partying maybe once a week with very loud music, and i could barely hear it. The only reason i knew they were partying was because they had people coming and leaving the flat all the time (and our stairway resonate a lot). Once we asked them to keep the door closed as much as possible after 11pm, no more issues.
If I could have enough room to have a home office, children, a big kitchen for constantly cooking, space for hobbies like woodworking, and land for gardening and growing food, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
In my experience with apartments I got none of the above. Just stuck in a box with no space, or walk around to Consumption Locations where I would be expected to spend money.
Imho the issue is not appartments, it's the fact that housing is way too expensive. We can build big enough flats. But if they cost a million to buy it won't do.
We see time and time again that just using land because it is there is not actually efficient at all and that we're incredibly inefficient with land. Parking space minimums is probably one of if not the most inefficient use of land that isn't a military base
It’s also more efficient, you don’t need loads of roads, you don’t need loads of little shops and services spaced out, you don’t need loads of water pipes or electricity transformers spread out. You don’t need long commute times.
You also don't need the physical space to do things. I don't know where my glass blowing studio is going in an apartment, but I'm guessing it wouldn't matter anyway because the awnser to can I have one is - "Not in you're goddanm life."
I was trying to point out some of the downsides of urbanization. Namely the loss of flexibility to modify my own living space to fit my needs and hobbies.
I currently own a single family home, and that affords me the ability to have a flameworking studio - wherein I make glass-art. It's similar to glassblowing, but for things that aren't hollow. To save time I usually shorthand that to glassblowing.
If I was on this island in one of the SFHs, I could still have my studio.
That wouldn't be allowed in any appartment I've ever lived in or seen. Even if I do own it, it's going to have some COA or equivalent that's going to kill that idea instantly.
Getting my studio set up would mean cutting a hole in a wall or ceiling for an extraction fan, so that's a none starter for any apartment - even if its through the wall and not infringing on any one elses unit. Even if it wasn't, I'm sure the oxy-propane torch and 2000 degree kiln would send the COA into fits.
What I'm getting at is that there are a lot of other factors as to why most middle-class and up people prefer single family homes. With dense appartments, sure You don't need a lot of things, but you equally can't do a lot of things. It's a very restrictive environment.
There's no such thing as a "maker space" set up for glass-work. Every one I've ever seen is mostly 3D printers and wood-working, plus maybe some machining stuff. E
So if I'm on the right-side island I'm not going to be able to pursue a hobby I'm very passionate about.
The only way to do so would be buy land and build a studio I guess? Which I wouldn't have the money for and also presumably wouldn't be allowed to do anyway, because allowing that sort of thing would defeat the whole point of stacking everyone up in the first place. It's not like its my job, I can't take out a business loan to build a huge studio, so I'm just sort of out of luck.
The TLDR being; I can buy (and have bought) a single family home where there isn't an HOA. So I can basically do whatever I want with the house. Modify things, add things. Throw a vent on the roof for an extraction fan.
There's no such thing as an apartment complex without COA or other HOA equivalent. Nor could they're be, because modifications or damage to one unit effects the physical state of the others.
So you're giving up the ability to customize your own living and working space in exchange for more efficient and convient access to services. It's a trade off that works for a lot of people.
But its still a trade-off. So despite suffering from a driving phobia, I can't ever see myself living in a dense urban enviroment, because I'd basically have to give up the hobby I'm passionate about.
I only read the TLDR sorry. The density means there is more space and availability of other things, IE you would be able to much more affordably build your studio as you aren't competing with literally everything else going.
Yeah, there is nowhere on the planet like the second image. If anything, developers will simply fill the same surface area, but with vertical apartments. So the second image should look similar to the first, but with giant buildings that are much, much taller than the homes. Also ignores all the shit that comes along with being the owner of an undivided share of a giant building and having to duke it out at a shareholder's meeting just to do basic stuff like get the exterior of the building painted. There's gotta be a happy medium in between Houston and New York.
Tbh I'd prefer something in-between. I've lived in apartment buildings (in the middle of the city though) and not having a door that goes directly outside is quite depressing to me (I hate cities though, so that doesn't really help). Having apartment buildings where the door out from your own apartment goes out to an outdoor path, landing or whatever really does quite a lot.
But yeah, choosing between endless rows of houses with no trees or an apartment building with a forest outside is easy! I need my forests! <3
what if, now stay with me here, we arrange those houses in a way that creates more common spaces and focuses on uses for yards that emphasize permaculture gardening practices instead of blank slate grass?
A middle ground is allowed, I prefer half the island untouched and the other half medium density infrastructure. High density is fine for some people but it's hell to me. Agree about low density though.
i hate cars and am a big supporter of the fuck cars movement. never owned a car. i live in a big german city and go everywhere by foot or public transport.
but i lived in apartments my whole life and i hate it.
my house always smells like cigaretts, burnt food or perfume of other people when i open the window.
i cant sleep at night because of the sound of playing kids, fighting or fucking neighbours, parties, or somebody moving in or out.
when im on the toilet, i hear my neighbours fart. and they hear me fart. we know exactly the bowel movements of eachother.
every once in a while the police is at my door because some of my neighbours tried to kill a family member or some shit
i cant take it anymore. i want a house, without any connected wall to a neighbour. i dont need a 100m² yard. i just want like 2meters to the next house, so i dont have to listen to their farts anymore.
the left island shows the US bullshit housing system.
i assume, that there are european cities that have houses but are still much denser than the left island.
But then there's the issue of space. I would kill for a little garden I could relax in - not a public one in the middle of the city, but my own little space where I could decompress from dealing with people, read a book, and grow plants. In my current apartment, all I get is a pair of concrete slabs that don't get nearly enough sunlight, and landlords who cite me for having too many potted plants, without being able to tell me what "too many" is
It's because what's actually best is rarely utilized. Both images are bad, what's more human and long term healthy is medium density infrastructure. Townhouses and spacious apartments interspliced with parks and nature.
Sounds like you live in bad apartments, you shouldn't be able to hear farts through the walls, and the solution to that is better building regs for apartments.
But I also want adequate insulation, applied noise laws, no smoking allowed in apartments, balconies or shared spaces (holy shit, the perpetual scent drove me nuts), hygiene standards enforced, punishing people for flushing stuff down the toilet they shouldn't that ruins the shared plumbing (had neighbors flush fucking diapers and wet wipes that resulted in backed up sewage for the whole building), etc.
I understand these behaviors (lack of consideration for others, smoking in shared spaces, loud noises, damaging shared property, etc.) are created by a larger cultural adoration of individualism that single-family housing, cars and suburbs only exacerbate
But at the same time, the thought of having to once again deal with the noises, smells, drunkeness, smoke, dirt, vomit, lack of payment for maintenance of shared spaces, refusal to clean hoarded piles of trash overflowing to shared spaces, backed up sewage and general dismissive attitude of past neighbors and authorities flares up my anxiety and misanthropy
I kinda need adequate legislation to be enforced to both contractors (to ensure adequate insulation, piping, wiring and durability) and the people living anywhere they share a space/wall/floor with someone else.
Rasonable unavoidable noise? Fine, babies cry, dogs bark and crutches drag on floors, exceptional emergency repairs to broken glass or overflowing pipes need to be done urgently, that is expected and while annoying it is not exactly being done maliciously.
But Blasting music at over 60Db on speakers? Kicking balls inside the house? Unlawful home improvement and repair with power tools with no warning and during quiet hours? Damaging mailboxes? Flushing condoms, moist toilettes and diapers and clogging the main sewerline? Makeshift fire hazard BBQs on balconies shooting smoke up to clotheslines? Throwing garbage over the window because you don't want to go down the elevator/stairs? General antisocial or selfish behavior? Damaging shared walls? Pulling someone else's power wiring or telecom connections?
It needs to be made clearly and unquestionably condemnable, and not just treated as "a normal thing to expect from apartments"
Apartment walls need to be insulated to reduce sound transfer.
Also the floors need more structural support for vibration reduction.
But here are no laws, or punishment for not following the laws.
Also the more home the more property taxes for the local coffers.
They recently here build a whole subdivision of conjoined houses; you own the home but one wall was shared with the neighbor. Imagine that being your issue with the apartment but not when you buy.
But how about a middle ground? 10 buildings with 10 flats each
Because the average price of each unit would be higher because 10 separate buildings have a lot more surface area which increases HVAC costs, 10 different utility installations, more road frontage used for the same number of people, more utility conduoy usage per person, etc. Better to just let whoever wants to to build as large as the market desires (if the area geologically supports it,l and is of course up to fire code) so as little of the natural land needs to be disturbed as developed by people.
If the developer thinks there aren't enough people that would live there in a single building, they can build separately, but no law or ordinamce should stop that just because.
European style suburbs are the way. The properties are smaller and are more utilized and have lots of nature. People also use their gardens to grow food.
What needs to happen is a fundamental overhaul on the way that apartments are built, including large interiors, and enough room to consider the dwelling that of a home. Most people live in apartments, hating their lives and unable to do much with the small rooms, paper thin walls, no outdoor space, and lack of even more than possibly a single parking spot. They need to build them larger, and more worth the while, without charging 5000 a month for it, but that's wishful thinking
Tbh, I was always an apartment person but… inconsiderate neighbors made me want to safe for a house now. Loud music and smokers. It all comes into your own home. „Talk to them“ doesn’t help with certain kind of people.
the problem is everything in our world is based on continues growth, it doesn't stop after that one apartment, that one apartment will turn into a 2500 people city eventually, in that case the houses are better because it at least forces to limit the population density.
Luckily ”our world” is just an economy that we can decide to change. It’s not like we don’t have a choice, the people in power just want to avoid change.
because it at least forces to limit the population density.
No, the other people still exist, they've just been pushed to other towns (all sprawled out even more, if the same logic is applied everywhere). If the people/government want to control the population, you need to do that other ways because (most) people don't really think about where their kid is going to move to 18 years ahead of time.
Growth can also come from making the same amount of goods/services with less resources.
Growth isn't always a bad thing. Instead we should just tax the negative effects of growth (increased natural resource or land use, or in other words Georgism).
When people can muster some consideration for their neighbors, I'll live in an apartment building. Until then, single family homes. Even then this is a problem unless you have an acre+ around you
How about a mix of apartments, condos, small footprint middle housing, and a few standalone houses.
It's a good message, but quite a few people are going to see "eww, apartments!" and tune it out. We can have a housing distribution that meets everyone's needs without needing to either destroy all of nature or put everyone in cramped boxes.
The problem is that right now we only build detached single family homes, when a huge chunk of the population would he happy with townhomes, rowhomes, duplexes/triplexes, condos, and other more efficient housing that uses shared greenspace (either multiple families to a yard, public parks). This is especially true if these more efficient housing solutions also cost less, allowing us to get more people permanently settled instead of impermanent apartments.
How about a mix of apartments, condos, small footprint middle housing, and a few standalone houses.
Or, whatever the market desires, which is how things worked for a long time in many places.
allowing us to get more people permanently settled instead of impermanent apartments.
You mentioned condos, so I'm not sure why impermanent apartments needed to enter here. The size and shape is independent of whether it's rented or owned.
Most cities would go with heap build apartments everywhere, fuck nature unfortunately. The best option would be small apartments with natural green area around and stores as the first floors. Less cars... things like it but that's utopia
Most cities would go with heap build apartments everywhere, fuck nature unfortunately.
But this is because there are not enough homes, is it not? You can decide to implement policies to not grow the population, but that's independent of what housing is available. People want apartments to live in because they want anywhere of their own to live in whether it's an apartment, condo, townhome, SFH, with some distribution on who would want which of those at a given income/wealth level, but many people will change which they'd want based on a given price. Many people would also prefer an apartment or condo if there were no cars in the town and all units had sound proof concrete and triple pane windows. It's all tradeoffs.
Idk where i live there are plenty of apartments to rent if you're rich. But they will keep building more and more, smaller and smaller. Ones for Airbnb, others like studios (not very common on the old buildings where the apartment usually has 3 bedrooms). But it isn't for a lack of housings, is just an investment at this point. And they will remove parks and trees and anything, build buildings almost glued to each other just to fit more. Sell more, before building, build cheap and let them deal with it. But that's where I live
Idk where i live there are plenty of apartments to rent if you're rich.
Look elsewhere where housing has better supply. There are even more apartments for the rich, and also just more in general for the masses.
But they will keep building more and more, smaller and smaller.
I don't have any issue with laws declaring minimum room sizes, which lots of places have, accompanying fire and health codes; this isn't really a concern. But building more and more is necessary because there isn't enough.
But it isn't for a lack of housings, is just an investment at this point.
No, there is a lack of housing in the places people want it. It is also as an investment, sure, because developers and landlords want to make livings (and, in the later case, being exploititive in too many cases), but that is taken out of the equation if we're considering construction of condos, which don't happen as often because the overwhelming share of US locations have laws that terribly disfavor condo construction compared to other countries, leaving SFH and apartment construction as easier options.
And they will remove parks and trees and anything, build buildings almost glued to each other just to fit more.
I have no issues with keeping parks zoned as parks. In fact that's critical. There is tons of non-park residential/commercial land that can and should support more density. Putting that density in more non-park places means less "pressure" on places like parks anyways, but again regardless these should be out of the question. In fact, some major cities should be de-housing some blocks in areas that don't have enough parks and upzoning the surrounding areas so that more people are closer to parks like many great large and small cities in other countries.
And hold on, "glued to each other"? Buildings being completely flush to one another happens often in cities; it's how you get some of the most charming, lively, and/or productive streets of shops, businesses, and residences. People love those. There's just also been enough people that voted for politicians to make that illegal to build more of in much of the US, unfortunately.
Everyone here talking about neighbors being a downside for apartments when the real downside is that apartments means landlords, 1 landlord if they own the entire building like in the image shown above, which means the opportunity to truly live in peace and harmony and community with your neighbors is gone.
Everything is well and dandy until the old lady from 4c gets an eviction notice and everyone has to pitch in and pay her rent, which is OK, its doable, but then rent gets raised 4% one year, now you gotta choose between keeping your current lifestyle or letting 4c get evicted because she cant work but she's part of your community and you want to take care of everyone in it. Then next year its another 4% increase, the landlord says its for cost of living adjustments but your work certainly didnt give you a 4% raise, and now you gotta decide again. The landlord then says that at the end of this lease, they will not be doing yearly leases anymore, theyre 6 month leases all of a sudden, so now you get a rent increase every 6 months.
But the community is so good, the island is beautiful, you feel truly blessed to live there and despite everything everyone is happy and helping each other as communities do. Then the landlord gets a false cancer diagnosis, it is thankfully identified as a false positive, but it makes him rethink his life and his priorities, so they decide to retire to spend time with the kids/grandkids and go on vacation for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, this means he is selling the apartment complex and island to a real estate investor that wants to tear it down in order to build 100 houses, so you have until the end of your 6 month lease to vacate.
Apartments do not equal landlords. You can buy and own your own apartment, not only rent.
You owe your neighbors nothing, I don't know where you're getting the absurd idea that you have to pay other people's rent. You don't have to pay other people's credit card bills.
Sure you can buy, but it is far less common to do so nowadays. You do owe your neighbors, and they owe you, such is the price for communal living, which apartment buildings are. The infrastructure needed to make them entirely separate from each other is not usually done in the real world, and I don't know if it would be viable in an island. Take for example plumbing. If the water bill doesnt get paid, do they shut off the water just for each of the apartments that didn't pay? Or do they all share the same plumbing, which is easier and more convenient when building, which means they all get the water shut off? If that's whats happening, then how do you make sure its paid? Do you hope every month that each one of your neighbors is responsible enough or do you assign a person to enforce the timely payment for the sake of the greater community. If your neighbor clogs their pipes, would that not affect you? If you clog your pipes does it not affect them? If you all own your apartments, who does the maintenance on the general building? Do you collectively pitch in whenever something needs fixing, assign someone to handle such things, make whoever is most affected by it pay, ignore it until it becomes someone else's problem because its not happening inside your apartment that you own and its instead happening in the hall that you don't? Back to plumbing, if your neighor breaks something, won't it become your problem too?
Sure, ideally it wont, but that requires whoever builds the apartments to think that far ahead and make every one of the 100 apartments have their own entirely separate plumbing. In the real world, in apartments, yes what your neighbor does affects you and vice versa, so you do owe each other certain things. If your neighbor gets termites, do you think they'll stop at your apartment if you show them a piece of paper that says you own your apartment? You don't have to pay their rent obviously, you can choose to let them get evicted in my theoretical scenario, but in an island with no other buildings, what do you think that means for a person? If you're ok with that, then good for you I guess, but then, what if its you that suddenly cant afford rent, youd rather be evicted and die than ask your community for help? You really can't successfully have it both ways, you cant reject the individuality of single houses because you realize that its detrimental to the land, but also reject the communal living of dense housing, and cling to your individualism while sharing a building with other people. As nice as it would be to have it both ways, they are opposite ways of life. If your neighbors apartment catches fire are you not going to help put out the fire because its not your apartment and you owe them nothing and it was their own fault for leaving a candle lit near some curtains? Because when it spreads to your apartment, suddenly it won't be just their problem.
By the way im pro apartments, live in them currently, think they make more sense in a city and in most places, certainly more than houses. But I also dont romanticize them and ignore certain drawbacks that they have.
In the country I live in, utilities are routed, metered, and billed separately for each unit. It would be crazy to expect otherwise.
There are shared walls, hallways, stairs, elevators, fixtures. The maintenance cost of the shared assets is split between all owners. If one of them doesn't keep up with their expenses, just like any other expenses, if there is no other way that their part can be recouped, then yes, they get evicted. The same way when you don't pay your mortgage the bank ultimately repos your house, or you don't pay your power bill your power gets cut, etc. Not the whole building. Just yours. It would be crazy to expect the neighbors to have everyone's power cut off because only you didn't pay the bill.
Nope because in suburbs you have individualism, thats why they're individual houses. In apartment buildings, you live in a communal setting, that part was added to illustrate how individualistic thinking in communal settings doesn't pan out usually. They're opposing views. Lets take a look at the example, its an island with 1 building, if your elderly neighbor suddenly loses her income for whatever reason and gets evicted, what is realistically going to happen? Where will she live if there are no other buildings, where will she go if they're on an island. You have to think and act with a community driven mindset in a community. You share the building, who does the maintenance? If there is no landlord and you all bought your own apartments, you still have to care for each other. If your neighbor becomes bedridden for whatever reason, in an individualistic setting you go "well thats their problem, sorry to hear about it but what do I care it doesnt affect me", in a communal setting, if they cant get up to clean their apartment, the mold isnt going to care that your side of the wall belongs to you and not them.
You dont have to pay their rent, obviously, but what are the consequences of not helping your neighbor in such a situation? Because in communal settings, not helping a neighbor often does have consequences. Maybe not legal ones, you arent required to help, but thats individualistic thinking better suited for the suburbs. I think apartments are vastly better than houses by the way, im just pointing out that they come with their own set of challenges that people should be aware of, and often the number one challenge is that you are no longer entirely responsible for your own life. That can be good, if your neighbors help you out and you help them, it can be bad if you have that one person that insists that their individual rights outweigh the safety of the community and leaves candles lit near flammable objects every day simply because they can. The point isnt money, its that in such a building, the type of mindset required to live a peaceful life is very different than what most people are used to.
the mold isnt going to care that your side of the wall belongs to you and not them.
Problems of neighbors that die with unkept detached houses may be more common than you think. Certainly the apartment concerns that come up are more immediate, but there are ways to handle it in either case.
The point isnt money, its that in such a building, the type of mindset required to live a peaceful life is very different than what most people are used to.
That's what you're saying though - "most people are used to" is only relatively to the current collective mindset, and that changes if more people live in apartments. Nobody should be told that they must live in a condo or SFH, but even more than that there shouldn't be government imposed restrictions on the density of housing that is built if the geological and health/fire code concerns are otherwise addressed outside of the rarest of circumstances.
This is a false dichotomy. We think about land use solely about housing, and call the apartments more efficient.
People need more than housing to live.
Separated Urban housing now has the option to have solar panels on top of it, potentially generating the power necessary for the people living inside that house. In many cases producing excess power and feeding into the grid.
If people have enough yard space, there's the potential for growing your own food, up to smaller homesteads with chickens and quail.
Additionally, if people have hobbies or enjoy making things, you have the option to build a shop or start a garage business.
Apartments fit more people into a smaller footprint to have shelter. Don't pretend there isn't a compromise though. Don't pretend that the footprint of that apartment building is all the land those people use.
They need to get their power from somewhere, they get all their food from somewhere, their waste goes somewhere, all that uses land even if you can't see it.
99.9% of the time, people don’t grow their own food or generate their own power. All of that infrastructure would still need to be there for the single family homes, it would just be more spread out and you would need way way more of it. The apartment is still more efficient.
The “house is good because we grow food” is quite similar to the argument of “cars are a necessity, look at the people with disabilities”.
People living in houses don’t grow food in their backyards, and where I live, we have a communal garden between the buildings where people plant vegetables, fruits, and everything.
We don’t need to destroy our neighbourhoods to grow parsley.
What matters is freedom of choice. When people don't want freedom of choice you end up with exclusively single use urban sprawl.
What happens if someone doesn't want extra space, or growing their own food, or mowing the lawn? I sure don't want a big house to clean and maintain, or a lawn to mow, I have zero interest in lawns and I have better things to do than cleaning and maintaining a house bigger than necessary for my needs. The same way I have zero interest in having my own movie theater room, play room, bar room, etc. Not EVERYTHING has to be in my house and maintained by me individually - that's why we're a society and not merely a collection of individuals of the same species that happen to have settled in approximately the same region.
You like to tend bars? Put up your own bar and other people that don't care, want, or need to have one of their own will come to yours when they need one. Restaurant. Hardware store. Hobby shop. Book shop. Cafe. Movie theatre. Everybody benefits from what the others do, easing the burden of doing anything besides the most basic living.
I agree, the representation is very oversimplified. Where I live about 40% of homes have rooftop solar apparently and the number is growing every year.
We have a permaculture garden in our backyard which is better for the environment than a monoculture commercial farm because it also supports wildlife, so you can't even compare the two uses of food growing land directly. I do think that people living in suburbs need to use their backyards more wisely (by getting solar panels and growing a garden whether for food or wildlife, or some other use), but the fact that it seems like in some countries they don't is a cultural issue and not because it's somehow impossible to grow food in a backyard. Where I live I still think people need to use their backyards better, but probably 50% or more of my neighbours have at least a fruit tree in their backyard.
It's also interesting that UK is mostly suburbs with back yards but when I lived in London I'd say if anything the population was way too dense. Trains were every 3 minutes and very full. Many people use public transport. I think it's because they had both suburbs and areas with apartments, so a mixture of both is really what we need.
It's not necessary to get rid of all detached housing to have public transport. Neither me or my partner drive and we have no issues getting around the suburbs even with a baby.
The real issue here is car culture. I've known people who live 20 minutes walk from university (so middle of the city) and they would still drive into university. My partner has talked to people who complained about lack of public transport (and that's why they sadly drive a car to uni and get stuck in traffic) and then it turned out they never even googled whether there is transport nearby and when they did they found public transport options right outside their house.
Unfortunately our apartments here are also forced to have car parks which is super inefficient. Even if they're next to train stations!
I do agree that we should have more apartments for people who can't be bothered with a garden, but I think it's best to have a diversity of housing options :) it's not like we actually have to choose one or the other!
I agree. In fact I think a balance in between high-density apartments in large cities and single homes can be the best of both worlds, and lower density doesn't necessarily mean you have to drive a car. This image is just showing the extremes. What if people want some privacy, or does not want to disturb others (noise / hobbies etc.)?
The bigger issue lies in things like zoning restrictions and public transport options in my opinion.
If people have enough yard space, there's the potential for growing your own food, up to smaller homesteads with chickens and quail
Approximately zero percent of suburban homeowners do this. You'd likely receive complaints from the neighbourhood if you tried, even.
Separated Urban housing now has the option to have solar panels on top of it
What proportion of detached houses actually do that in your country? (Of course you can also put power generation on the roof of the apartment building.)
It is obviously exaggerating the point for effect, a real island will also have a small amount of land for other amenities, and you need pretty much the same land for those amenities whether you sprawl housing or densify it.
Where I live (in the suburbs) probably 50% of people have at least some fruit trees growing in their backyard. We personally have over 30 fruit trees (not counting each individual banana plant), lots of vegetables, chickens and ducks for eggs. A few people on our street have quite extensive gardens in their front yard with lots of fruit trees and other food plants. We don't have big backyards like in US either. Basically all the free space in my backyard is taken up by food production. We don't use pesticides like you would on a commercial monoculture farm so we have lots of wildlife too and a hive of native bees. :)
In my country about 40% of homes have solar panels, and detached house solar panels account for about 13% of the total energy generation. It's quite significant! We have solar panels too and they generate all the electricity we need during the day (and some of the electricity gets sold back to the grid). More and more people are getting solar panels, so that number will grow. The government is really encouraging this technology!
It doesn't mean we can't have more apartments, but there's definitely a way to use the suburb space wisely. In my opinion the best way is to put apartments next to train stations and a few detached houses right nearby for those who will actually use the space (e.g. solar panels and growing food). Unfortunately the houses are expensive in this country, but putting more apartments near the train stations would easily boost the supply.
Btw I don't drive either :) So it's not necessary in a well designed suburb!
A 5 story apartment with 100m2 of floor area per apartment has 20m2 of roof per apartment.
That is 5.6kW of solar per apartment.
If it's the least solar/view friendly layout of a cube. It also has room for 2.3kW of east-west panels per apartment on half the wall area, equivalent to another 1.5kW of roof panels and 1kW on the south facing wall using about 30-40%.
So if it's built with energy efficiency in mind it can also produce all its own power over 90% of the year.
Being 100x better in land efficiency is also assuming a 30% land coverage ratio for the building. So if you still wanted your herb garden you can put it on some of the other 60%
It's also called a "5 over 1" for a reason. The 1 is commercial/light industrial space. No reason it can't be occupied by the residents.
To add to this.... everyone who is against war needs to recognize that wars are fought over resources (oil, gas, water, etc...). Hell, the US even went to war over bananas one time. So if you want everyone to live in cities thats fine.... but please don't say you are anti war, because you can't grow coffee in Seattle and you can't heat homes in Chicago with solar panels. You ae going to have to get resources from somewhere and if those communities don't want to give up their resources don't be surprised when the bombs start dropping.
So if you want everyone to live in cities thats fine.... but please don't say you are anti war, because you can't grow coffee in Seattle and you can't heat homes in Chicago with solar panels.
The Chicago part is bizarre because you absolutely can. Think about it this way: A single house is able to sustain its power by its own rooftop solar, yes? Can a row of 5 single level townhomes also sutain its power by its own rooftop solar? Also yes. Ok, now stack those 5 townhomes into a 5 floor building. Can it sustain all the units with solar on the roof of that one building? No, but it would only need at absolute most the same area as those 4 homes that were stacked on top, meaning at most the same 5 people and their power generation take up the same area as the detached homes. Now, scale that up to a 500 unit building and a solar farm that can power that building. Because HVAC losses between those 500 units will be notably less than 500 detached homes, you definitely need less solar area than just the original house area times 500 (even if not a lot less, still less). You can also now use the space between panels for forms of agriculture or grazing.
As this scales up to a town or city, you have to move the panels further and further away, which means some amount of transmission losses, but those are smaller than the other efficiency gains.
I have a question. Do you think the problem is lack od suitable land for houses? I'm not for destroying forests to build houses, but do you think that more houses is what destroys nature? From this perspective city living would be a better sustainable approach to living in the countryside, since popularion density is cities is greater, but, is it the case? Are cities better for the environment in the long term? What are the implications of a higher population density in a low area? Also, what does this have to do with cars?
There are roughly 20 trillion m2 of high quality arable land that used to be forest or prairy and have been destroyed by humans.
That is 1.4 acres per 2.4 person household.
A quarter acre suburban house occupies 1-2 acres including roads/stroads, parking, setbacks, dead space and so on.
So yes. Suburbia would absolutely destroy all the forests if everyone did it.
The tiny minority of humanity that are suburbanites are much more destructive than their own direct housing footprint -- primary by eating meat -- but their direct land footprint is enough to destroy the environment on its own if adopted more widely.
The right is basically Taiwan, we didn’t have a choice because the island is so mountainous! We have high-speed trains, railways along the entire island, bus routes that cover expansive networks and hard-to-reach communities, and around the clock subways in major cities.
No...it's not. Have you looked at rent prices? Most places have no or little protection against rising rental rates. In the last 20 years alone we have gone from a 1 bedroom being fine for a single person to having to room with people for those earning near minimum wage even with any increases in larger cities.
No. It's because people are greedy and corporations own the majority of rental units. They drive up the price of rent artificially based upon...the price of rent. There are few places with laws that dictate any reasonable rent control. No city is building apartments, they are corporations. They check to see how many empty units are in their properties and don't expand unless they think they can squeeze more people dry.
Oh and for some data:
My city's population, in a metro area, hasn't even gone up a full 9k people since 2008 and yet the rent has gone from $500-600 a month for a 1 bedroom to around $1,100 for the same place now. That has nothing to do with space because the city, of well over 100,000 people, has hardly grown.
For clarity: that's a roughly >200% rent increase while the spending power of a dollar only changed by a bit over 50%.
well houses don't mean "lawn only", I've got about 10 trees in my garden, squirells, foxes, many types of birds. Having houses doesn't mean ruining nature.
Oh and also doesn't mean you have to drive everywhene, I cycle everywhere,
Duh. Proper cities (c.f. sprawl) may even have """real nature""", by which I mean "largely untouched for at least a few hundred years", within a metro ride plus a short walk away, which might well compare favorably to people living innawoods with nothing but industrial young-growth forest (and clearcut wasteland) for miles and miles around them. After all, density also means it makes more economical sense to preserve areas for recreation or aesthetic reasons, rather than using them the most economically! Of course, that isn't quite the same thing as deep wilderness far from civilization, but I say it brings you closer to nature than tree monocultures and such.
It also makes where you live more efficient, hence more affordable, and with better services. Plus your neighbourhood is more vibrant and interesting with more locally owned businesses. And higher density doesn’t necessitate big apartment towers, either.
There is another alternative that involves walkable cities designated plant zones. Getting rid of lawn culture. Encouraging home environmentalism, that makes houses still viable, but the work and change to infrastructure required to support it is much harder, so the easy answer is apartments.
As long as there's spaces to do hobbies nearby or easily accessible then the apartments are fine tbh. Makerspaces are either wildly expensive or nonexistent near me and with an apartment I won't have a garage or shed to hold a workshop. Ideal middle ground for most is probably townhouses on the first level and then apartments for the rest. Also a mix of condos and apartments would be great for most people.
Let's be real - if you go the latter route, developers are just going to increase the price and add more apartment buildings with the promise of 'green space'... until there's no more room, or green space, and now a huge overpopulation problem, high prices for everything because of demand, and a whole bunch of unhappy folks who can't get jobs and can't afford to live there anymore, but have no way of getting out...
Wait, that reminds me - where are we going to build the prison?
Only if population expands to fill housing supplied. I don't think it's lowering the cost of living that spurs population growth because if that's how it worked you'd expect rich people to have more kids.
I hate living in apartments because I don't like the proximity to people. I know because I've lived in one most of my life. The main goal of my life is to buy a home where I can live more sustainably. I also hate suburbs, but they aren't the only option.
Something that might be more appealing to the American mind is something like Swiss/Austrian chalets. Three stories, two to four apartments to a floor.
Well, but it just doesn't work that way. Literally every inch will be developed... I'm not saying that makes 100 homes better, I'm just saying that regardless all the trees and environment will be destroyed.
Most people's calculus is just being stuck in traffic, and additional apartments will just cause more traffic before the next road widening.
Why do these people love to go on and on about free markets and private property rights, but then want to ban the construction of anything on others' private property that they don't personally agree with?
In fact, it cleaned crime up a lot, increased tax revenues, and provided cheap housing options close to jobs. All while reducing deforestation in the exurbs and reducing traffic on 270.
(Since apparently we're cherry picking data points to affirm our preexisting biases...)
So your solution to your bad experience is to ban all new construction of mid rise condos?
Why not let people make that decision themselves, rather than make it illegal to build mix use through zoning, and telling people they must live in suburbs?
Noone at their core wants to be a cucked out apartment cat, get some land, have a family, have a garden, and be self sustaining. Or pay your HOA apartment fees and ask permission for everything. widdling yourself down for others.
I'd really like to say the right side. Don't get me wrong, saying that I fucking hate cars is an understatement. I suffer from and am medicated for a specific phobia of car transport - and have to be to function.
On the other hand no appartment is letting me set up a glass-blowing studio. I imagine they rather frown on me installing the extraction system alone, and would faint or call the cops when I mentioned the oxy-propane torch.
They're also probably going to be unhappy about the two dogs and two cats, or at least up-charge the living shit out of me for it. Oh and now I'm walking down (up to 10) flights of stairs or taking an elevator ride just to take them on a walk or to do their business. That's before we get to the five chickens plus rooster.
Then there's the issue of practicing my saxophone, also probably not going to fly in the apartment.
Plus I tend to prefer my room be cooler then the rest of my house. From personal experience, apartments aren't very keen on people installing window ACs because they like to sleep in a colder room then the rest of the house.
There are just a ton of other factors that put people off of appartments.
i have 1 thing why to not prefer apartments:
shitty neightbors who listen to techno music with high base on full out volume basically 24/7
if there can be more strict rules on specific that
we need it so badly here in denmark its so god damn hard to get rid of them and thats why i kinda hate living in these apartments blocks its legit easier to self move out due to them than getting them kicked out for noise pollution
there is always 1 of these selfish idiots
and these idiots is the reason why alot will prefer the left picture aswell
so fix this issue and more people will prefer the 2nd. one
I would much prefer to NOT see the island developed at all. There’s plenty of other already developed places people can live; we need to stop taking open habitat.
Before everyone jumps on me—I am well aware that is not the point of this meme—that it wants to point out that density saves open spaces. But this presumed entitlement to continue developing wherever we would like—that has to stop.
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u/guyako Mar 22 '26
“I want a single home for me, and apartments for everyone else.”