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Fuck Cars
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This would just become a 100 apartment buildings.
Well if that much housing is needed then the idea of not providing it is kind of.. monstrous? evil?
Nah mate, there should be laws to how much people can live in some area. It's inhumane to compress so many people in one place. I don't want every city to be Hong Kong.
Exactly. People who advocate for densification are basically advocating for everywhere to be Amsterdam or NYC with continuous human habitation and maybe small concessions in the form of city parks (a joke compared to real natural areas, IMO).
I'm not sure if they're aware that this will be the logical conclusion of those policies.
How about nice green suburbs with single family homes and a lot fewer people?
No, im good on suburbia, it’s inherently damaging to both our mental health and the natural ecosystems of the planet. You cannot have a sustainable single family suburb.
Ok, well surely you recognize that there are lots of people who agree with me - who feel single family homes are nice and living elbow to elbow with your neighbors in maximum density is not in any way desirable.
Unfortunately, ultra-urbanist zealots are very loud online. I suspect many of them will change their tunes with age.
Edit: what's damaging to the ecosystems of our planet is PEOPLE! There's no law of nature that states a suburban density isn't sustainable, just that it's unsustainable for 8b people. You're proposing eco-austerity because human population is out of control
cool where's everyone else gonna live then
Let the population contract to <<1b as it was for thousands of years of civilization before industrial agriculture caused a very recent explosion in population the past 2 centuries (predominantly the 20th century)
Under 1 billion is unrealistic but some contraction will happen. The main factor dictating how many children people will have is infant mortality of the previous one or two generations as well as the existence of pension systems.
...which is the reason why developed countries have birth rates below replacement level and with increased wealth elsewhere it's also going to happen there, which would mean contraction everywhere. I don't expect that to keep up forever, however, states will get their shit together and set incentive structures (in particular making having kids affordable) long before we're contracting to one billion.
Education? Contraception? It's not fucking rocket science. Every developed country in the world is at well below replacement rates. The idea needs to be promoted and not derided or conflated with eugenics (which it emphatically isn't). Blunting the impact of an aging population is the most difficult problem.
Edit: the most difficult problem is that capitalism demands perpetual growth, and billionaires and heads of state with a vested interest in growth would never allow the population to shrink without extreme resistance, like pervasive propaganda and outlawing abortion.
Sure, and so will slowing, stopping, and reversing anthropogenic climate change. Should we give up?
ah yes i love ecofascism
Where "fascism" is defined as whatever you want it to be, regardless of any reasonable definition. Is renewable energy eco fascism? How about fuckcars? How about forcing densified housing?
Not fascism? How convenient.
Do you have an example of a sustainable single family suburb that exists currently, or ways in which to offset the inherent inefficiency present in such structures?
Why is not living in a suburb austerity? Is all of every city and rural population living in austerity?
So is your solution global mass genocide just so you can enjoy your sprawling suburbs?
What part of "naturally contract" implies genocide? I swear, the resistance to understanding is willful.
That will take well over a century, if not multiple centuries. We need actual plans for living sustainably now, not hundreds of years in the future.
The 'under 1 billion' part implies genocide, because that is literally never gonna happen - in a time frame where we wouldn't have to rethink housing and nature right now and the next few decades - otherwise without a major worldwide catastrophe. Sure, climate change might take care of it (again, decades away and people need housing now, also, these solutions actually help with climate change) but then we won't have to worry about silly things like housing ever again.
Or we could promote education, contraception, and contraction of the global population the same way we promote renewable energy - because the ideas are related. Or do you think that there's no point in trying to fix the problem? Because you clearly don't seem to hold that opinion about the climate catastrophe, you just refuse to look at population as part of the problem.
Call me when you fucking grow up
No such thing as suburbia doesn't have the density necessary to allow for public transit (with sane frequencies) or to be walkable. Living in there will always mean taking a car to fetch groceries, to get to school, to get to kindergarten, to go to the doctor, to go to the hair stylist, to go anywhere.
Meanwhile you're forcing people to live in accommodations which are absurdly large and expensive because batshit zoning codes make building anything that's not a gigantic house on a humongous plot illegal. I don't want to fucking upkeep a house.
...and I also don't want to finance the sky-high per-inhabitant infrastructure costs that suburbs bring with them. They're the leading cause of municipal bankruptcies in North America.
"forcing", yes that's it. These people hate living in the suburbs and we are "forcing" it on them. Did you ever stop to wonder why suburban houses sell for 2-3x or more of the cost of condos? I'll give you a hint: it's not because people hate single family homes. The anti-car urban zealots don't have a clue that there are people out there that live in pleasant green communities, and yes, have to take the car to the grocery store.
I lived in NYC - an ultra-dense city with incredible transit. I had to walk or take transit to get groceries. Now I live in a suburb, the store is the same distance away, and it takes 1/4 the amount of time to get groceries. Someone save me from these awful car-centric troubles.
You know that there's options besides concrete box in the sky and suburbia, don't you?
With a couple of row houses, multiplexes and small apartment buildings -- think three, maximally five storeys suburbia could be densed up to support public transit. It could support supermarkets in walkable distance, schools, the whole shebang.
But that's illegal in the US.
And guess what? The rare places in the US that have that style of mixed development, places that pre-date the suburbia zoning codes, are the ones with the absolutely highest home prices. Because they're legitimately nice places to live, not because they'd be expensive to build, they're actually very economical.
Man so true. I live in Dallas Tx home of suburban sprawl. I just spent a month in North Carolina and I had no idea what I was missing. The unspoiled nature in the Appalachians just blew me away. Hard to come back to miles of concrete.
I agree that if we could build a few wall label buildings, and leave the rest untouched that would be the best way. But I’ve seen how hard it is to stop development once money starts being thrown around.
But what about THE LINE!
Sadly, that's more likely to happen. I like apartments more than houses, but it's not just about building apartments alone.