The picture on the left is just an argument against lawns.
Right? And also...who needs space between two homes if there are no lawns? Just moosh all the outer walls together.
Come to think of it...that's gonna result in a ridiculously long line of houses. Maybe we could moosh roofs and bottom floors and stack 'em up a bit to make the line of houses only a half to a third as long, and then leave a little space between Consecutive House Stacks™️ - y'know, so that there'll room for more windows.
Partially, even if you got rid of the lawns the houses would still take up significantly more space for both the road infrastructure as well as the houses themselves.
The way i see it is people prefer to fence themselves from the world in their tiny square, rather than enjoy a larger piece of land they have to share.
If the island were 100 times larger, the houses would take 1% of the land area, leaving 99%. The apartment complex would take up .04%, leaving 99.96%, which isn't much of an improvement. The proportions of our planet are much closer to my scenario than this made up island. That's a reason why we might not "prefer apartments in our own town."
There are good reasons you might want density, this just isn't one of them.
Yeah, but most people don't live in that other 90% . Most people live in urban and suburban areas where most if not all of the land is privately owned. Because of this the problem shown of fitting 100 households into 25 acres is way more common than your scenario of fitting 100 households on 2500 acres
And having trees and nature near urban venters is very much desirable, to help with air pollution (tho really not a lot), heat concentration and humidity.
If the island were 100 times larger, the houses would take 1% of the land area, leaving 99%.
Singapore government: if only.
Also wildlife, carbon capturing, and distance to everything. There's reason why denser city is easier to go around, in this island, you might not even need a car.
Easier travel is definitely a great reason to increase density. Walking & biking > cars
There is approximately 15.77B acres of livable land and there are 8.2B people so if each person had just 1/4 acre that would be 13% vs if you gave each person 2000 sqft it would only be 2%. Then you need to factor in how to built transit for low density and how many more stores you need due to the lower density and you can see that it would be much better for the environment if we had higher density
That's the difference between America and Western Europe. Western Europe is already mostly built up, they don't have room. America does.
That's not even remotely true. Do Americans actually believe this?
Spoiler: No it isn't.
Yea, everything is pretty full here. We have plenty of nature, but there's always traces of civilization.
I often miss the vastness of nature. Been to Alaska some years ago and being in nature is an entirely different feeling.
But then you have to live in an apartment…
The neighbors kids who live above you will stomp around at 2:00am.
The neighbors below you will complain when you make the slightest noise.
I guess that's just an argument for better made apartments.
We can't live in an apartment because it will always have bad insulation. We should all live in single unit housing with... checks the quality of insulation in your average 1970s ranch house oh shit, oh fuck.
Also, gotta say, love to live in a street level neighborhood Cul-de-sac with that one guy revving his motorbike at 3am. Single pane glass, noisy neighbors, and god help you during July 4th or Jan 1st when someone gets ahold of fireworks.
But for some reason, we completely forget about this shit when we talk about apartments. Like the suburbs - particularly the corners near intersections or school yards or big churches or highway on-ramps - aren't routinely noisy af.
The thing is, you can't really engineer against anti-social behavior. For every better made apartment you will find that there is an even bigger anti-social idiot who still manages to make life hell for their neighbors.
I'm pretty blessed with my mostly boomer neighbors (🤞) who don't make a peep after 10PM, but my girlfriend has had some shitty neighbors even though her apartment is pretty well made. Sound insulation between apartments is no match for cigarette and marijuana smoke wafting in from the balcony below any time you want to open the window to air out, or if, heavens forbid, you want to sleep with the window open in the summer, nor does it help much if they are partying and speaking loudly on their balcony until 4AM on weekdays. And then I'm not even getting into how they're treating shared spaces.
The proximity makes everything so much worse than it would be with a house, at some point only adding distance helps.
I’ve lived in shitty apartments but dated two people who lived in “modern” high rise appartments. In mine I heard the neighbours occasionally since they were clearly old motels that they half arsed into units. The modern apartments I practically never heard anyone.
Though “modern” apartment generally price out people who are up all hours making noise it’s more the fact that these appartments usually have body corporates or people that live on site. Being the typical “up all hours stomping around” type would be a quick way to have your lease terminated.
Edit: Duh and the super obvious thing I forgot, improved sound insulation in modern apartments I imagine as well.
Concrete framed buildings help a lot with this. Other noise proof options are out there as well
My favorite is a few hundred meters of trees with a fence and stone walls
I grew up between a big house with it's own forest, and a town house. At this point in my life, I have spent more time living in apartments, and the last 4 years living in studios. Gotta say, I have no desire to move into a house at any point. Having an apartment in a well built city with good public transport is just way nicer.
for a while now i've maintained that commie blocks (at least over here) are some of the best places to live, and i have to conclude that the only reason people think most other areas are at all appealing is because they have simply never actually been in the commie block areas.
It's like how my dad had never once even considered the notion of riding a bike, then one day i convinced him to buy an e-bike and since that day he has driven a car.. literally 3 times, i think. Once you actually consider the merits of it it's so obviously better.
Because I lived in apartments for my entire adult life until maybe 2 or 3 years ago, and I can say most apartments suck because of the neighbors. Ya my neighbors across the street from me are awful and trashy but they are not directly above me or one wall away from me.
We moved into a concrete building and then another and then another. The horrible neighbors we had in our last wood frame building - Fire's Favourite food! - ensured we're never going back. Now I'm aware I have neighbours but, like bigfoot, you're never really sure they're there.
Sometimes yes sometimes no, I don't hear my current neighbours
I work nights, so it didn't bother me, but my wife said the upstairs neighbors stomp and yell and stuff all the time from like 11 pm till 3 am all the time. When I would confront them, they would blame it on their religion or their small kids. They would talk about how now that the sun is down, they can eat and would celebrate it. After the third time, I started talking about the scriptures of their religion that tell them to respect their neighbors, and then I started reporting it to the leasing office a few times a week.
After they were finally moved out, I was talking to one of the leasing people and complained about how they were loud all the time. They asked why I didn't report it more, and I had to tell them that I would have been calling them every single day at least once a day.
Its mostly because all of the older apartment 20th ce try or older have wood floors that reverberate lime a drumhead. Newer buildings with concrete construction elminate noise. I dont hear my neighbors ever. Will never go back to an old building.
Most suburbs suck because of the neighbors, too.
Seems the common problem is neighbors.
Renting sucks and relying on a landlord is awful. I bought a small house and keep my yard wild.
Having renting be the default for apartments is part of the problem. It is very normal where I live that a developer build an apartment building and the sells the apartments to individuals who own the living space and co-own and maintain the shared spaces. The developer takes the winnings and never interferes with the building again.
At least in my country it is very normal to own your apartment
In the US you can be kicked out of your apartment with only 60 days of warning without cause (the owners only have to claim they need it for personal use or some other bs).
That is part of why people hate renting. 60 days isn't enough time to find a new place, pack everything up, and move all while working 50 hours a week.
Why does renting have to be the automatic assumption? We're simply talking about two different ways to organize living space, not how it's financed. Shit, we should take a page out of Finland's book, and make some actually really good public housing and make it available to everyone.
Because capitalism.
There's a principle in economic analysis called "Ceteri paribus", "other things equal". So, if you're renting in the image on the right, you're also renting on the image on the left.
You lost me at buying a small house
Owning sucks too. Shit is always breaking, it's expensive to fix and nobody else will handle it for you. Just paying for lawncare is bleeding me dry, and I don't even use the lawn... but the city/police get angry when I don't cut it.
Replace your lawn with white dwarf clover. It looks lawn like but doesn't get super tall. Also it feeds the pollinators.
Edit: White dwarf clover is what people think of when they think of clover. It's not something exotic. Do not get crimson clover and especially not red clover lol. Red clover is a perennial and gets very tall.
I have both owned and rented, and there is no comparison. Owning is a million times better. Not having a landlord that can just raise the rent or kick you out whenever they feel like it, plus the freedom to do whatever you want with the place, plus the almost certainty that your house is appreciating and you're not constantly throwing massive amounts of money in the fucking toilet.
There is nothing about owning a house that even approaches the cost of renting unless you don't know how to do even basic DIY shit and you don't have any friends who can.
So um, why are the houses and nature mutually exclusive? I live in a suburban detached single family home, and my whole neighborhood is filled with trees, wildlife and even a tree lined creek that separates the back yards on my street from the back yards on the opposite side. You can't even see my actual yard from google maps because it's nearly entirely covered by tree canopy (at 6pm in summer my yard is 100% shaded). We have all sorts of wildlife including deer, foxes, owls, frogs, mallards, rabbits, squirrels, etc.
While I agree that we do need more housing options of all sorts, I don't for a second agree that nature and suburban housing are mutually exclusive. We just need to stop tearing down all the trees when we build, and plan better.
Don't forget the huge energy savings (heating/cooling, transportation, infrastructure) by having denser housing. It isn't just a measurement of "I can see trees," but all the daily human activities that have a reduced environmental impact in denser development. It's counter-intuitive, but rural areas that are "nearer to nature" are often worse for the environment.
There is probably a break-even point, I don't think everyone living in skyscrapers is ecologically ideal and I wouldn't want to live there anyway. But medium-density development with multi-unit (shared wall) buildings allows huge energy costs, while also making public transit more viable and providing a tax base that actually pays for its own infrastructure.
I think the point of the island is to show that when you have limited space, residential density really matters. Even if you took away all the concrete, spacing, etc between houses in this example and just out 100 ranch style homes in a corner with no spacing in between them, it would leave room for significantly less nature.
Your neighborhood sounds beautiful, and that's great, but that ratio between nature and residents is probably being achieved with more land than if high density residential housing was in place.
Based on your description we might be neighbors
why
Well, you could count the trees on the right and find a way to fit them in between the houses on the left.
in both scenarios developers eventually buy up the entire island and fill it with either
This. Whenever people use "if we don't eat meat we need this much less land" I'm immediately thinking if we don't need to plant all that grass and other things then people would just make more houses on those land not grow a forest.
Yes, but the development on the right is going to discover the colony of cannibalistic cave dwellers much quicker, as the high density makes it more difficult to hunt unseen.
Valid point, did not consider.
What about something like that ?
8 houses in a row, built using a wood structure and straw bale wall for insulation (thermal AND phonic insulation) and clay plaster. So the construction material is storing CO2 rather than emitting tons of CO2 like concrete does.
It collects rainwater for the garden and has enough solar panels for the community and to contribute to the electrical consumption of the village around it.
It leaves a lot of space for land to develop a food forest, permaculture projects and leave space for biodiversity.
Gentle density is awesome too! Rowhouses, duplexes, low-rises: all great options for cities that are zoned to only allow single family housing.
i will take literally anything that is denser than single family houses, row homes are generally a pretty good middle ground for most people who can't fully grow out of the suburban mindset.
That looks great! Where is this?
It depends also on the type of houses. It's not the same a cabin in the woods and a house with a garden.
Yeah give my 5th floor apartment a back yard to garden in and the we'll talk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_gardening
Very common in and around the old Soviet style Eastern European blocs. The style of construction was known as "Towers in the Park" and was often paired with rail stops and local commercial centers for the convenience of pedestrians.
Check out Habitat 67 in Montreal - an architectural student solved this in the 60s. Apartments where everybody gets their own rooftop terrace. Given the funding, the original plan was for a 30-story terraced hill of mixed-use and apartments in an A-frame with public green space underneath that mixed the density of apartments with the benefits of single family homes.
Since everybody thought he was crazy, he only got a fraction of the funding for what he ended up building for the 1967 World's Fair, but those apartments have the longest occupancy time of any building in Canada (some seeing 2 or 3 generations living in them) and a 5-year waiting list on units.
Last year, a 3d model of the original concept was released for Unreal Engine: www.unrealengine.com/en-US/hillside
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_(gardening)
This is a solved problem.
that's called terraced housing and it's really astoundingly enjoyable.
Now imagine apartment buildings taking up 100% of the island and that's what you get under the current system.
Three apartment buildings and the rest is all parking lot
Zoning bylaw might require 1.5 parking spaces per dwelling unit. Three buildings would then need 450 spaces at roughly 128 sqft. each which would take up nearly an acre and a half.
The three buildings on their own probably wouldn't need even a single acre.
In current system it'd be all air bnbs and hotels
And most of them are unoccupied.
Apartments are never built right. Always cheap out on sound proofing and appliances. Also fuck you if you have a dog
I'll go with 99 apartments and one house on the other side so I can be as far from them as possible.
In the original position, one is asked to consider which principles they would select for the basic structure of society, but they must select as if they had no knowledge ahead of time what position they would end up having in that society. This choice is made from behind a "veil of ignorance", which prevents them from knowing their ethnicity, social status, gender and, crucially in Rawls's formulation, their or anyone else's idea of how to lead a good life. Ideally, this would force participants to select principles impartially and rationally.
What not many people are touching on:
In 2, the owner of the building likely owns the rest of the land as well as the apartment. You are a slave to the owner as he owns the island and your "beautiful view" will either be absolutely not developed at all so it is difficult to use as a park or a source of food without explicit consent from your ruler. No community gardens without tons of power tripping and infighting of course either.
In 2, the owner of the apartment and land can and will bulldoze the entire forest and completely pave it over if there is the slightest hint that he can make more money that way, then jack up your rent for the privelage of living in a hellhole. Conservation of nature my ass. The building owner has a 99% chance about not giving a shit about conserving the rest. They will turn it into monoculture or cattle farming or a parking lot and stores. This post is literally landlord propaganda.
Edit: owns the apartment building, not apartment.
In 1, if there was a workplace, it's likely way farther away from 2, with more limited choices.
Want to do office job as a disabled person in 1? Bad luck, your only options are a few different factories with different kind of workplace abuses, all requiring you to wake up at 4AM, because the factory opens up at 6AM. Disabled? No, you're not, you have all your limbs, you just want to take money from the government to then spend it on luxury cars, and maybe a few months of lifting at the factory will make it "magically go away". Maybe your "wanting to do art" will also be cured, which hopefully got crushed by the good AI, as artists are evil because they don't get cool injuries during their craft.
People were okay with apartments, but then some upper-middle class Karens and their male counterparts started to whine about not having "a kitchen garden" (which none of those fuckers can care about at all, thus becoming hotspots for bugs) and "a place where their child can play" (alone), and who knows, their neighbors could be a migrant/black/Roma/whatever is the current boogeyman at your local area.
Also if you're in the US, you're owning the 1 way less than 2 in Europe, thanks to HOAs.
I just moved from an apartment to a house.
If the apartment had the same floor space and the city actually accommodated my hobbies (I need a large garage to work on cars and finish fixing a boat) then I would’ve gladly stayed.
However. Apartments above 60m² are rare and expensive, and all garages/industrial sites are unfavorable because you can put another bloc or supermarket in there. The cities became living hubs for corporate workers whose entire lives can be crammed into a 40 meter apartment and their only entertainment is a depression rectangle or a gaming console.
This is probably too late, but may help someone. If you're looking for an "industrial" type of setup for a workshop, look at small, local Airports.
There are small airstrip airports all over, and their filled with warehouses that aren't being used. My friend rented a small hanger for a couple hundred (he did small engine repairs) which the owner allowed him to build or do whatever he wanted in there, eventually he made an overnight loft/hangout room on one side when he felt like crashing on late nights. He enjoyed having a dedicated "away from home" space to work and the airport gave him business when locals drove by and saw him working (some local pilots always had stuff that needed work). The really cool bonus part was pilots would just show up and ask if he wanted to go with them for a joy ride, guess it's more fun when you get to share the experience with someone.
This is exactly it. Where the fuck can I do my hobbies in an apartment that are loud. Can I run a torch? Fuck that.
We could also all live in cells. Maybe even hook us up to VR so we dont even need to get out into nature. You could maybe even harvest energy, by keeping us in nutrient filled tubs while simulating a perfect world into our neural perception.
If you'd build an apartment tower surrounded by food forest and nice fields everyone would get an amazing view. Better view than from ground level. Make the ceilings high and very good noise insulation and great windows. And it would be cheap because the land could be cheap.
I've lived in an apartment and I just can't do it. I hated every day in it.
Did you hate the apartment, your landlord, your neighbors, or living in an apartment?
Sharing walls sucks
I hated my proximity to so many people and their noises. I hated the apartment, I hated living in the city, it felt inhuman and I felt absolutely trapped. The landlord was fine. Not to mention bugs and rats. Tell me that apartment building doesn’t have roaches.
Yes.
As someone who is sensitive to noise, I hated the lack of adequate standards regarding wall thickness and/or sound proofing. And the mail thief.
Yes. I’d rather live under a bridge than in an apartment complex.
Was it an old building? Did you share a shitty fence with annoying people?
I live in a two bedroom apartment in Aus. with my wife and dogs. The build is maybe 5yo. It's great. Noise is minimum, it stays at a steady temp most of the year, and security is really good.
And your dog can run out the dog door into your small yard anytime or do you have to walk them every day. How is your garage? Is there a workshop in it? Can you have friends over into your basement DnD room setup to play games? Apartments suck I don’t care how many people stuck in cities tell me they don’t. Like being born in the zoo they don’t understand it’s awful. Also good security, yeah sounds like a great place to live. I don’t need security in my neighborhood and it’s a working class not a rich one too. Why do you need security? Is it because cities suck and the density makes you more likely to be a crime victim?
Logic here is broken because we don't make these decisions anyway. A developer will instead put 30 apartment buildings while chopping down anything that gets in the way, then charge more for rent than you'd be charged for the mortgage on the house. There's also the fact that this picture assumes every family on the left pic doesn't give a fuck about free scaping, preserving trees, or planting new ones? Idk, whole thing is jacked.
It feels like whoever made this only sees those large suburban sprawls in the South West of the US where it's all flat desert. Or the suburbs built on large tracts of farmland that had trees taken down many years before for crops.
Housing development is expensive when you have to cut down and uproot large tracts of forest. They're not willing to do that unless there is a high rate of return... Such as an apartment building with a hundred tenants.
You see one apartment building. A property developer sees room for 100 apartment buildings.
If the apartments are no shoe boxes and have lavishly big (garden) balconies I'm all in. The space should be around 100-120 qm each with flexible drywall placement for individual footprints.
I love living in a walkable city but I envy a friend of mine a little bit, who exits his apartment into a market center with cafes, shops, supermarkets, barber, doctors etc.
You think the corporate apartment developer is going to let all that stay green? That many people in apartments, you need a few parking lots, shopping malls, corporate centers, and then some more apartments once the rent goes up.
Perhaps in some parts of suburban north america. However, well-designed walkable, bikeable cities with proper transit don't require mega big box stores all in one zoned area that you drive to from a sprawling suburb.
But you're describing a city. The graphic does not show a city, it shows one apartment building. The rest of the city you've described would swallow the rest of the green space. That's what sprawl is, when the desirable land becomes more valuable so nearby land is further developed and becomes more valuable becomes more developed becomes more valuable.
It's an inperfect metaphor anyway, because island development works under its own constraints. An island can only support so many people, regardless of whether they live in an apartment or a single family home. There are limits, and growing beyond those limits will result in feedback loop which can cause systemic collapse. See: San Francisco, where retailers must raise prices because they cannot afford to hire someone who can afford to live there because everything is so expensive.
I'm with you that we need more walkable cities. But car-dependent development is a result of regulatory capture by land developers. Zoning and public transit spending are the battles we need to win. And if we can tax corporate landlords out of existence, that would go a long way, too.
If the building is mixed function, like commerce on the floor level and offices on the first floors, and residential on the rest, you don't need as much parking and car infrastructure.
I think you missed the point. If you build all of those things you mentioned in a similar compact fashion you still have lots of room for nature and more efficiency when compared to sprawl.
You're missing my point. Development density doesn't preserve green space. It just puts more people in a smaller space. Protecting green spaces requires actual protections.
This graphic implies that there is a market solution to protecting green spaces. It's suggesting that NIMBYs who oppose high-density zoning are the reason for suburban wastelands. Zoning regulation should prioritize preserving green spaces and public lands, but deregulation is not the fix (as is implied).
You can sell the wood and drill for oil, maybe there is some gas or coal to burn.
bruh you do realize hong kong exists right? that's almost literally a real life example of this image.
The nicest thing about the second picture is how much free untamed land it leaves for me to find a spot to bury the body of my asshole upstairs neighbor.
Edit: I'm not a murderer... But only because I moved out.
I know you're not serious but this is a really sad and hateful worldview.
You never met my neighbor...
Joking aside, I really did have to move away to prevent things getting worse.
I pride myself on getting along with people, but this experience made me admit that some people just genuinely suck.
First one. I've lived in condos and I will do anything to always live in a house now. It's the literal reason we sold a condo to buy a house.
Life has been much better ever since.
As stated lower down in the thread, there are more options than just suburban sprawl and tight apartment buildings.
Let me guess, the walls seemed "paper thin"? That is very easily fixed by basic sound proofing and insulating shared walls. Or by using brick or concrete. I lived in an apartment with 3 other guys that had brick walls and I could scarcely hear anyone. It was amazing.
sweden has a lot of "commie blocks" built around the 60's, which are generally basically solid concrete, and straight up the only time i hear my neighbours is if they drop heavy stuff directly onto the floor or if we both have a window open.
These buildings were made specifically to be cheap housing, and yet they seem to be some of the better housing available in the world, fucking wild. I maintain that our commie block areas are some of the best places to live within the country, you get hilariously cheap rent, car-light surroundings, generally very decent public transport connections, and it's not unusual for them to effectively be the situation depicted in OP's image, some example areas being Bergsjön, Fisksätra, and Jonsered, the latter of which is wonderful because it's effectively a small town consisting solely of apartment buildings.
What makes you think it would be just one apartment building instead of filling the island with apartment buildings?
No no, one apartment building and the rest of the island is a surface level parking lot because an underground lot was too expensive.
This is a consequence of the inane policy of mandatory parking minimum requirements in local zoning codes. Remove them and this problem goes away.
For the same amount of people, you wouldn't need to.
Who says only X amount of people will move to the island? The island will always fill up over time, at least with suburbs, there will be some green left
Because FUCK living that close to other people. Humans fucking suck to be close to and I'd go fucking postal having to deal with that shit.
I hate my neighbors as it is and barely see them. If I could hear their shithead kids screaming and throwing themselves into the walls I'd burn down a city block.
Modem building codes usually have noise separation requirements.
You have to remember that people who advocate for apartments usually aren't trying to make everyone live there, they're just trying to make apartments/condos an option for who those who want them. In much of the US and Canada it's illegal to build medium and high density housing, for essentially no reason beyond aesthetics and racism.
See that's all fine and well. More people should do that. But then you get the people who don't want to live near people, in the middle of a city. The "have your cake and eat it too" kind. And that's just not feasible.
There really is no one-size solution to housing. We need, and all benefit, from having some degree of options, but importantly, those options should be attainable, and all have their costs/drawbacks.
Consider that if you have one bad neighbour in an apartment, then everyone on your floor will also be talking to them and helping to regulate their disruptive behaviour.
Apartments usually have concrete walls so you can't hear your neighbours. Unfortunately, there are some new builds made by developers trying to maximise profit at the expense of the residents who don't do this.
Unfortunately, there are some new builds made by developers trying to maximise profit at the expense of the residents who don't do this.
AKA every developer in an american suburb
Basic sound proofing can make apartments very quiet. We could pass regulations requiring sound proofing
The real crime is that fucking font. I'd rather just burn down the whole island.
You mean the Avatar logo font?
It’s called Papyrus and it’s everywhere. From Arizona Green Tea to the band Lamb of God.
I hate it, maybe not for good reasons, but if I see that font on a product or document, I feel repulsed. Like reading someone’s resume printed in jokerman or one of those faux-handwritten cursive fonts that are all the rage on handmade hipster farm-to-table rustic authentic commodities.
Still one of the greatest all time SNL sketches, Gosling's magnum opus. I hope they make a 3rd Avatar just so we can get another skit.
Fires (i live in london)
*slaps cheap cladding
"This cladding can burn and kill so many people so well"
(Genuinely though, Grenfell was ridiculously tragic, and its disgusting how making decisions to cut costs and be cheap cost lives, I mean in no way to be mocking that. I'm sorry for any losses you may have incurred in such a tragedy yourself.)
concrete is a magical material
It is, but we have a tendency to decorate it with kindling over here
Counterpoint: they didn't need to clear all the trees, or at the very least, they could have replaced them with more native trees once they were done building. I'm not gonna pretend that houses don't cause a ton of environmental destruction, but imo they really don't have to continue to be destructive long-term; they do it because people usually go with the lowest bidder.
Counterpoint: they didn’t need to clear all the trees
You're not laying plumbing and electric through an old growth forest. The roots of those trees won't allow it. You've got to clear the whole lot and then replant.
they could have replaced them with more native trees
That would require a local nursery specializing in the cultivation of native plants at the scale the developer requires. At the industrial level, its easier to just ship in some stock variants, whether they work locally or not.
From an ecological level, it is easier to simply not break things than it is to fix them afterwards. Stripping the soil and resodding it, tearing up all the old plants and replanting, and kicking out the native wildlife for years at a time isn't in any way conducive to ecological preservation.
You're not laying plumbing and electric through an old growth forest. The roots of those trees won't allow it. You've got to clear the whole lot and then replant.
Okay, but... What if... You didn't bury the pipes and wires and put them overground (you have good points, I'm just shit-posting NCD-style now)? Snake them between the trees. You don't have to have houses all in a row. Sure, they're less efficient space-wise, but then you can have your yard and your white picket fence without disturbing the surrounding environment!
That would require a local nursery specializing in the cultivation of native plants at the scale the developer requires. At the industrial level, its easier to just ship in some stock variants, whether they work locally or not.
Just uproot the trees and replant them later, EZ.
From an ecological level, it is easier to simply not break things than it is to fix them afterwards. Stripping the soil and resodding it, tearing up all the old plants and replanting, and kicking out the native wildlife for years at a time isn't in any way conducive to ecological preservation.
Yeah, well, we're gonna have to learn how to do it eventually.
From a semi-serious standpoint, if our population keeps growing, we're either going to have to learn how to tear up ground and then replace it in an ecologically-friendly manner, or we're going to have to push off into space. We're currently scheduled to have a population collapse due to climate change, but let's be honest here, that's going to come with significant ecological destruction which will require significant ecological reconstruction if we ever want to try to return earth to its pre-change state.
Cough I mean: nature put it there, just have nature put it back. Simple as.
Neither have water, so neither?
Obviously the blue part is land
Simple. People desire to own what they pay for, and they prefer not having to hear their neighbors partying, arguing, fighting, fucking, etc.
It's possible to own a condo apartment, or if the building is structured as a co-op, then rent is permanently affordable and you have a stake in how the building is run.
Ok thx for the link. Still not something id be interested in as i like my space
Sound proof walls are a thing, as is owning a single apartment. It works pretty well.
Also this idea of owning is just bs. Most of the money goes to a bank in form of a mortgage intrest. Once you paid that off, the children leave the house and you are stuck with a property designed for a larger family. Much better to move to a smaller space at that point, which is cheaper and easier to maintain. That is not even talking about the option of moving to a better job or something similar. Selling and buying a house can easily cost a years worth of rent.
Decomodified housing, like housing cooperatives solve a lot of the renting problems.
How many landlords do you believe would install soundproofing or even allow the renter to do it? Before i hocked my soul for my home here i was a renter for a half century. No landlord i ever dealt with would allow the tenant to so much as swap an outlet to a proper code one. Nor would they entertain the thought of doing so themselves. Long as it was working it was left alone
A lot of people in this thread are mistaking the map for the territory. Like yes, obviously neither the development on the right, or the left would actually happen in real life, because why are these people even on the island? What do they eat? What do they drink? Where do they work? The sole statement of the graphic is that dense developments have a reduced impact on nature compared to sparse developments. Discussing the logistics would exceed what can be conveyed by such a format.
A lot of people in this thread are deliberately missing the point because they don't want to hear it.
They want to live in independent suburban homes, in isolated subdivisions where you can only get to jobs or groceries or social events by car, with big yards soaked in pesticides so they don't have bugs in their houses, etc, etc.
They want to live high consumption lifestyles. They don't want to live in resource efficient, high density housing because they imagine it will reduce their standard of living.
So they nitpick the image and make up reasons why it's unrealistic because they don't want to admit the kinds of homes seen on the left are unsustainable and unrealistic in the long term.
I don't have to imagine, I've lived in both, it is a reduced standard of living and saying it isn't is a lie. I've seen pictures of how you people want us to live, Hong Kong and Tokyo exist. I'd rather die of exposure in the woods than be forced into a coffin sized little apartment room that the poors get there.
Dang, Lemmy really is misanthrope central
It's easy to call it out like that, but I that apartments have design flaw, that it dehumanizes your neighbours.
Something along road rage. You are stuck in a container and interaction with others are limited to annoyance.
Maybe coop apartments would have a way to solve it, but it will break down if multiple suites are built next to each other. You can know/befriend a very limited amount of people.
You are stuck in a container and interaction with others are limited to annoyance.
Nailed it. Either they're annoying me with noise, or I'm constantly worrying that I'm annoying them with noise.
it really feels like this post is either being brigaded or just straight up astroturfed by bots
We all know that soon enough, the center of the island will be filled with cheap appartement blocks, and all the beaches and access to water will be owned by rich people with huge houses.
There is so much possible between these. Both options suck.
Different families have different needs.
my only gripe with apartments is that people are too fucking stupid to sort their garbage and recycling according to the giant fucking posters in the garbage room.
and strata vote manipulation to make idiotic changes that benefit nobody that actually lives there, while never fixing anything that breaks.
I could get behind this if I could continue yelling just for the fun of it and have a space for a decent workshop
You could go out to the middle of the forest and yell, would disturb less people that way anyway.
You could also have a community workshop in the basement like how a lot of buildings have gyms these days. Similar to gyms it would probably have more machines as well since the cost can be spread out. You probably can't justify buying a lathe for one project but a lathe for a whole apartment block makes more sense.
I am planning to get my own metal lathe and mill as is but having access to a shared table saw or bandsaw would be nice but I'm will to pay extra to not disturd others while in at home
a horribly dangerous tool can is only a liability if other people can use it, and disturbing others should always be a goal.
My apartment building has a shared use workshop.
We also have a gym and a sauna, along with an apartment you can rent per day for cheap if you have visitors and a space you can rent if you want to host parties.
Yelling for the fun of it would perhaps not be the most respectful thing to do to our neighbors, so I would advise against it. It's not strictly speaking something that I miss, though.
Eh maybe is something like a tik but I honestly enjoy being loud either talking like some kind of opera singer or laughing muniacly at full volume but that could just be from being weird and growing up outside of town
This thread is an object lesson in why the whole world hates Americans.
For those complaining about noise in apartments: in my experience apartment dwellers are quite considerate and when living in an apartment I never had any major noise problems.
Now that I live in a single home let me tell you about the noise of neighbours mowing their lawns, constant noisy renovations etc. and in general a lot more car noise.
Quite honestly, it was more quiet in the apartments that I lived before.
Edit: and besides, I think people are confusing apartments with the real cause: housing areas with low socio-economic status tend to be more noisy. Correlation is not causation and all that...
People are down voting you but I've had the same experience. The apartments I've lived in were very quiet. The suburban home I live in now is within earshot of lawn care daily. I literally never leave my land, when I say daily I actually do man daily.
Noise reduction in buildings have come a long way. Anyone living in an old apartment is going to find it more noisy.
how old is that generally? my apartments is from around the 60's and i generally forget i have neighbours at all, the magic of solid concrete.
Side note - even in an apartment (a large complex that is mostly parking lot and big patches of barren lawn) the lawncare guys that come through several times a week starting at 8am drive me up a fucking wall. I can't fucking stand lawns dude. Give me patches of unmoderated and peaceful nature over that shit any day. Density and nature do not have to be mutually exclusive.
so many people in comments need fucking therapy. idolizing atomization and misanthropy and then wondering why the world has gone to shit. "fuck other people and their children" Andys wondering how fascism is on the rise and why people do mass shootings. it's you. the only difference is you haven't pulled the trigger yet. get help.
I see you haven't lived in an apartment, if you believe people here hate just because they hate people.
i currently live in an apartment and have only lived in apartments for more than three decades. i had noisy neighbors all my life. i usually let it go because it's people living their lives and it's fine.
i have once knocked on the door of my neighbors upstairs because their music made it hard for me to actually hear myself talk. turns out they had friends visiting from abroad and they got carried away having fun. they apologized and turned the volume down. believe it or not, we survived that day.
and where i live now there happens to be a noisy kid upstairs who loves jumping around. guess what, it's a kid, that's what they do. I'm an adult. saying fuck the planet I'm gonna live in a suburb because hearing other people annoys me is more childish than anything that kid will ever do.
Density zoning is the source of the housing crisis.
People think it's market forces that have created the housing crisis, but it is exactly the opposite: government ha been artificially restricting supply for decades.
There are so many places where 100 units is a more profitable use of land than 10 units, but it's prevented by density zoning.
The people who have the most wealth and power over the markets are the very same people who bribe / lobby/ donate to politicians to write the zoning laws that contribute to the housing crisis.
Consider this, you are a wealthy property developer. Are you going to lobby the government to do things to bring down the cost of housing? Fuck no. You're going to do the opposite. The more expensive housing is the more money you make.
People need to realize the US only pretends to be a democracy. We get to pick which individuals get to sell us out to the lobbyists and donors and without fail both parties put on a big show of political theater but then meet with lobbyists in private and sell us out. A democratic republic if only democratic if the elected reps represent the will of the people, which they don't.
I would even argue that a two party system is deeply undemocratic and that we will never be a real democracy until we adopt a multiparty system, ban super PAC donations, and ban paid lobbyists.
It's not just the property developers. Most people who've spent a year or more paying off their mortgages don't want their asset devalued by ending the housing crisis. No government would bring down the cost of housing because democracy will prevent it until renters are a majority of sufficient size to overwhelm homeowners, landlords, vested interests, and the dumbfucks they gaslight.
Only if the apartment has very strict noise and smoking rules that are actually enforced.
Noise separation is pretty easy to design into a building. Air separation is possible but would require design that no one bothers with, as far as I know.
When we lived in an apartment someone set off the fire alarm several times a week, sometimes at 3am which is a shitty way and time to awaken. Never want to live in one again
How about quadplexes? 50% of island used.
Those are great too :) with some small grocery stores at corners occasionally.
i can do you one better: 1/3rd each of apartment buildings, quadplexes, and row homes.
This is how they're building a new development in my town and while it's pretty fucking sad to see how much more space the low density housing gets, it's so fucking good to have a mix of densities near each other. It means you don't get the extreme segregation between young/old, rich/poor, and native/foreign people, and that if you want to move to a different density of housing you don't have to leave behind all the people you know.
As long as I can live in a hollow under a tree far away from the apartment building, okay.
But if not then I’ll just walk into the ocean because that’s still too damn many people.
Really good framing of it
Everyone is going to need to agree on a noise level
This is true. In Holland we have laws and regulations about this. My wife's job is enforcing this, although most of the work is designing places to minimize problems (don't build homes right next to highways, or under flight paths, or next to industry), as well as dealing with cafe owners who let their customers talk in front of the bars smoking at 02:00. 😄
that's true in SFH suburbs too, you don't magically get to launch rockets in your backyard at midnight.
Had an apartment. Guy's girlfriend upstairs smoked. His apartment caught on fire when she fell asleep smoking in bed. Guess where the water goes when the fire department put out the fire. And that's not just water, it's water mixed with toxic soot. No more apartment.
...insurance?
Insurance companies really do a great job of replacing those family heirlooms. They always over compensate for sentimental value. They also make it super easy to collect on a claim and they never raise their rates after paying a claim.
Technically it was above me and across the hall. The water came in on one side of my apartment and I was able to close off those rooms and only lost a few things. The water that came in was black, just running down the walls like a horror movie. I just threw them away those few items. It made the apartment unlivable though due to the smell and toxins. My neighbor across the hall had it worse though and insurance paid to have all of her stuff treated. Apparently the stuff is brought to a facility and they expose it to ozone for a while(weeks if I remember correctly). She wound up buying a house and I moved in with her.
Neighbour had a garden with trees, guess where the tree fell during a storm? No more single houses... /s
You can litterally find examples for downsides like that of any kind of housing arragements.
Yup, but this is mine. I don't ever wish to live in an apartment. I want my own space. I can site way more examples than this. But, hey, you like apartments? That's great, YOU go live there. Live and let live.
Take a look at the UK on Google Maps.
Pretty green, right? Plenty of space to expand those towns and cities.
Zoom in. It's pretty much all farmland. There's precious little nature in that.
Density isn't going to save nature. Having fewer people and sustainable farming will save nature. Density is useful for having things like efficient public transport, and reducing the need to have a car. It also localises noise, and I feel we don't value quiet enough.
What nature? I have to drive 2 hours to see nature. Bring on the houses.
I wish somewhere like this actually existed because I would move there instantly.
Places that are surprisingly similar to this do exist and unsurprisingly are very fucking nice places to live, and by dint of being high density it's generally not that outlandish to actually be able to live there.
Look for areas around public transport lines, with a reputation for being largely inhabited by immigrants and poor people, those places at least in sweden tend to be really fucking nice. They get a bad reputation because of racism/classism, but that's kind of good because it means there's little competition for the housing and it's going to be way cheaper than it would otherwise, and having lots of immigrant inhabitants mean there'll be more neat businesses available to you.
There are plenty of high density places (usually very expensive in the US) but not surrounded by natural beauty like this. Maybe in Europe you have this I haven't explored extensively but in the Americas it's basically nonexistent.
Can you give an example of such a place? The closest that I can think of is Vancouver but it's one of the most expensive places to live on Earth. And it's really only some nice parks, not fully surrounded by nature like in this image.
I wish apartments in major metropolitan areas had green space like this. If I could have just enough of a yard for my dog and a small vegetable garden I'd happily live in an apartment.
Zoning laws in at least some areas in my country mandate that for every floor higher, the surounding open space must enlarge by so much. The result is widely spaced towers.
You are probably looking for a small medieval town. Adding aparment blocks together makes transport cheaper. Hence you can built a walkable neighbourhood with good public transport. You then have green space outside the settlement. However that can be reached quickly in smaller settlements.
Major metros don't have the extra space for hoarding. This is why people suffer the reduced economies of scale and move into rural areas. There's gotta be tradeoffs, and what you pay in occasional power failures or road issues you get back in forests and streams.
Edit: we agree that hoarded greenspace isn't a public park, right? Like, that's almost the opposite thing?
But I mentioned the suburbs because gestures at a forest a bajillion times the scale of Central Park, a contiguous forest area the size of the Amazon
Central Park is awesome - I loved watching the falcons at Mr Allen's place back then, and I had a lion lunge at me in the zoo - but I'm sorry I wasn't clear enough to point out that consolidated park space is the opposite mindset from the hoarded greenspace attached to each individual unit of sprawl of the sort we need to bulldoze for proper space.
But yeah, downvote away.
Non-sense, there's plenty of potential to have green spaces including community gardens in cities.
fucking central park????
The picture on the left could be even worse. There are areas where people move in and tear all the greenery out of the garden and then either cover everything with paving stones or gravel. Everything around the house! Then there's also an ugly metal fence or plastic elements in the garden, sometimes you can see fake plants.
Some humans are so stupid...
A bit nuanced in drought-prone places, though --- stone is, well, drought-friendly, but a typical lawn is most certainly not. Best would maybe be drought-resistant native plants...
Either way is fine as long as I still get a house.
Can we get a version with all treehouses?
We've been dead set on getting something fully detached since living in an apartment style condo. There's 0 enforcement of the little bit of laws we have as soon as it's an apartment building. The city is 100% hands off for anything not detached. None of the laws on the books are focused on or designed with any kind of density in mind.
The condo boards are HOA's on steroids. The rulers of these little fiefdoms don't just fuss at your lawn and paint. They decide if/when the roof will be looked at, if they should bother to top up the emergency fund as much as suggested, etc. It's insane. As much as we prefer the low impact of high density, it's just not livable.
Family have tried finding apartment buildings (condo or rent) but have given up. All of them are studio, 1, or 2 bedrooms. Max seems to be ~900 sqft, which would be fine if they were square. Unfortunately they all seem to be very long and narrow. The 900sqft also includes balconies, storage spaces, and parking spots here. It's not great.
Every apartment style condo in this city also has serious building issues. The city just signs and doesn't inspect. The builders (major builder #451) just disappear after each build as they "go under" and the major builder they were "part of " are not considered liable since it was a subsidiary. Regulations were put in place to prevent this with detached builds but they don't cover condos.
Until regulations make them livable I doubt we'll see a serious adoption of them for a while here.
All of them are studio, 1, or 2 bedrooms. Max seems to be ~900 sqft,
We're renting a 3.5bd (the half is labeled a den as it's only 7x9 vs 10x10) built this year.
When you find a good one, jump on it.
That's awesome! I'm jealous. Congrats! :D
Sadly 7x9 is a legal bedroom size here, so long as it has a window. There's also no requirement for any of the walls to be straight, so I've seen some really unlivable room shapes
It's impossible to not hear your neighbours in an apartment. There are ways to reduce that, but almost no apartment is built like that. Not to mention that often you want to open windows for fresh air and get to breathe in smoke from cigarettes. It's a different kind of hell to live in one. I agree that it looks nicer from outside. There can even be parks nearby. But never venture there after dark, because you'll get your vallet stolen. Due to that every street must be light up during the night, and now you can't see the stars...
Anyhow. People fucking suck
I currently live in a (honestly pretty run down) commie block in eastern Germany. The walls are solid concrete. For me to hear my neighbor, they need to be hammering on wall.
My flatmate has horrible gamerrage, but I only really hear him through the two doors connecting our rooms with the hall, or through the windows if both are open. You can absolutely soundproof apartments
I envy you. I lived in 3 commie block apartments that the soviets built. Even though build from concrete, you could always hear neighbours from all sides except below.
Neighbours above had two children that would chase one another. Sounded like elephants from above.
Surprisingly moving away from the city into a brick apartment actually solved most of the sound problems. The building is even older, was built in between occupations around 1920.
Although there are still problems due to moded cars and bikes driving around. Need to move out again, further...
Left, 100%. I don't share walls with randos.
Yeah, exactly!
What if you both touch the wall at the same time and make inappropriate contact? That'd be unchristian!
Put a few more towers there for double or triple the housing and we’re in business.
While I'm all for this, the problem I see with high-density buildings is that it's easy to put them up, but it's hard to then build the services that this many people need. You can put an apartment block with hundreds of new residents, sure, but where are the doctors, the schools, the hospitals, the public transport routes, etc?
All very solvable problems, but one that high-density living often fails to cater for, because some rich developer cunt is happy to throw a high rise up and forget the rest.
You could say the same for suburban development. Public transport? lmao
In fact it is also cheaper to build/maintain plumbing and electricity and internet delivery for high density than low density housing, simply because you need less of it.
but it's hard to then build the services that this many people need
The idea is that there are the same amount of people on the island.
Island 1 might need 2 small schools to serve the top and bottom of island.
Island 2 could put one large school in walking distance of living building.
One large school is much cheaper than multiple smaller ones.
Same with things like fire stations. You only need one around the living building on island 2. One station on island 1 might not be in range of all the homes.
So we should lift other zoning restrictions as well.
Allow people to start businesses in these buildings.
It's one thing to prevent boiling horses into glue next to a preschool, but it's entirely another thing to specify that a building cannot contain a barber shop because it's zoned for residential.
We have too much zoning in our country. Too many rules to allow the market to simply solve problems. Oh this neighborhood does't have a doctor's office? Sounds like a great place for a doctor to set up shop, assuming they're allowed.
Within the same building? Restaurants and bars and shops.at the bottom, services like doctors, and offices at the first few floors, then living space above that.
Also, good city zoning
Also, focus on people, not cars.
This is where city planning comes in.
As city gvt gives out permits to build high rises, they need to build the other infra around it.
Also, said rich developer cunts want to maximize their profit. People will pay more to be near where they need to be, be that public transport stops or schools, so they're already incentivized to build where there's good infra. As they start building more where there's no infra, the city will develop infra there.
The high-density buildings attract more people, which increases the tax base of the city, so there's more budget for infra.
If looking at American examples, look at NYC vs... Any big city in the south or mid-west, I guess? Idk, I'm not American. NYC is one of the very few cities in the US with actual good public transport. There's plenty of schools and hospitals too.
There are plenty of examples of this working just fine around the world, i have personally been to one of them and it's almost a magical place to be in.
It's not that hard to figure out the solution really, just tell drivers to suck a fat one and design around public transport instead. Build a railway into the countryside and surround every stop with a commercial area with housing around that, this is how the suburbs to the northeast of Gothenburg are constructed and it obviously works and results in some of the nicest places i've been in.
The landlord would sure prefer option 2.
The meth head neighbor fighting with the scary guy who is always mean mugging people, the shoddy repairs and maintenance done to the lowest standards, the ever increasing rent even though the building is paid off…
We have plenty of space, we just need an economy that allows people to afford a single family home. A sfh can be built with nature in mind… the earth has plenty of room for 10 billion people.
An apartment building doesn't have to mean renters. Condos are a thing that exists...
And apartment buildings aren't the only high density options available. Half the issue is just the bans on subdivisions and requirements for minimum parking, lawn setbacks, etc.
There is a great deal of difference in density between these options:
I can understand not wanting to live in a multi story apartment building. But for those people, some percentage of them would still be ok with one of the first two images here. We don't all have to go with the third one if we want something more independent.
Neither options. There's a third option, involving a really smaller number (smaller than 100), but it's too controversial to be written as a comment, I guess...
I mean seriously, the first thought that came to my mind was: "How is this better for nature? They are going to poison the shit out of the ocean around their shores dumping their shit right into it because they've got nowhere else for it to go, because it's still too many people for that area."
Even if they try to build septic, it's just too damn small for it to not be leeching into the water unless they dig the septic tank insanely deep.
Wouldn't a water treatment facility for that much wastewater take up about as much space as the living area? What about electricity generation? And where is fresh water coming from?
These fucking simplistic ass views will be the death of us.
Now, do the houses in the same density. I'm talking, wall-to-wall, stacked on top of one another in a brick filled with shingles, confusion, and misery, thanks to the lack of any connecting hallways, stairwells, or elevators. /j
Unironically houses. If you go for the apartment, The remaining land will still be filled up, just with apartments instead of houses, and you'll have to deal with 50x more people then you would have with house model.
One of the main benefits of using houses instead of apartments is avoiding population density.
There's only so much population. Afaik availability of housing isn't particularly a limiting factor for population growth, either, so I don't think this is true. If we all moved into apartments then there would be less land used, no question.
Nah you can still have high population density in businesses/venues whether people are coming from houses or apartments. Only difference is whether they have to drive 20 minutes through suburbia to get there. It doesnt feel any less dense when 90% of the land has zero points of interest besides houses so you simply drive past all of this nearly empty space to get anywhere.
If you don't care about going anywhere and just want to sit in your backyard admiring the grass most days, then sure, you do you.
Everyone's gonna starve
I'd prefer the left. Fuck other people.
so much hate.
It's a soft fuck. But too many people haven't lived in a multi party house and are the loud annoying neighbors themselves, of course they don't get my comment.
Humans turn food into poop. They don't just sit in an apartment. An apartment is a tool to bring in food and take out poop (and other waste).
You can draw a building like that, but to portray the apartment system correctly, you need to show where the poop goes, and where the food comes from.
Do you think houses don't need those things? I'm confused what you think your point here is.
If you draw those things, the actual land use becomes apparent, and then you have to draw the infrastructure to bring the food in and take the poop out. Eventually you'll start to see that there's an enormous amount of land use just for living, it consumes the island either way, and there's an argument to be made for living like a village (as they do in actual villages) because of the decentralisation of resources and lowering the land use of infrastructure.
-
100 houses:
- sewer lines under each row of houses, joining at the roads, and then emptying into a single pipe that goes into the sea. Lines are low load and low pressure so can get stuck easily depending on weather.
- most homeowners get in their vehicles and drive to the store depending on distance to the store
- 3 homeowners might grow vegetables. Maybe.
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100 apartments:
- single sewer line, high load and high pressure, waste can travel further into the sea
- grocery store on the ground floor of block, next to the kebab shop, apartment owners can take the lift or the stairs.
- 3 apartment owners might grow vegetables. Maybe.
What are you talking about. It's an island. Where are the animals for the kebabs? Where are the "groceries" coming from? How much power does it take for the "single" sewer line? Who said the houses would have a sewer line and not septic tanks? What roads? I'm not arguing for the thing on the left, I'm saying there's a reason why we have been building villages in village shapes and not in apartment shapes.
-
The same is also true for the houses. That argument is a wash.
