The more roads, the more opportunities your citizens have access to. Also, those same people don’t want to live in Apartments that they’ll never be allowed to own, packed like sardines in a population dense building.
So, roads allow them to have their own houses out in the suburbs - and the more of them, the faster they can get to their destination. The faster they can get to their destination, the further out they can move. This also supplies businesses with a wider reach of the population for whatever their needs are.
And people don’t want to waste an extra 45 minutes getting to their destination by waiting on public transportation. We’re a population of people who - when we want something done - we do it now. Delays are unacceptable.
This is the quintessential ignorance to everything outside of a car-centric realm that is pervasive in North America.
The more roads, the more opportunities your citizens have access to.
This is only true when you have super restrictive zoning laws. The other way is to bring the opportunities closer to the citizens i.e. have more freedom to put corner stores, shops, hospitals in neighbourhoods, instead of having only big box stores in the outskirts with acres and acres of subsidized parking.
Another problem is there are very little variety of modern condos, apartments that are big enough to raise families, so many barely fit in 1 bedroom.
Moving suburbs further out ends up adding more time on everyone’s trip, it does not make it faster at all. Unlike typical NA bus systems, a good transit system wouldn’t add that much time and unlike highways and easily ramp up capacity during peak times so that it doesn’t take 2-6 times as long due to traffic.
You don’t own a condo. In a condo, there is generally no individual ownership of land; the unit owners jointly own the land and building exteriors. Each unit owner has rights only to the unit’s interior space. All other spaces are controlled by the condo owners’ association.
It’s so wild that you’re so uneducated, and so confident all at the same time. You’re not taking reality for what it is, instead you’ve reached a conclusion - and then you work backwards to justify that conclusion, even to the point of deluding yourself into thinking something is one way, when it clearly isn’t; and then mocking someone for correcting you.
Nobody is talking about land, they’re talking about housing. Nobody thought they owned the land underneath a condo, and frankly you’re the idiot for assuming as much.
You don’t own the interior like you think you do either. The condo can force you to sell it at any time they like. The concept of ownership begets control. If you don’t control it, then you aren’t the owner.
An HOA in a neighborhood of single family homes can do the same thing.
Isn’t the whole idea that you dislike people being annoying? The point of that legislation is to remove people who are being egregiously annoying by breaking the rules of the HOA…
HOAs were designed to keep black people, the poor, and other ‘unwantables’ out of rich white neighborhoods, so no - they were specifically designed to keep me out of them, but thanks.
Wouldn’t you know it, car culture, roads, and suburbs were designed for the same exact reason and perpetuate the same bias to this day- looks like we have a common cause! The answer, however, is not creating an even more antisocial society or abandoning society altogether. Quite the opposite, actually.
If you can’t read the article I referred to, I guess you can’t exactly discuss this in good faith now can you.
The condo association controls how long you have that condo for. If they can force you to sell it at any time, then you don’t own it, do you…
Can you make improvements to the condo? Put in a jacuzzi tub? Oh – you can’t. How about building new walls? Can’t do that either. Can you choose a different internet service provider? Oh, weird – condos have contracted providers that you’ve gotta use. For all of this “I can totally own a condo”…you sure aren’t able to do the things which beget actual ownership, now can you? So you can purchase temporary residence in a housing-cubicle – but don’t pretend that is actual ownership. If you owned it, you could demolish everything within and nobody would care. But that’s not the case. So you don’t own it.
If I wanted to demolish my house tomorrow, I could. Because I own it. If I want to add walls, change electrical, paint it a new color, change the roof, add a second floor, add a jacuzzi tub, all things that I can do. Granted I have to get permits for some of those things, but condos control IF you can do those things at all.
I’m perfectly happy living without those things. Especially if it means my neighbor’s stupid Jacuzzi tub isn’t going to cause mold in the building or come hurdling down through my ceiling.
If I don’t like my condo, I’ll sell it and buy a better one, as there are improvements that I did which didn’t involve changing walls or electrical (which you can do with board approval if you really want to), like updating the kitchen and bathrooms and floors, and therefore it has most likely appreciated in value since I bought it. I have exclusive rights to the proceeds from the sale because I own it and I really have never had any urge do anything stupid that would piss off the HOA (re: my neighbors) because I’m a decent person and considerate of others. The community is worth that small sacrifice of not being an asshole.
But ultimately, I’m not owning it as an investment vehicle. I’m owning it to live in and to keep my money in my own name instead of putting it into some landlord’s pocket.
Demolition will not be necessary because I don’t care about the land underneath it, I care about the building itself.
The internet is perfectly good and if it’s not, my neighbors will probably agree, and we can vote to change providers because we are all voting members of the HOA, but ideally that would be something provided by the city as it doesn’t really make sense to run multiple lines for multiple providers in a dense urban setting. In that case, the whole city gets to vote! I have up to 600mbps fiber optic in my current complex, though, so I don’t think that will really be necessary.
I’m sure you’ll find a problem with that, but you’re way out in the country and don’t like cities anyways, so catering to you would probably not be very healthy for the city.
Being co-owner does mean you own it. It is a form of owning that is perfectly acceptable to me. I would gladly own a condo if I could afford it. I don’t need to own the land my property is on to consider myself a homeowner.
Privacy - on a vehicle with publicly visible license plates that’s being tracked by various license plate readers not to mention the various sensor outputs being uploaded over a cellular connection to be sold
I think people that don’t spend much time in dense spaces have a limited idea of privacy.
There’s privacy in the sense of being unseen, and there’s privacy in the sense of being unremarkable.
I can walk down the street here and people will see me with their eyes but not their brain.
In the suburbs where my parents live, if I walk down the street people will see and notice. It’s unusual to walk, so people take note of it. I’ve had the police stop and question me because I was walking (and I’m a white guy)
Being completely unseen isn’t as valuable as being unremarkable to me. I can ride the train with a bunch of other people and they’ll see me, but they won’t care
Yeah, I had this conversation with aunt. She grew up in a rather big city, and always wanted to move into the countryside for more privacy. Well, a hurricane leveled the area she lived in. She got a shit deal from FEMA, and insurance, etc. So, on top of always wanting to move away from people, it was easier to afford.
She regrets it, especially as she ages. The people, though farther apart, and fewer in number, are all up each-others’ asses. She said she went from being someone she doubted her neighbors fully realized existed, to everyone in the county knowing who she is, who her kids are, who her husband is, where they live, what car was theirs, etc. She said she never felt more under a microscope in her life. She said it really sunk in when she was at the store, and a woman she didn’t recognize, just said “Hey, aunt’s name, how is husband’s name leg doing?” He didn’t work in the area, like he worked a several hour drive away, she didn’t know this woman, yet she knew about her husband’s recent surgery. Now that she is aging, and has had her knees replaced, she is finding it more, and more, difficult to do basic life things, because there are so few support resources compared to where she left.
I got pulled over by police when I was in the US because I was riding a bike. To play devil’s advocate slightly, I was riding a crusty old Walmart BSO and I look like a scruff, and the town has a major homeless methhead problem so assumptions were made, but it still took them a while of talking to me to comprehend that I am happy to continue riding my bike, once they had at least figured out that I’m not a homeless methhead.
Today I learned that “BSO” (bike shaped object) is a thing. I’m only on the edge of bike riding (I use the city bike rental thing here sometimes), and from a quick search I see there are depths, here.
What the fuck, such a ridiculous bunch of bullshit. You must have no concept of the massive variety and depth of the massive landscape that makes up the USA.
My house is brick, built about 5 decades ago, I own it along with multiple acres of forested land. I get along with my neighbors fine, and we help each other out occasionally, and we have enough distance and room from each other that I can piss in my yard any hour of any day that I want with privacy. The crime rate here is so low that we have about 1 murder per decade on average. I pretty much do whatever I want all the time here in the USA and I wouldn’t trade it to live anywhere else (unless someone paid me millions of dollars to)
You have nothing to contribute but hatred for those you envy. Sorry that your life is not how you want it to be.
For the record, I pay more individual taxes than the majority of American households do to our Federal government, and more than the vast majority of households to my state so you are completely wrong about that “parasite” garbage.
Yeah just make up whatever makes you feel better about being trapped in the prison of city life. You make a lot of assumptions about things that you don’t have the ability to quantify.
The facts you’re ignoring are that rural areas support the agriculture and industry necessary to sustain city life, and cities could not exist without them, aside from some hellish Soylent Green type of artificial subsistence.
What about options? I don’t want an apartment. I have a modest home on less than a quarter acre of property. My neighbor’s house is 16ft from mine. Some people have bigger. Some people like apartments. Just options, you know? Or should everyone need to live in sense, urban areas? And I say this, the town I live in has about 5500 people/square mile, which is pretty dense. If I drive 10m south it’s farms. There’s a real variety.
Most folks online seem to only know cheap HOA Florida style neighborhoods with zero places to walk, cheap construction and 10 ft between houses.
Everyone makes assumptions of what “dense apartment living” , “suburban living” etc looks like, and folks are generally wrong on both sides of the perspective.
At its best, suburban living is great. I’m biased because I have an awesome suburb home I bought for cheap many years ago, and have awesome neighbors and no need for an HOA. I can access public transportation easily and use it often. Many other great things, including privacy and quiet. I can access the city center in about 20 minutes or great outdoor spaces in say 30. By bike. That’s not normal for lots of folks
But again, I’m biased. My experience is not universal.
suburb you described is pretty much the exception and these are expansive generally as any city.
South or West US style burbs is just the same corporate ghetto except this one does not produce sufficient tax base to support its existence without “growth”
I clarified my bias, but fyi my suburb is in the “west US”. As I said, everyone here is making assumptions. Reducing whole regions of the country to a described “corporate ghetto” isn’t a realistic reflection
Southern US has been development 70-80% post WW2 entire fucking region is corporate ghetto from poorly designed urban cores to the shiti mcmansion burbs 30 miles out.
Sure there are good places near the urban core with 2 million dollar house. That shit is great but kinda not accessible.
If it’s not walkable, it’s not good. I want to cover my basics without a car or long trip. Where I am now there’s maybe 5 groceries of various sizes and a couple dozen restaurants and bars within a short walk. Plus other stuff like hardware stores, pharmacies, etc.
This isn’t a fancy or expensive neighborhood. It’s just regular Brooklyn. I wouldn’t trade this for the suburbs.
Even if you had a “suburb” that was walkable, you’re just not going to have as much stuff. Like if you lived right by “main Street” where my parents lived, there’s just fewer options. Like, I don’t think they had a single Thai restaurant when I was growing up.
If you accept the premise that a wider variety of options is better, suburbs really can’t compete on that metric. Someone might prefer the “there’s one diner in this town” model but that sounds dull to me.
But mostly it’s the car-first nature of most suburbs I can’t stand. It’s antisocial, it’s dangerous, it pollutes the environment. My parents take a 10 minute drive to get groceries and that’s incredibly wasteful.
My suburb as described does allow for much walkabilty, and bikability with sidewalks and tree lined gravel trails that go all the way to the city center. I can walk to 2 groceries, and a host of other stores in about 15 minutes one way. Bars, coffee shops, restaurants too. All on sidewalk or trail, sidewalks along slow speed neighborhood roads
On the trail, or via the neighborhood bus line, I can be downtown with a large variety of shops or or restaurants of every type.
Moreover, my point isnt to get kudos for luckily living in a nice neighborhood. It’s to highlight that generalizations are pointless.
You have a perspective of a suburban neighborhood is “not great”, and that’s fine, in a lot of places it’s true.
I have an opinion that most apartments suck, but that’s obviously not universal.
Privacy as in I get to run around the property naked, and do whatever I want, as loud as I want, without worrying about a shared wall. Personal privacy.
Every - single - apartment dweller that I have ever met, has complained about the guy upstairs stomping around, or the loud kids running around outside their door, or listening to the neighbor fuck their housekeeper at 2am. They get deliveries stolen from their front door so consistently that they need a PO box to have things delivered to. They’ve got crack heads and pot smokers that stink up the place and leave used needles around the area.
Not sure why you are being downvoted into oblivion. What you are saying is very true, but where we disagree is that roads are the only solution.
Last night, I was looking at a short trip l need to make this weekend (here in the US): 14 min by car, 58 min by rail (with a 20 min walk to get to the station), 1h20 by bus. We brought that on ourselves, we’ve made it so that cars are the only viable option - but better public transit for example would make things a lot better, for a lot of people.
That’s pretty normal for this sub, to be honest. I’m fine with it, because at least the mods aren’t deleting comments they don’t like; they let people downvote instead. All in all while I would say I disagree with this community in many ways, I respect its followers and its mods to a higher degree than I do other communities. It allows discourse whereas others often don’t. I actually applaud the restraint of the mods here, because it’s easy to just delete opinions you don’t agree with when that button is available.
The actual followers of the community – Herd animals are gonna herd animal. Lots of people just want to be told that their opinions are correct; not everyone actually wants to debate the merits of their viewpoints.
If that’s how you read that, you need better reading comprehension. It’s pretty well known that being presented with an argument, even one that you might agree with – but seeing that everyone downvoted it, is more likely to get you to downvote it as well. Everyone does it, it’s a relic of humanity’s evolution. I was not insulting those who disagreed with me. 🤓indeed. But hey, when everyone online has been trained to be the victim over everything, that’s kinda the response I figured I’d get from someone.
You literally called us herd animals and they you hit us with the “if that’s how you want to read that”???
Also, your position is severely lacking. Please try to factor in the total emissions from car tires and the impact that has on public health. Next facture in the obesity epidemic which directly correlates with car dependency. Also, please consider that we have created a world where people drive to a gym to run on a treadmill because it isn’t safe for them to exercise outside. That one is harder to put a number on but it is extremely dystopian.
So if you want all your organs polluted with microplastics from car tire dust and you fully support the depression, loneliness, and obesity epidemics, then keep defending car dependency because that is hidden cost of cars that people don’t talk about nearly enough.
Believe it or not, cars are a product of our wants and needs. They aren’t an obstacle to our goals, they were the solution to our goals. People want to do things on their time schedule, not work around a transportation system that they don’t control.
With all due respect – did. It’s an article I have quite a good familiarity with.
You are focused on the city.
I am focused on the US. We are not the same. The US does not have a strong rail infrastructure. It has a much larger bulk transport infrastructure via roads. It’s STILL not an obstacle to our goals.
In fact, I wish I knew what the impact was for a road that was more directly linking point A to point B, vs the additional pollution created by cars having to go twice as far on a non-direct route. I have a feeling that data would be interesting.
Given that every time they add a road, more cars travel them, I’m starting to think we haven’t reached enough road density yet. I think we should add more.
Maybe we could build more rail and reform the existing rail infrastructure instead of doubling down on inefficient and dangerous infrastructure that is both destroying our planet and atomizing our societies… ?
Given that every time they add a road, more cars travel them, I’m starting to think we haven’t reached enough road density yet. I think we should add more.
I think your heart’s in the right place here, and I don’t mean to insult you or start a flamewar here - but, didn’t urban planners discover induced demand 100 years ago? It’s the nature of the beast that, whenever more roads are built instead of more alternative transportation infrastructure, more people will choose to drive on those roads. Of course, these new cars aren’t coming out of nowhere - but if you’re looking for a house or a job, you’re likely to pick one at least somewhat based on the commute. New residents and people looking for new jobs will look for ones they can drive to, which means more houses and jobs on the highways, which means more cars on said highways, which means more highways, ad infinitum.
Failing the highways (as is often true in places like Europe or Japan), people will instead plan their commute based on where they can go with the transportation options available to them - and you can transport more people per hour on a railway than on a highway by orders of magnitude, so while the number of people being transported is going to be the same, the space and infrastructure cost required to transport them is lower with most alternative methods (though I can’t say if bike lanes or other specific infrastructure options besides rail are among these). The American rail infrastructure sucks right now, but we spend a LOT of money on highways, and if a significant fraction of that were allocated to railways, it seems very feasible that they could become practical for interurban use again, as they were in days gone by.
Cars were forced on us. They are a solution to problems create that we cannot solve without a functioning democracy (which the US has never had, it has always been a plutocracy that serves the rich over the needs and will of the people.)
So no, I strongly disagree that people actually want car dependency. When cities were first destroying their city centers to make room for cars, people fought against it. But these days most people don’t know anything else than car dependency. But when they travel to other countries it is like taking the pill from the matrix and they wake up to how hellish and dystopian car dependency truly is
Detached homes are fine but people buying them need to actually pay their worth to society which they do not right now. It’s a lifestyle that is subsidized by the dense cities as the sprawling infrastructure is not economically self sustainable. And it’s ridiculous that in many places in North America the only thing that’s legal to build is single family homes. It’s a falsehood saying that’s what most people want, when the reality is that’s the only option on most of the land. We cannot continue to economically or environmentally support that as the majority form of housing, we need more missing middle density like townhomes, four
-plexs etc. Not to mention the cars whether gas or electric will become unaffordable to the average person in the next 20 years
Detached homes are fine but people buying them need to actually pay their worth to society which they do not right now. It’s a lifestyle that is subsidized by the dense cities as the sprawling infrastructure is not economically self sustainable.
What, in your opinion, are costs that detached homes are being subsidized by others not living in detached homes?
And it’s ridiculous that in many places in North America the only thing that’s legal to build is single family homes.
Its not entirely ridiculous. There are finite limits to local civil infrastructure. Think things like:
public school student capacity
fresh water supply
sewage treatment
road size in the localities
capacities of public transportation
Unchecked high density housing in a small area can overwhelm these critical services things in short order. Some landlocked communities may not even have the real estate to build out additional facilities irrespective if the tax revenue exists.
It’s a falsehood saying that’s what most people want, when the reality is that’s the only option on most of the land.
You’re making a statement as though it is fact. Can you cite your source of that fact?
Yeah they make a good point, you reply with reactionary bullshit, they show you that your concerns are illegitimate through simple counterexamples, you realise you’re outmatched and quit. Did I miss a step?
Raising fresh water supplies and sewer capacity limitations is reactionary bullshit? You’re proving my next point.
you realise you’re outmatched and quit.
I realize that the conversation here isn’t interested in discussing anything that doesn’t align with the idea of high density housing is the only solution for all scenarios. This isn’t a discussion of policy, but instead of religion. I’m not interesting in trying to convert others from their religion.
Its your clubhouse. I’m not asking you to change your actions or your rules, its just not a place I’m interested in being in, so I gracefully made an exit.
The most obvious cost of detached homes is the completely unsustainable amounts of infrastructure required to maintain them. Roads, sewage, electric, etc.
It’s a well documented fact that suburbs of sprawling suburban homes are bankrupting towns/cities all across America and only the densely built downtown cores are keeping these cities afloat because the tax revenue of dense mixed-use areas is substantially higher than the cost of maintaining the infrastructure for these places. Check out Strong Towns if you’d like to know more and see the studies showing all this.
And people don’t want to waste an extra 45 minutes getting to their destination by waiting on public transportation. We’re a population of people who - when we want something done - we do it now. Delays are unacceptable
Cities built around public transit (like Seoul, Tokyo, Zurich, Vienna) don’t have that problem. Cars are what create unexpected delays. Cars are what ruin cities for everyone.
The whole one solution fits all, my way or the highway (pun intended) ethos that is rampant on Lemmy is exactly why their goals won’t be met. Refusal to compromise and blatant hostility will be met with much of the same, but hey, if I’m out here calling people with cars retards, I’m doing my part!
The average walking speed is roughly 2.5mi/hr - So 24 minutes per mile. You want stores every 1/12 of a mile? That’s unsustainable over a wide area such as the USA. It’s not sustainable to do such a thing in anything except for the most population dense areas, and nobody in this community seems to understand that there are people who don’t like constantly being around other people
People make noise. For some of us, we can’t stand it. Living away from populated areas is a matter of sanity, and peace, and quiet.
there are people who don’t like constantly being around other people
Do you think there’s a chance that catering towards anti-social attitudes is actually a bad thing for society, and that kind of thing might itself be the reason you so strongly feel this way about other people that you would come here and tell us we’re not allowed to reorganize cities thus that they allow us to be near people?
We get it, you don’t like cities. Nobody is telling you that you have to live in a city. But our cities should not be designed to cater to people who don’t like cities.
Have you SEEN the people who take public transport? The drug addicts, and the mentally ill that decide they’re gonna piss all over the seats? Yeah, I’ll take my car – where I can avoid all that bullshit.
I would be fine with people commuting to suburbs, if they weren’t endangering my life and sucking up a disproportionate share of the tax dollars to fund their lavish land use.
Cordon cars to freeways, make tailpipe emissions filter through the passenger air cabin filter, and stop using tax dollars to make more roads. Then I’ll have no problem with suburbanites.
Although, whether or no it’s fair for children to be subject to the fantastical whimsical lifestyle choices forced on them by their parents is a complicated matter. I sure wish I had a normal childhood. Suburban dreams of my parents kept that from me.
The answer is jobs, and privacy.
The more roads, the more opportunities your citizens have access to. Also, those same people don’t want to live in Apartments that they’ll never be allowed to own, packed like sardines in a population dense building.
So, roads allow them to have their own houses out in the suburbs - and the more of them, the faster they can get to their destination. The faster they can get to their destination, the further out they can move. This also supplies businesses with a wider reach of the population for whatever their needs are.
And people don’t want to waste an extra 45 minutes getting to their destination by waiting on public transportation. We’re a population of people who - when we want something done - we do it now. Delays are unacceptable.
This is the quintessential ignorance to everything outside of a car-centric realm that is pervasive in North America.
This is only true when you have super restrictive zoning laws. The other way is to bring the opportunities closer to the citizens i.e. have more freedom to put corner stores, shops, hospitals in neighbourhoods, instead of having only big box stores in the outskirts with acres and acres of subsidized parking.
Another problem is there are very little variety of modern condos, apartments that are big enough to raise families, so many barely fit in 1 bedroom.
Moving suburbs further out ends up adding more time on everyone’s trip, it does not make it faster at all. Unlike typical NA bus systems, a good transit system wouldn’t add that much time and unlike highways and easily ramp up capacity during peak times so that it doesn’t take 2-6 times as long due to traffic.
I don’t think this is true.
You can own an apartment
Density has a number of benefits. More cultural output, less isolation, it doesn’t feel like a post apocalypse scene when you go outside.
This is satire, right? Poe’s law is real.
Foot traffic is good for businesses and neighborhoods. Car traffic much less so
Public transit is often faster. Plus I can do many more things on the train than I can while driving (reading, games, some kinds of work, etc)
Car based transit introduces many delays.
Your post is a joke right? I can’t tell.
I was gonna respond to them but honestly, I couldn’t even begin to think of where. That comment was so wrong on so many levels.
Just the simple fact that someone would unironically say that you can’t own a condo is just wild to me, let alone the rest.
You don’t own a condo. In a condo, there is generally no individual ownership of land; the unit owners jointly own the land and building exteriors. Each unit owner has rights only to the unit’s interior space. All other spaces are controlled by the condo owners’ association.
It’s so wild that you’re so uneducated, and so confident all at the same time. You’re not taking reality for what it is, instead you’ve reached a conclusion - and then you work backwards to justify that conclusion, even to the point of deluding yourself into thinking something is one way, when it clearly isn’t; and then mocking someone for correcting you.
Peak Lemmy right here folks.
Nobody is talking about land, they’re talking about housing. Nobody thought they owned the land underneath a condo, and frankly you’re the idiot for assuming as much.
You don’t own the interior like you think you do either. The condo can force you to sell it at any time they like. The concept of ownership begets control. If you don’t control it, then you aren’t the owner.
An HOA in a neighborhood of single family homes can do the same thing.
Isn’t the whole idea that you dislike people being annoying? The point of that legislation is to remove people who are being egregiously annoying by breaking the rules of the HOA…
It’s designed specifically for people like you!!!
HOAs were designed to keep black people, the poor, and other ‘unwantables’ out of rich white neighborhoods, so no - they were specifically designed to keep me out of them, but thanks.
Wouldn’t you know it, car culture, roads, and suburbs were designed for the same exact reason and perpetuate the same bias to this day- looks like we have a common cause! The answer, however, is not creating an even more antisocial society or abandoning society altogether. Quite the opposite, actually.
You own a condo. That’s how it works. The shared land is a different matter.
Please stop. You’re making embarrassingly bad arguments.
If you can’t read the article I referred to, I guess you can’t exactly discuss this in good faith now can you.
The condo association controls how long you have that condo for. If they can force you to sell it at any time, then you don’t own it, do you…
Can you make improvements to the condo? Put in a jacuzzi tub? Oh – you can’t. How about building new walls? Can’t do that either. Can you choose a different internet service provider? Oh, weird – condos have contracted providers that you’ve gotta use. For all of this “I can totally own a condo”…you sure aren’t able to do the things which beget actual ownership, now can you? So you can purchase temporary residence in a housing-cubicle – but don’t pretend that is actual ownership. If you owned it, you could demolish everything within and nobody would care. But that’s not the case. So you don’t own it.
If I wanted to demolish my house tomorrow, I could. Because I own it. If I want to add walls, change electrical, paint it a new color, change the roof, add a second floor, add a jacuzzi tub, all things that I can do. Granted I have to get permits for some of those things, but condos control IF you can do those things at all.
That’s not ownership. That’s a lease.
Yes, you own it. All of what you bring up is a legal issue that can be changed.
I’m perfectly happy living without those things. Especially if it means my neighbor’s stupid Jacuzzi tub isn’t going to cause mold in the building or come hurdling down through my ceiling.
If I don’t like my condo, I’ll sell it and buy a better one, as there are improvements that I did which didn’t involve changing walls or electrical (which you can do with board approval if you really want to), like updating the kitchen and bathrooms and floors, and therefore it has most likely appreciated in value since I bought it. I have exclusive rights to the proceeds from the sale because I own it and I really have never had any urge do anything stupid that would piss off the HOA (re: my neighbors) because I’m a decent person and considerate of others. The community is worth that small sacrifice of not being an asshole.
But ultimately, I’m not owning it as an investment vehicle. I’m owning it to live in and to keep my money in my own name instead of putting it into some landlord’s pocket.
Demolition will not be necessary because I don’t care about the land underneath it, I care about the building itself.
The internet is perfectly good and if it’s not, my neighbors will probably agree, and we can vote to change providers because we are all voting members of the HOA, but ideally that would be something provided by the city as it doesn’t really make sense to run multiple lines for multiple providers in a dense urban setting. In that case, the whole city gets to vote! I have up to 600mbps fiber optic in my current complex, though, so I don’t think that will really be necessary.
I’m sure you’ll find a problem with that, but you’re way out in the country and don’t like cities anyways, so catering to you would probably not be very healthy for the city.
Can I haz walkable city now?
Being co-owner does mean you own it. It is a form of owning that is perfectly acceptable to me. I would gladly own a condo if I could afford it. I don’t need to own the land my property is on to consider myself a homeowner.
Poorly educated boomer likely… they just shill shit teevee told them 20 years ago because muhh property values.
Privacy - on a vehicle with publicly visible license plates that’s being tracked by various license plate readers not to mention the various sensor outputs being uploaded over a cellular connection to be sold
lmao
I think people that don’t spend much time in dense spaces have a limited idea of privacy.
There’s privacy in the sense of being unseen, and there’s privacy in the sense of being unremarkable.
I can walk down the street here and people will see me with their eyes but not their brain.
In the suburbs where my parents live, if I walk down the street people will see and notice. It’s unusual to walk, so people take note of it. I’ve had the police stop and question me because I was walking (and I’m a white guy)
Being completely unseen isn’t as valuable as being unremarkable to me. I can ride the train with a bunch of other people and they’ll see me, but they won’t care
Yeah, I had this conversation with aunt. She grew up in a rather big city, and always wanted to move into the countryside for more privacy. Well, a hurricane leveled the area she lived in. She got a shit deal from FEMA, and insurance, etc. So, on top of always wanting to move away from people, it was easier to afford.
She regrets it, especially as she ages. The people, though farther apart, and fewer in number, are all up each-others’ asses. She said she went from being someone she doubted her neighbors fully realized existed, to everyone in the county knowing who she is, who her kids are, who her husband is, where they live, what car was theirs, etc. She said she never felt more under a microscope in her life. She said it really sunk in when she was at the store, and a woman she didn’t recognize, just said “Hey, aunt’s name, how is husband’s name leg doing?” He didn’t work in the area, like he worked a several hour drive away, she didn’t know this woman, yet she knew about her husband’s recent surgery. Now that she is aging, and has had her knees replaced, she is finding it more, and more, difficult to do basic life things, because there are so few support resources compared to where she left.
I got pulled over by police when I was in the US because I was riding a bike. To play devil’s advocate slightly, I was riding a crusty old Walmart BSO and I look like a scruff, and the town has a major homeless methhead problem so assumptions were made, but it still took them a while of talking to me to comprehend that I am happy to continue riding my bike, once they had at least figured out that I’m not a homeless methhead.
Today I learned that “BSO” (bike shaped object) is a thing. I’m only on the edge of bike riding (I use the city bike rental thing here sometimes), and from a quick search I see there are depths, here.
Ha! Sorry. I hear the term a lot from bike shop mechanics so it’s baked into my vocabulary at this point
Whoosh.
They are talking about the privacy that having your own home detached from neighbors’ homes affords. It’s wonderful.
Lolwat
Us construction quality is shite… Even Macmansions you hear everything everybody doing with the property.
The wood structure just passes noise through the entire house🤡
Also your neighbors care about who you are in because they can since there is so few people lol
While your every move online is tracked.
How is this different from a row house?
I will admit that living in wood frame construction apartments is degrading though.
But the issue is quality and type of costruction, not the type of housing but suburban trash would never understand these things.
Hey, but let’s talk about crime now
What the fuck, such a ridiculous bunch of bullshit. You must have no concept of the massive variety and depth of the massive landscape that makes up the USA.
My house is brick, built about 5 decades ago, I own it along with multiple acres of forested land. I get along with my neighbors fine, and we help each other out occasionally, and we have enough distance and room from each other that I can piss in my yard any hour of any day that I want with privacy. The crime rate here is so low that we have about 1 murder per decade on average. I pretty much do whatever I want all the time here in the USA and I wouldn’t trade it to live anywhere else (unless someone paid me millions of dollars to)
Good for you… But your taxes paid on property and gasoline don’t support the infrastructure you are using even more then
Fuxking parasites got to comfortable they don’t know they leeching 🤡
Also many houses are “brick” is woodgrame with brick decor that is lol
For reference, here’s a Not Just Bikes video about how suburban property taxes do not cover the costs of infrastructure, with numbers: https://youtu.be/7Nw6qyyrTeI?si=mVDdJNfGXV0g-W65
as in they don’t cover sufficiently or they are not even used for infra purpose?
A block of suburban homes generates less tax revenue than the cost of maintaining the infrastructure it requires.
You have nothing to contribute but hatred for those you envy. Sorry that your life is not how you want it to be.
For the record, I pay more individual taxes than the majority of American households do to our Federal government, and more than the vast majority of households to my state so you are completely wrong about that “parasite” garbage.
Suburban and rural development tax base does not support the infrastructure they require to live a modern life.
I am happy that you make good income, good for you but your “income taxes” don’t go to fund infrastructure, at least not directly.
Consider educating yourself on the topic.
Yeah just make up whatever makes you feel better about being trapped in the prison of city life. You make a lot of assumptions about things that you don’t have the ability to quantify.
The facts you’re ignoring are that rural areas support the agriculture and industry necessary to sustain city life, and cities could not exist without them, aside from some hellish Soylent Green type of artificial subsistence.
So everyone should have acres of land? And drive literally tens or hundreds of miles to buy a gallon of milk? How does that scale?
Do you seriously think that people are driving HUNDREDS of miles to get necessities?
What about options? I don’t want an apartment. I have a modest home on less than a quarter acre of property. My neighbor’s house is 16ft from mine. Some people have bigger. Some people like apartments. Just options, you know? Or should everyone need to live in sense, urban areas? And I say this, the town I live in has about 5500 people/square mile, which is pretty dense. If I drive 10m south it’s farms. There’s a real variety.
So everyone should assume that every comment on Lemmy is an absolute prescription for how every other person should live their life?
Most folks online seem to only know cheap HOA Florida style neighborhoods with zero places to walk, cheap construction and 10 ft between houses.
Everyone makes assumptions of what “dense apartment living” , “suburban living” etc looks like, and folks are generally wrong on both sides of the perspective.
At its best, suburban living is great. I’m biased because I have an awesome suburb home I bought for cheap many years ago, and have awesome neighbors and no need for an HOA. I can access public transportation easily and use it often. Many other great things, including privacy and quiet. I can access the city center in about 20 minutes or great outdoor spaces in say 30. By bike. That’s not normal for lots of folks
But again, I’m biased. My experience is not universal.
suburb you described is pretty much the exception and these are expansive generally as any city.
South or West US style burbs is just the same corporate ghetto except this one does not produce sufficient tax base to support its existence without “growth”
I clarified my bias, but fyi my suburb is in the “west US”. As I said, everyone here is making assumptions. Reducing whole regions of the country to a described “corporate ghetto” isn’t a realistic reflection
Southern US has been development 70-80% post WW2 entire fucking region is corporate ghetto from poorly designed urban cores to the shiti mcmansion burbs 30 miles out.
Sure there are good places near the urban core with 2 million dollar house. That shit is great but kinda not accessible.
I don’t know about great.
If it’s not walkable, it’s not good. I want to cover my basics without a car or long trip. Where I am now there’s maybe 5 groceries of various sizes and a couple dozen restaurants and bars within a short walk. Plus other stuff like hardware stores, pharmacies, etc.
This isn’t a fancy or expensive neighborhood. It’s just regular Brooklyn. I wouldn’t trade this for the suburbs.
Even if you had a “suburb” that was walkable, you’re just not going to have as much stuff. Like if you lived right by “main Street” where my parents lived, there’s just fewer options. Like, I don’t think they had a single Thai restaurant when I was growing up.
If you accept the premise that a wider variety of options is better, suburbs really can’t compete on that metric. Someone might prefer the “there’s one diner in this town” model but that sounds dull to me.
But mostly it’s the car-first nature of most suburbs I can’t stand. It’s antisocial, it’s dangerous, it pollutes the environment. My parents take a 10 minute drive to get groceries and that’s incredibly wasteful.
My suburb as described does allow for much walkabilty, and bikability with sidewalks and tree lined gravel trails that go all the way to the city center. I can walk to 2 groceries, and a host of other stores in about 15 minutes one way. Bars, coffee shops, restaurants too. All on sidewalk or trail, sidewalks along slow speed neighborhood roads
On the trail, or via the neighborhood bus line, I can be downtown with a large variety of shops or or restaurants of every type.
Moreover, my point isnt to get kudos for luckily living in a nice neighborhood. It’s to highlight that generalizations are pointless.
You have a perspective of a suburban neighborhood is “not great”, and that’s fine, in a lot of places it’s true.
I have an opinion that most apartments suck, but that’s obviously not universal.
Your suburb sounds exceptional. As in, the exception to the norm. But as it is the exception, adopting policy decisions on it would be foolish.
You wouldn’t point to one docile bear and be like “Living among bears is great. Look how friendly he is.”
I haven’t heard anything my neoghbours do other than occasional drilling and I live in an apartment building with ~40 parties.
Just don’t build shitty houses
American builders and real estate investors cannot comprehend this one simple trick.
Privacy as in I get to run around the property naked, and do whatever I want, as loud as I want, without worrying about a shared wall. Personal privacy.
Every - single - apartment dweller that I have ever met, has complained about the guy upstairs stomping around, or the loud kids running around outside their door, or listening to the neighbor fuck their housekeeper at 2am. They get deliveries stolen from their front door so consistently that they need a PO box to have things delivered to. They’ve got crack heads and pot smokers that stink up the place and leave used needles around the area.
So yeah…Privacy. Privacy AND Peace.
Not sure why you are being downvoted into oblivion. What you are saying is very true, but where we disagree is that roads are the only solution. Last night, I was looking at a short trip l need to make this weekend (here in the US): 14 min by car, 58 min by rail (with a 20 min walk to get to the station), 1h20 by bus. We brought that on ourselves, we’ve made it so that cars are the only viable option - but better public transit for example would make things a lot better, for a lot of people.
That’s pretty normal for this sub, to be honest. I’m fine with it, because at least the mods aren’t deleting comments they don’t like; they let people downvote instead. All in all while I would say I disagree with this community in many ways, I respect its followers and its mods to a higher degree than I do other communities. It allows discourse whereas others often don’t. I actually applaud the restraint of the mods here, because it’s easy to just delete opinions you don’t agree with when that button is available.
The actual followers of the community – Herd animals are gonna herd animal. Lots of people just want to be told that their opinions are correct; not everyone actually wants to debate the merits of their viewpoints.
Everyone who disagrees with my take is a sheep 🤓
If that’s how you read that, you need better reading comprehension. It’s pretty well known that being presented with an argument, even one that you might agree with – but seeing that everyone downvoted it, is more likely to get you to downvote it as well. Everyone does it, it’s a relic of humanity’s evolution. I was not insulting those who disagreed with me. 🤓indeed. But hey, when everyone online has been trained to be the victim over everything, that’s kinda the response I figured I’d get from someone.
Motherfucker, you SAID IT. You said “as for the followers of this sub, herd animals gonna herd animal”.
Own your argument you disingenuous dicksplash.
Damn if it being spelled out still doesn’t allow you to get it, I don’t know what else to say.
You literally called us herd animals and they you hit us with the “if that’s how you want to read that”???
Also, your position is severely lacking. Please try to factor in the total emissions from car tires and the impact that has on public health. Next facture in the obesity epidemic which directly correlates with car dependency. Also, please consider that we have created a world where people drive to a gym to run on a treadmill because it isn’t safe for them to exercise outside. That one is harder to put a number on but it is extremely dystopian.
So if you want all your organs polluted with microplastics from car tire dust and you fully support the depression, loneliness, and obesity epidemics, then keep defending car dependency because that is hidden cost of cars that people don’t talk about nearly enough.
Believe it or not, this is actually a product of cars.
Believe it or not, cars are a product of our wants and needs. They aren’t an obstacle to our goals, they were the solution to our goals. People want to do things on their time schedule, not work around a transportation system that they don’t control.
With all due respect - just read the article you dense motherfucker :)
With all due respect – did. It’s an article I have quite a good familiarity with.
You are focused on the city.
I am focused on the US. We are not the same. The US does not have a strong rail infrastructure. It has a much larger bulk transport infrastructure via roads. It’s STILL not an obstacle to our goals.
In fact, I wish I knew what the impact was for a road that was more directly linking point A to point B, vs the additional pollution created by cars having to go twice as far on a non-direct route. I have a feeling that data would be interesting.
Given that every time they add a road, more cars travel them, I’m starting to think we haven’t reached enough road density yet. I think we should add more.
Maybe we could build more rail and reform the existing rail infrastructure instead of doubling down on inefficient and dangerous infrastructure that is both destroying our planet and atomizing our societies… ?
I think your heart’s in the right place here, and I don’t mean to insult you or start a flamewar here - but, didn’t urban planners discover induced demand 100 years ago? It’s the nature of the beast that, whenever more roads are built instead of more alternative transportation infrastructure, more people will choose to drive on those roads. Of course, these new cars aren’t coming out of nowhere - but if you’re looking for a house or a job, you’re likely to pick one at least somewhat based on the commute. New residents and people looking for new jobs will look for ones they can drive to, which means more houses and jobs on the highways, which means more cars on said highways, which means more highways, ad infinitum.
Failing the highways (as is often true in places like Europe or Japan), people will instead plan their commute based on where they can go with the transportation options available to them - and you can transport more people per hour on a railway than on a highway by orders of magnitude, so while the number of people being transported is going to be the same, the space and infrastructure cost required to transport them is lower with most alternative methods (though I can’t say if bike lanes or other specific infrastructure options besides rail are among these). The American rail infrastructure sucks right now, but we spend a LOT of money on highways, and if a significant fraction of that were allocated to railways, it seems very feasible that they could become practical for interurban use again, as they were in days gone by.
Cars were forced on us. They are a solution to problems create that we cannot solve without a functioning democracy (which the US has never had, it has always been a plutocracy that serves the rich over the needs and will of the people.)
So no, I strongly disagree that people actually want car dependency. When cities were first destroying their city centers to make room for cars, people fought against it. But these days most people don’t know anything else than car dependency. But when they travel to other countries it is like taking the pill from the matrix and they wake up to how hellish and dystopian car dependency truly is
Detached homes are fine but people buying them need to actually pay their worth to society which they do not right now. It’s a lifestyle that is subsidized by the dense cities as the sprawling infrastructure is not economically self sustainable. And it’s ridiculous that in many places in North America the only thing that’s legal to build is single family homes. It’s a falsehood saying that’s what most people want, when the reality is that’s the only option on most of the land. We cannot continue to economically or environmentally support that as the majority form of housing, we need more missing middle density like townhomes, four -plexs etc. Not to mention the cars whether gas or electric will become unaffordable to the average person in the next 20 years
What, in your opinion, are costs that detached homes are being subsidized by others not living in detached homes?
Its not entirely ridiculous. There are finite limits to local civil infrastructure. Think things like:
Unchecked high density housing in a small area can overwhelm these critical services things in short order. Some landlocked communities may not even have the real estate to build out additional facilities irrespective if the tax revenue exists.
You’re making a statement as though it is fact. Can you cite your source of that fact?
How does New York cope with its density and schools/services? It’s a mystery that cannot be solved, no way to know.
Also in Europe people don’t have schools or sewage, we’re feral educated and dump our poop in the river.
Gotcha. I understand the nature of this conversation now. Have a great day!
Yeah they make a good point, you reply with reactionary bullshit, they show you that your concerns are illegitimate through simple counterexamples, you realise you’re outmatched and quit. Did I miss a step?
Many.
Raising fresh water supplies and sewer capacity limitations is reactionary bullshit? You’re proving my next point.
I realize that the conversation here isn’t interested in discussing anything that doesn’t align with the idea of high density housing is the only solution for all scenarios. This isn’t a discussion of policy, but instead of religion. I’m not interesting in trying to convert others from their religion.
Its your clubhouse. I’m not asking you to change your actions or your rules, its just not a place I’m interested in being in, so I gracefully made an exit.
This should answer your questions: Not Just Bikes - Suburbia is Subsidized: Here’s the Math [STO7]
Better yet, just watch the whole playlist: Not Just Bikes - Strong Towns Playlist
The most obvious cost of detached homes is the completely unsustainable amounts of infrastructure required to maintain them. Roads, sewage, electric, etc.
It’s a well documented fact that suburbs of sprawling suburban homes are bankrupting towns/cities all across America and only the densely built downtown cores are keeping these cities afloat because the tax revenue of dense mixed-use areas is substantially higher than the cost of maintaining the infrastructure for these places. Check out Strong Towns if you’d like to know more and see the studies showing all this.
🤦♀️
Cities built around public transit (like Seoul, Tokyo, Zurich, Vienna) don’t have that problem. Cars are what create unexpected delays. Cars are what ruin cities for everyone.
Exactly! Perfect example of the lie they’re talking about.
Removed by mod
Great talk. Excellent example of this community. Civility at its finest.
The whole one solution fits all, my way or the highway (pun intended) ethos that is rampant on Lemmy is exactly why their goals won’t be met. Refusal to compromise and blatant hostility will be met with much of the same, but hey, if I’m out here calling people with cars retards, I’m doing my part!
That’s an issue of capitalism and building codes.
The average walking speed is roughly 2.5mi/hr - So 24 minutes per mile. You want stores every 1/12 of a mile? That’s unsustainable over a wide area such as the USA. It’s not sustainable to do such a thing in anything except for the most population dense areas, and nobody in this community seems to understand that there are people who don’t like constantly being around other people
People make noise. For some of us, we can’t stand it. Living away from populated areas is a matter of sanity, and peace, and quiet.
Do you think there’s a chance that catering towards anti-social attitudes is actually a bad thing for society, and that kind of thing might itself be the reason you so strongly feel this way about other people that you would come here and tell us we’re not allowed to reorganize cities thus that they allow us to be near people?
We get it, you don’t like cities. Nobody is telling you that you have to live in a city. But our cities should not be designed to cater to people who don’t like cities.
Biking. Public transport. And people live in cities. Rural areas can still have their mile-by-mile grid. Maybe some regular traffic calming.
Have you SEEN the people who take public transport? The drug addicts, and the mentally ill that decide they’re gonna piss all over the seats? Yeah, I’ll take my car – where I can avoid all that bullshit.
That’s an issue of low mental health trearment availability and anti-loitering issues.
I would be fine with people commuting to suburbs, if they weren’t endangering my life and sucking up a disproportionate share of the tax dollars to fund their lavish land use.
Cordon cars to freeways, make tailpipe emissions filter through the passenger air cabin filter, and stop using tax dollars to make more roads. Then I’ll have no problem with suburbanites.
Although, whether or no it’s fair for children to be subject to the fantastical whimsical lifestyle choices forced on them by their parents is a complicated matter. I sure wish I had a normal childhood. Suburban dreams of my parents kept that from me.
Is this an eanrest take?
Or is u booming, boy?
You’re being downvoted because you are correct. But in the wrong sub