- cross-posted to:
- yimby@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- yimby@lemmy.world
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You can still have trees and plant life in low density housing. You don’t need green deserts everywhere.
Yeah fuck lawns too, they aren’t meant to exist
We can thank England for those damn things.
We used to be a great nation… Invading… Murdering… Stealing… Imposing grass deserts… Now we have left the EU, are implementing government spyware and have no plans to make anything better…
I don’t remember what my point was, but England is shit and I don’t want to be here anymore.
The one on the left has no communal space. The one on the right does.
I don’t really care. As a lifelong apartment dweller; I hate people and want nothing to do with them. Get me a house far away from civilisation and I’ll be happy. Communal space, my arsehole.
This is the insanity of people who advocate for densified housing, IMO. I loathe apartments and attached dwellings. It’s like a dystopian future where you can’t own anything or have private space. If I never have to share a wall or floor with someone again, it will be too soon.
It’s like a dystopian future where you can’t own anything or have private space.
That’s our dystopian, low-density present.
I’ve lived in 4 major cities including NYC, and several small cities. The small cities and green suburbs are light years better than the dense urban hellscapes, without exception. Apartment living is also universally awful. There’s nothing desirable to me about what you idealize.
Don’t bother. The regulars on this sub are totally out of touch with reality and normal people.
I guess if I really wanted to scream at a wall, I’d make a c/fuck-fuckcars. These people are beyond help, but I hope they grow out of it so I don’t have to live in high density hell because infinite growth is just accepted as normal.
But you still need way more infrastructure for the Houses.
Yup, tons more parking and tons more road space per capita as well. Low-density sprawl just needs a lot more stuff per capita.
Do you dare come say this here in Scandinavia please? FYI, you will suffer the date of Vigo the Carpathian, but I promis to erect a nice slab of stone for you.
The issue is that all of those apartments are owned by one person getting filthy fucking rich from rent.
Then organise the renters, let them buy the house to transform it into syndicate or cooperative housing. Social apartment construction isn’t impossible.
What a fuckin great idea. Immediate downside is who’s in charge of the bills?
ask yourself this: if the apartment is owned by a company who is in charge of bills?
in the case witht he syndicate, the syndicate is in charge of the bills, the bills are split up among the members, this stuff all already exists btw.
Maybe in the US. In Germany this defintly isn’t the rule. Many people own their own flats and a lot of people own 2-4 flats to rent them out as an extra income.
No, maybe you are in a more wealthy environment. It is not possible that everyone has multiple flats to rent out. In fact, Germany has one of the lowest ownership rates.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_ownership_rate
Where did I say “everyone”?
But it is defintly not a given that an apartment has to be the tool of a slum lord, the way they portrayed it to discredit the idea that appatments are a more sustainable way of living…
Apartments can be owned by the people who live in it and this is quite common in many countries.
If one person rents out 4 appartments, that means that at least 4 others do not own their home. It’s the same with houses of course.
Germany is just a particularly bad example unfortunately. Low ownership is a problem because it increases wealth inequality, which is also worse in Germany than many other nations.
I spent seven years living in an apartment. I so enjoyed hearing the neighbors having sex, the thumping music they played, the smell of their cigarette smoke inside my apartment with all my windows closed, the random intrusions by management to repair something unrelated to my apartment, the random rent increases. Add this to the fact that I had no space for a work shop to make anything, and paying the equivalent of a mortgage with no equivalent home equity. Some people love apartment life, but it definitely was not for me.
You hate shitty apartments, not apartments.
If only there were good apartments available that people could afford.
If people can’t afford good apartments they can certainly not afford good single homes. So what is your point?
the problem seems to be when people take “apartment life isn’t for me” and then go to the conclusion of “they shouldn’t build apartments for anybody”
you don’t have to live in one. just let people build them. only allowing single family homes doesn’t make single family homes more accessible for anybody, it just makes land more scarce and housing less affordable all around.
Of course. Everyone can live in an apartment if they wish. I will be the one with the house at a reasonable distance.
This meme is advocating it as the only option
Why not prefer apartments in your own town?
Noise. Neighbours being closer.
Uh yes, the suburban tranquility of non-stop leaf blowing, lawn mowing, and pickup humming.
Musics to my ears.
It’d take it over the sound of the upstairs neighbor fucking his microwave while bowling at the same time
I live in an apartment with actual good sound-proofing. It’s almost dead silent inside except for the quiet hum of my AC. It’s legitimately so much quieter than my gf’s family’s house, where you constantly hear the rush of cars driving by on the street. Not to mention leafblowers and lawnmowers.
You realize you are speaking from a very lucky position right? Everyone here agrees quiet apartments with clean facilities are pretty nice, but a large majority of apartment dwellers live in older, very noisy, very poorly managed facilities.
It’s very fair to want the conversation on improving apartments, it is super important. But you.have to acknowledge that people’s response about their apartment history is informed from lived experience.
It’s not luck. Things are built for a reason, the regulations and structures of society are designed, and it artificially dictate s what is built. Perhaps they live in a place where the regulations mean that sensible livable apartments are fairly abundant. Perhaps you don’t. That’s not luck, those places were designed that way.
The homie was pooped out in a place where it was possible, and that was luck.
I think the phrase “lived experience” should automatically disqualify someone from speaking about any topic. They’re just anecdotes, usually in contradiction to actual data.
Ok?
So for example the “lived experience” of black folks in the southern US in the 60s isn’t valuable I’m the discussion of racism in America? Of course it is. Their first hand experience (indeed anecdotal as you say) is meaningful.
In the context of apartments, especially in America, millions of units are no where near the soundproofing or quality OP was describing. You could determine that by age of the buildings alone.
Do you have sound dampening data for apartments across the country?
Anecdotes are only problematic when they are purported as data. By definition someone relaying their lives experience suggests they are describing their individual life to you. It’s fine to want to move from anecdote to data, but when you talk about “disqualification” from discussion you’re just being a gatekeeper. There is no data rigor here, this is a message board about a meme.
Lastly the person I responded to described THEIR lived experience (the quiet apartment they have) so that further insulates myself and others from any objective requirements to comment.
So for example the “lived experience” of black folks in the southern US in the 60s isn’t valuable I’m the discussion of racism in America?
When their “lived experience” is “no, I’ve never seen any racism!” then no, it’s not really valuable, and it’s incredibly suspect to boot.
It’s fine to want to move from anecdote to data
Let’s just start with data. Anecdotes are supplementary. The way “lived experience” is usually used (and is used here) is to provide the primary support to an argument.
Again you’re expecting a rigor beyond the venue of discussion, especially given that the person I replied to started with an anecdote as well.
If you have data on the soundproofedness of apartments across the US to contextualize the common consensus to the level you expect I would be happy to browse it.
Until then I’m comfortable believing anyone (as in the many commenters here) who say their apartment was loud. The several I lived in were as well so I have no reason to question it
This isn’t a particularly convincing analogy. Islands have limited space. The suburbs where I live border tons of open space and parks. Meanwhile, our school district is already overwhelmed with children, so converting commercial spaces into apartments will merely add to congestion and sprawl. NIMBY’s make a convincing argument against denser residential construction.
A better focus would be the ability to simplify public transit and walkability. Town centers and public spaces could be more accessible with denser residential construction, and the additional green space can be closer to where you live without everyone needing their own half-acre yard to mow and water.
Ownership. You will not own your apartment, it will be owned by your landlord and you will pay him whatever he demands. You will not own the forest, either. The state will, or some private entity will. No trespassing.
what no right to roam does to a mfer
You can still own and buy appartements in most places in the world. Then there are many forms of social housing.
Rent to own is also a possibility but not seen in most countries.
Seems your problem is not ownership but landlords.
Some countries in Europe have the right to roam on any land. State owned and private owned. (Maybe more countries somewhere else have it to but I don’t know)
It does not need to be so terrible. In some places it just is because of profits
Owning an apartment and owning land are wildly different. The housing structure alone is not the entirety of home ownership.
Since we’re just talking hypotheticals anyway, let’s say in the second image the land is actually owned by the owners of the apartments, like a co-op.
That’s still not ownership. That’s co-ownership. I’m not free to do what I want with it, when I want.
Same reason I hate HOAs
The vast majority of places where you own a house, you still can’t do whatever you want.
Whatever reasonable thing you want will tend to fly though. Versus HOA which often dictate crazy restrictions.
In this image I can’t help but notice how much infrastructure cost there is here. Consider need for water treatment pipes run to and from each house for water and sewage as well as sewage treatment infrastructure. Keep in mind that failure rate increases with each house and by length of these runs that you are adding and fire hydrants being added every so many feet, shut off valves. Don’t forget that we now have significantly bigger demand for water as we now have a lot more vegetation to manage and a higher reliance on emergency services as we are spread out over a larger area so we now have to increase ems, fire, and police spending. Then you add the costs for electrical infrastructure with your sub stations and transformers and all the costs set to maintain that especially since these are underground lines apparently and ofcourse we have increased risk of failure again per service and foot run and higher demand on those services which will require more workers which turns into money being spent outside of the community. You then add the cost of data lines and phone lines including the costs associated with maintaining and upgrading those which are also apparently underground which means your upgrades may be significantly more expensive and will take much longer to deploy. Now that we have all these houses separated we will now have a population that will be more dependent on vehicles so now we have to factor in all of our road maintenance costs and our public services will not require far more vehicles as well which means we will also need mechanics to repair and maintain these vehicles. Now with roads alone when we consider the costs involved things get rather expensive quickly. Cost to maintain roads, even roads that are seldom used, is surprisingly expensive and require a lot of workers to build and maintain as well as vehicles, machinery, and land to store, recycle, and create materials needed to repair and build the roads. On top of that there is also an often missed statistic of vehicles which is public safety as they are a leading cause for injury which is another stressor on our little community.
This is far from all the possibly missed costs of our suburban/rural neighborhood but I feel these are some of the important ones people live to overlook.
Consider need for water treatment pipes run to and from each house for water and sewage as well as sewage treatment infrastructure.
Someone has never heard of “well and septic”.
Out in the country, you have enough biological diversity around you that sewage is just fertilizer for your lawn. You don’t need the extensive network of sewers to concentrate it, the chemicals to treat it, and the sufficiently large body of water necessary to dilute it back down to something that nature can tolerate.
Much the same with potable water: there’s no need for an extensive system of water treatment plants, chlorination, the network of underground piping when you are just pulling water up out of the aquifer. It has been filtered through hundreds of feet of sand and gravel, in the absence of oxygen. All the biological material has been filtered out, leaving just water and some trace minerals.
Electrical infrastructure is moving away from centralized fossil fuel plants to distributed solar and wind power. Spreading the load out allows generation to be moved closer to the point of consumption, which reduces the total load at any point on the grid, and increases redundancy and resiliency.
Spreading homes apart introduces a natural firebreak between them, reducing the demand on fire services. A single kitchen fire in an apartment complex can put hundreds of people out of their homes. High-rise fires are especially dangerous. It’s much easier to attack a house fire than an apartment fire.
Roads are not reduced: food and raw materials used by humanity come from the countryside. Transportation infrastructure must stretch out to the farms and mines. Housing farmers and miners in the cities just increases their commutes on top of their long work days.
Wireless data can be much more feasible in the country than the city. Less building interference; less RF interference.
No, I’m afraid you’ve overblown the cost difference considerably.
I started to respond to this but it’s so full of obvious bullshit it’s not worth the time. Dump raw sewage into the ground in suburbia? What the fuck kind of capitalism hellscape do you live in?
Dump raw sewage into the ground in suburbia?
Well and septic are viable options down to as little as half-acre lots, yes. Raw sewage is dumped into the first of 2-3 tanks, where it is biologically processed with virtually no intervention, before the nutrient-rich effluent eventually flows into a leach field and soaks into the topsoil.
Municipal sewage processing does it much the same way. The problem is that the cities don’t have sufficient biomass, so they have to discharge their effluent over a very large area. A city typically converts a nearby river into a massive leachfield.
You have a problem with individuals processing their own sewage and discharge it to vegetation on their own lands, but you support massively upscaling that process and dumping the effluent directly into waterways.
“Capitalism hellscape” accurately describes one of these scenarios, but not the one you’re thinking of.
you obviously need to come up with misinfo to justify your “correct” way of living
Diversity is good. Different types of homes and zoning. Mix of nature and buildings
abolish zoning
I live in an apartment. I want to live in a house.
Cunt upstairs neighbour smoking cancer sticks on the balcony, making my room smell like shit when he does it, dumbass neighbour to my right who phones some other dumbass at 6 in the morning, screaming into his phone, waking me up. No garden, can’t have a cat or a dog.
I don’t want to live in a suburb where I am forced to use a car, but you can live in a house and still be able to get anywhere you want without a car.
But that’s only because other people live in apartments. If everyone gets the privilege of living in their own house, than it won’t be economical to have everything you need in walking distance. And you can have shitty house neighbors as well.
My concern with multi unit living is that your home is now dependent on the actions of others. You could lose everything because some dumbass next to you dropped cigarette burning on their floor, or overflowed their tub.
It also just gets messy having that many people try to manage a property together. I lived in a high rise for a year. There was constant bickering over who put the wrong thing down the trash chute or who was using the elevator to move furniture without checking it out first. Everyone had to all agree to building repairs, which was a nightmare, and getting them them done took forever. From my understanding our building was pretty well run, but it didn’t feel like it. I loved the idea of high rise life when I moved in but by the time we got out house I was ready to be done with it.
What the hell is going on in your apartments, that an overflown tub destroys everything? Is the floor in your bathroom not waterproof? In Europe water damage typically happens with bursting tubes and that can happen in your own home as well. You are typically insured against this.
Sounds like a literal nightmare to me. No garden to enjoy. No vegetables. No privacy. No ability to get solar panels.
No room for improvement. Basement second levels. Changing plumbing windows etc. No ability to charge your ev.
Fuck is this some corporate bullshit
As someone who’s lived in apartments since birth:
A lot of apartments in Europe have a communal garden, or you can simply rent a plot of garden nearby for larger projects, or use your balcony for small things like herbs.
Idk what you mean with plumbing windows/basement second levels but there would be an underground garage where you can charge your EV
You also don’t rely as much on solar panels because apartments are already so much more energy efficient. They are cooler in summer and warmer in winter
So buy more land and it’s potentially a distance from your house. Communal gardens are good in theory but in practice they are far harder than just having a garden with a nice wee raised bed. Need some lettuce pop outside and get it. Unlikely you’ll bus/walk drive to the communal to grab a few leaves of something.
There wouldn’t be no. Maybe in more modern builds but all the flats I’ve rented have been 100s of years old. No ability to change interior and no luxury parking garage. Barely any parking.
If you own a house you can do what you want with it. Want to build a basement, crack on. Want to get double glazing, put in grey water. Sure. Can’t do shit in a building without building getting involved.
Fuck knows where you’ve live but no. Maybe modern ones are but old ones are freezing in winter, poorly insulated and hod awful in summer.
I’d rather live in a city or town with mixed use development, walkable neighbourhoods and functional public transport instead of suburbian nightmare pictured in #1.
There’s also townhouses that are a good compromise between urban density and home ownership/garden usage while still being more energy efficient than standard family homes.
Your username clearly indicates it is completely pointless for you (or me for that matter) to argue with this guy.
Hä was hat mein Username damit zu tun? :D Aber ja der Typ ist komplett durchgeknallt:D
Du bist offenbar aus dem deutschsprachigen Raum und damit fast sicher aus einer zivilisierten Gegend.
A truth most people don’t want to hear is that densely populated cities are overall better for nature and resources. You need less roads and tracks, fewer concrete overall, compact cities are much easier to make walkable, etc.
Really the only argument against tight packed cities is “I don’t like people”. That shouldn’t really be a priority.
For nature to recover we need to give back space. The worst you can do is build rural homes or spread out suburbs.
Really the only argument against tight packed cities is “I don’t like people”. That shouldn’t really be a priority.
There’s also: “I want to have nature around me” - and there’s “I have pets that need to go out” - and there’s “In a big city it can be dirty, smelly and loud” and “People neglected by society hang around big cities” and “Big real estate firms crank up housing prizes”.
What we really need is better city planning, to reduce traffic & roads, and make areas pedestrian only - at that point, quality of life in a city improves. Also, we need to kill big real estate corps and regulate housing prizes. And there needs to be a will in politics to actually address social issues, including but not limited to violent crimes.
You are right, this is of course argumented from an ideal perspective. Building and managing cities like they are now, just denser, wouldn’t work.
In an utopian world that really put the environment first there would be no greedy investors and greedy landlords, no one would feel left behind and instead of using farms we’d have some kind of ultra efficient vertical hydroponics stuff going on.
It would be amazing having sci-fi mega cities, perhaps connected via underground railroads and between them just nature undisturbed. It feels like we are so close from a technological standpoint to make that happen. At least it’s not completely unimaginable.
It would be amazing having sci-fi mega cities, perhaps connected via underground railroads and between them just nature undisturbed. It feels like we are so close from a technological standpoint to make that happen.
I wholeheartedly agree. And I believe we have everything needed to make that happen - but if everyone has good living conditions, that just isn’t profitable / exploitable for the corporate world. Happy people means it’s harder / impossible to scare them or make them angry at some perceived threat / enemy, and exploit their dividedness. All megacorporations without exception and a lot of mid- to large size businesses thrive on exploiting workers who are too divided to unite and demand a fair share of work and profits and acceptable working conditions.
ꃋᴖꃋ
A lot of people are pro-apartmemt before living in one, so here are some fun facts:
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Apartments usually have a maintenance cost, that covers as little as possible while still costing a lot. You never really own the flat, the building company does.
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You often have a communal garden; it’s looked after by the lowest bidding contractor. Not all flats have balconies, so you are unlikely to have your own.
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Fear of fire and flooding - if someone else messes up, your stuff is toast/soaked. Insurance companies love that extra risk, it gives them an excuse to charge more.
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No flat has good sound proofing - the baby screaming downstairs at 5am and the thunder of the morbidly obese person upstairs going to the bathroom at 1am will denote your new sleep schedule (i.e. disturbed)
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I hope you’re in for deliveries - apartments have no safe spots to leave things.
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You will not be able to afford a flat with the same floor space as a house. I’m sorry, welcome to your new coffin.
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Good luck drying your laundry (spoiler, your living room is going to have a laundry rack).
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Good luck owning a bike (it’s either the bike or your laundry, take your pick).
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Vocal intimacy becomes a community event.
Living in a flat is a pile of little miseries grouped together.
That is pretty pessimistic. I never lived in a big block of appartments but in 8 flat/building houses. We have thick walls, so flooding and noise isnt really a problem. We know our neighbours, they even take deliveries inside (into the stairway) so they dont get stolen from outsiders. We have a dedicated bike-room downstairs, with a dedicated bikeramp from the outside, every house in the area has this. We have a communal parkinggarage with electric charging-spaces.
The cost of living i cannot really compare, the inability of repairing something or our own (as we are renting) is a negative. The fire risk is something I have never thought about but is a fair point I guess.
Big minus is smoking neighbours
You’ve never lived in a large apartment building but you think the issues people have with them are pessimistic?? I wouldn’t have a problem with a townhome but apartments definitely have some trade offs
I want to say that living in an european low-/midrise block isn’t as bad as said in the comment
Apartments works very different in your country. For me it’s like this:
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Building companies build apartments, usually they are owned by whoever paided them. That can be a private company, it can also be state owned, a cooperative, or a collection of privates. It’s not uncommen to buy single apartments here. Depending on the constellation you have a say in what is what done in what way. However: cost like garbage collection, tax,… Are always there. No matter if you live in an apartment or single home.
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Same as 1. Depends on the constellation. Many people living in apartments have a garden plot somewhere else. There are places (close to nature, away from streets) where you can rent a garden and have a place of piece. Quieter than your lawn next to the next house.
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If apartments are that more dangerous then insurance companies will want more money, sure. As far as I looked for my neighborhood the cost seems to be related to the living area, I. E. Same size same price. So it does not has to be more expensive.
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Of course can you have sound proofness. Usually here walls are massive and not made out of paper.
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And houses do? Isn’t it a thing that people steel packages from your doorway/garden in the US? But nevertheless: usually I was friends with other people in the house who could get my parcels for me, like the elderly lady on the ground floor. It does not get safer than that.
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Yes? Flats are obviously cheaper for the same size as a house. You will not find 500m^2+ appartements, but >200m^2 can be found. How big are your houses usually?
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Dryer? Balcony? A lot of apartments have an extra room in the basement, or a sun roof.
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Bike or laundry? What are you on about? A lot of places have an extra bike room. Most of the time you have also your own compartment in the cellar. Bigger apartment complexes here are also required to have room for cars, I.e.you can rent a garage if you really want more space.
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Same as 4.
I am really not sure if you are trolling or houses work differently in your area.
Probably an American, that hears 15min cities and runs away screaming.
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You know how computers were supposed to make life so easy we’d only have to work a few hours a week, and how that never happened.
This is the same thing.
The per capita GDP massively increased. Are you saying your wages did not keep pace??
If people had tree Icons in their gardens in the left image, it would look much better wouldn’t it.
The HOA requires Bermuda grass, needs full sun so can’t shade it with trees…
The what?
I couldn’t live in a place that didn’t have a workshop, that’s what deters me from apartment blocks.
Then go get a workshop. Why does that have to be where you sleep?
![[meme] How would you rather see this land developed?](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f6ec67a5-2636-4875-8dd4-fa5241a3083c.jpeg){kind=link}