Something to consider when pushing housing density.

[Moonbeam]

While it is true we could resolve issues through killing each other in many ways that’s just a different market - a market of violence.

What your point is or how it relates to what I said, I have no idea.

So density preserves nature.

The link I presented has nothing to do with this yet you and others harp on it endlessly.Assuming the link is correct, "Without engaging with natural environments, our brains cease to work well. As the new field of environmental neuroscience proves, exposure to nature isn’t a luxury – it’s a necessity", it doesn't matter a fig how much natural environment there is if you are not connected to it.

When I was a child I could ride my bike and be lost in the wild nobody having the slightest idea where I was. I explored abandoned buildings, massive gun turret, caves and miles of ocean shore. I found a fossilized whale in a cliff next to my school. I caught snakes and lizards and horned toads, ant lions, ants, pollywogs and frogs. I could lay on grass and watch the clouds float by. There were fruit trees and berries planted by my parents in the yard. I can smell the white sheets my Mother would hang to dry in the yard. I remember two black men teaching me when I was 4 or 5 how to suck nectar from a honeysuckle flower. I didn't have to go anywhere couldn't manage myself.

 

[Zorba]

Attempt to even wash a vehicle, much less pop the hood, in an average HOA. Extend the example to painting, home maintenance, or virtually any project involving a power tool.

Absolutely not at all average. Probably less than 1% of SFH HOAs. Apartment complexes, condos, and town homes might be different, especially with respect to car maintenance in parking lots.

But feel free to link up some HOAs that ban doing your own home maintenance.

 

[fskimospy]

What your point is or how it relates to what I said, I have no idea.

The link I presented has nothing to do with this yet you and others harp on it endlessly.Assuming the link is correct, "Without engaging with natural environments, our brains cease to work well. As the new field of environmental neuroscience proves, exposure to nature isn’t a luxury – it’s a necessity", it doesn't matter a fig how much natural environment there is if you are not connected to it.

When I was a child I could ride my bike and be lost in the wild nobody having the slightest idea where I was. I explored abandoned buildings, massive gun turret, caves and miles of ocean shore. I found a fossilized whale in a cliff next to my school. I caught snakes and lizards and horned toads, ant lions, ants, pollywogs and frogs. I could lay on grass and watch the clouds float by. There were fruit trees and berries planted by my parents in the yard. I can smell the white sheets my Mother would hang to dry in the yard. I remember two black men teaching me when I was 4 or 5 how to suck nectar from a honeysuckle flower. I didn't have to go anywhere couldn't manage myself.

I think you lack an understanding of how society works. It’s ok - you don’t get it.

This explains why you have the ideas about housing that you have. You just don’t understand real life.

 

[Moonbeam]

I think NIMBYs justify their horrifying opinions by convincing themselves that people want to force them to live in apartment buildings.

The reality is we just want them to stop banning people from living in apartment buildings.

All we are asking for is for NIMBYs to leave everyone else alone.

Apartment buildings don’t leave everyone else alone. They insure that people are never alone. They create traffic, strain the infrastructure and create greater and greater demands for services. They insure that public facilities, parks and recreation areas are jammed full of people. They create hatred for people who cook with fish sauce among other things. I was going to tear my house down and camp out on five stories of 50 gallon drums of gas, but the NIMBY fuckers at city hall said no even to water. Seems it would have shadowed my neighbor’s solar cells.

And nobody wants to ban people from living in apartment buildings. All I want is for people to have a guaranteed basic income so they don’t have to rent one because they are enslaved by a need for money.

 

[Moonbeam]

I think you lack an understanding of how society works. It’s ok - you don’t get it.

This explains why you have the ideas about housing that you have. You just don’t understand real life.

Let me answer this way.

This is so dumb. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

And add that your comment is no surprise to me. Maybe you were projecting.

 

[Moonbeam]

Is this a joke?

My point is and has always been that people should live in whatever house they want. My request is for people to stop banning people from living in houses they don’t approve of.

You could be saying two different things here grammatically speaking,one of which is that I for one have no intention of banning people from living in houses they don’t approve of because I would simply trust that if they would not want to live there they won’t.

 

[Moonbeam]

No, it is not.

The moral prerogative is the highest standard of living for the most people.

I want people to have good lives.

Very admirable, I’m sure but who would not say the same. What I hear is that you not only wish people to have good lives and not only think you know what a good life is, but you want a more distant state to overrule local laws on the premise their responsibility is abused.

The number of people who think as you do is growing, but that does not mean you will win. I will be fine either way.

 

[Moonbeam]

En anglaise s'il vous plait.

Be serious. Are you really asking for an explanation or are you just trying to say that my word are meaningless. If it is the latter, I agree. No word can say what I pointed at. I can hope that what I said will resonate with some. The same has been expressed in a million ways over thousands of years. I will see if I can find a different set of words as I have just lost an arm for typing as a cat pillow. The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. An illustration:

 

[Moonbeam]

I have a question. If the millions of people who are homeless or paying exorbitant mortgages and rents had the economic security not to have to work, do you think the prices of real estate in presently very expensive areas to live would collapse? Every homeless and low wage person could up and move somewhere where more affordable. You could buy a lot and a trailer for a start. People could follow their bliss.What a way to fuck the NIMBYs. Their wealth would evaporate but their property taxes would go down. And the turtles could stay.

 

[sdifox]

Be serious. Are you really asking for an explanation or are you just trying to say that my word are meaningless. If it is the latter, I agree. No word can say what I pointed at. I can hope that what I said will resonate with some. The same has been expressed in a million ways over thousands of years. I will see if I can find a different set of words as I have just lost an arm for typing as a cat pillow. The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. An illustration:

Densification involves creating more units in a lot serviced with sewage, electricity, gas and road access. That has zero to do with in the middle of the forrest. Bringing up being in the forrest is good has nothing to do with it. Want to be in the forrest? Move your butt and get to it.


This 305 acre conservation area is within minutes of the biggest shopping malls in my city, Markville Mall. It is marked as CF Markville on map. I am maybe 3km from it.

And we are known for urbal sprawl.

 

[fskimospy]

Apartment buildings don’t leave everyone else alone. They insure that people are never alone. They create traffic, strain the infrastructure and create greater and greater demands for services. They insure that public facilities, parks and recreation areas are jammed full of people. They create hatred for people who cook with fish sauce among other things. I was going to tear my house down and camp out on five stories of 50 gallon drums of gas, but the NIMBY fuckers at city hall said no even to water. Seems it would have shadowed my neighbor’s solar cells.

And nobody wants to ban people from living in apartment buildings. All I want is for people to have a guaranteed basic income so they don’t have to rent one because they are enslaved by a need for money.

Lots of people want to ban people from living in apartment buildings and are currently doing so.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Absolutely not at all average. Probably less than 1% of SFH HOAs. Apartment complexes, condos, and town homes might be different, especially with respect to car maintenance in parking lots.

But feel free to link up some HOAs that ban doing your own home maintenance.

I may have been a little unclear with the maintenance part.

The HOA my in-laws came from forbid the removal of trees without an arborist verifying the tree was dead prior to removal. All modifications of the home that were visible from the outside of the house(including the back of the house; they technically didn't own the back yard) had to go through the HOA first.

They forbid on street parking. They forbid any vehicular maintenance. They once got a verbal warning for airing up their tires in the driveway.

They forbid any moving pods of any kind. When they moved they had to put a PODS container outside the HOA (a disused parking lot nearby), rent a uhaul, load the uhaul at the house, ferry it outside the HOA, unload the uhaul into the PODS container, repeat.

 

[Brainonska511]

Cuz the part that misses is, that apartment complex attracts an entire shopping and eating district, followed by a moderate sized starter home community, followed by a gated community with homes for 3-5x the cost, followed by a higher end shopping and eating district, followed by a commuter town to facilitate it (since nothing in the area is affordable anymore), followed by the original apartment complex torn down for a business high-rise. Oh and the trees have been gone for years.

So people in detached housing don't need or want to go to shops?

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

So people in detached housing don't need or want to go to shops?

Never said that. The original premise of the picture was that you could plop a high rise on an island to replace 100 homes on an island, and let the rest be green space. Neither picture is practical, but one limits development while the other encourage it.

 

[Brainonska511]

Never said that. The original premise of the picture was that you could plop a high rise on an island to replace 100 homes on an island, and let the rest be green space. Neither picture is practical, but one limits development while the other encourage it.

It's a thought experiment, don't be so literal.

The whole point is if your goal is to "preserve nature" and "natural spaces", you're better off building more density instead of putting in place policies that lead to detached sprawl.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

It's a thought experiment, don't be so literal.

The whole point is if your goal is to "preserve nature" and "natural spaces", you're better off building more density instead of putting in place policies that lead to detached sprawl.

But you also have to put in policies to reduce density sprawl, which was my point. Just moving people into dense housing does nothing if the land which previously contained a bunch of detached housing now contains shopping, business, industrial, and further dense housing districts.

 

[fskimospy]

But you also have to put in policies to reduce density sprawl, which was my point. Just moving people into dense housing does nothing if the land which previously contained a bunch of detached housing now contains shopping, business, industrial, and further dense housing districts.

You can have density or you can have sprawl. The two things are mutually exclusive.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

You can have density or you can have sprawl. The two things are mutually exclusive.

You can absolutely have both, see nyc, Tokyo, DFW, or basically any city whatsoever
Why is there this notion that if you densify, the rest of the land remains untouched? When has that ever happened?

 

[fskimospy]

You can absolutely have both, see nyc, Tokyo, DFW, or basically any city whatsoever
Why is there this notion that if you densify, the rest of the land remains untouched? When has that ever happened?

You have X number of people. They are either concentrated in an area (density) or they are spread out (sprawl). By definition you can’t have both.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

You have X number of people. They are either concentrated in an area (density) or they are spread out (sprawl). By definition you can’t have both.

Right but when you densify, and add services because the land is now available (and cheaper) thanks to the denser housing, you get x+y people. Which begets more services and more people.

 

[fskimospy]

Right but when you densify, and add services because the land is now available (and cheaper) thanks to the denser housing, you get x+y people. Which begets more services and more people.

No - density does not magically create more people.

 

[Brainonska511]

Right but when you densify, and add services because the land is now available (and cheaper) thanks to the denser housing, you get x+y people. Which begets more services and more people.

So you're subscribing to the idea of "induced demand" for housing? You certainly see that concept on roadways (just one more lane will fix traffic), but I don't think we've ever seen that play out for housing. Plenty of cheap housing in places like St. Louis and Detroit, but you don't exactly see people flocking to those booming metropolises.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

No - density does not magically create more people.

Cheaper housing and more services absolutely 'creates more people' by way of people moving there.

 

[fskimospy]

Cheaper housing and more services absolutely 'creates more people' by way of people moving there.

So then by definition the areas they are moving from become less dense, reducing sprawl. The two terms are mutually exclusive.

Also, this means your fundamental argument is people love density, which then of course means we should create more of it.

 

[Brainonska511]

So then by definition the areas they are moving from become less dense, reducing sprawl. The two terms are mutually exclusive.

Also, this means your fundamental argument is people love density, which then of course means we should create more of it.

I guess we could say, if density begets more people moving into an area, that's fine: we're just satisfying the latent demand for people wanting to live in high amenity, dense neighborhoods near employment, which is a good thing (whereas satisfying the demand for shorter commutes via personal automobile through "one more lane" is a bad thing).

Regardless, if there is a concern regarding government services: good news on that front - they're cheaper to deliver per capita when you have to serve a denser population. Suburbs and detached housing are money sinks when it comes to infrastructure costs the government bears.