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.
I don’t know. They seem pretty natural in a lot of places.
I didn’t plant my lawn. I don’t water it. It has just always been there.
That might be true for you but the US uses 9 Billion gallons of water per day on residential irrigation. As of 2017 https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/www3/watersense/pubs/outdoor.html#
Of course you probably mow and trim. So still pretty unnatural. Natural Flora tends to look better even without obsessive maintenance. A robot mower was critical for me to actually not mind having to have a grass lawn.
Sucks for pollinators though…
We do keep a couple patches of wildflowers.
You just made my hoa froth at the mouth a little.
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.
They should pay a significant land tax instead of leeching off the high-density dwellers.
Funny you say that as I’m the creator and mod of !justtaxland@lemmy.world
For others curious about land value taxes:
A land value tax (LVT) is a levy on the value of land without regard to buildings, personal property and other improvements.[1] It is also known as a location value tax, a point valuation tax, a site valuation tax, split rate tax, or a site-value rating.
Land value taxes are generally favored by economists as they do not cause economic inefficiency, and reduce inequality.[2] A land value tax is a progressive tax, in that the tax burden falls on land owners, because land ownership is correlated with wealth and income.[3][4] The land value tax has been referred to as “the perfect tax” and the economic efficiency of a land value tax has been accepted since the eighteenth century.[1][5][6]
LVT’s efficiency has been observed in practice.[18] Fred Foldvary stated that LVT discourages speculative land holding because the tax reflects changes in land value (up and down), encouraging landowners to develop or sell vacant/underused plots in high demand. Foldvary claimed that LVT increases investment in dilapidated inner city areas because improvements don’t cause tax increases. This in turn reduces the incentive to build on remote sites and so reduces urban sprawl.[19] For example, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s LVT has operated since 1975. This policy was credited by mayor Stephen R. Reed with reducing the number of vacant downtown structures from around 4,200 in 1982 to fewer than 500.[20]
LVT is arguably an ecotax because it discourages the waste of prime locations, which are a finite resource.[21][22][23] Many urban planners claim that LVT is an effective method to promote transit-oriented development.[24][25]
Further, it can’t be passed on to tenants, both in economic theory and in observed practice, and even a milquetoast LVT – such as in the Australian Capital Territory – can have positive impacts:
It reveals that much of the anticipated future tax obligations appear to have been already capitalised into lower land prices. Additionally, the tax transition may have also deterred speculative buyers from the housing market, adding even further to the recent pattern of low and stable property prices in the Territory. Because of the price effect of the land tax, a typical new home buyer in the Territory will save between $1,000 and $2,200 per year on mortgage repayments.
Sounds like it could have a lot of loopholes like any tax scheme but as long as those are addressed, this looks like a reasonable proposal.
That’s actually the beauty of LVT – the government already knows who owns what land (the landowner has the deed), and land can’t be hidden or offshored. You may try having shell companies, but the tax bill comes due regardless. The reason shell companies work for avoiding other taxes is because they can allow you to offshore your on-paper profits to tax havens. LVT doesn’t tax you on profits, so it doesn’t matter where the profits are on paper. Similar for income or sales taxes, income and sales can be done cash-only and hidden.
Off the top of my head I’m imagining the infinite loan scheme, but modified a bit, where the vast bulk of your wealth is in securities and then you “rent” a property from a company for like $1 a year. The company doesn’t pay its taxes, it goes bankrupt, a new company is created, and the process starts again. YOU never owe taxes, the COMPANY owes taxes and could get deductions on any number of bogus things and then worst case just declare bankruptcy and fold.
This could be addressed, but it’s similar to people saying Mac or Linux is immune to viruses. If they get popular enough, they’ll need antivirus software.
Similarly, no tax scheme is immune to loopholes, but as long as they’re addressed, it’s not a point against it.
To somebody else’s point, how would this compare to the what single family home owners pay now?
Where I live we have about .09 acres of land our house sits on and we pay ~$3000/year.
Seems like a good way to get a lot of retired folk to lose their property over taxes, as land value rises above their means
Sounds like they should sell their house - which has netted them a nice profit - and downsize. Or do a reverse mortgage.
And move where? Why have retired people (who are most likely on a fixed income and have paid off their home in some cases) to move from a home they’ve paid off to an apartment/living center with obscene monthly payments? Or introduce another ever rising tax on something they should have been able to age peacefully in without as much financial worry? That seems cruel. I’m no fan of boomers, but damn.
I feel like best plan here would be to impose steeper taxes on second-plus properties. You can have your primary residence, but every home after that accrues a higher and higher tax. Especially on LLCs.
If tax goes up, it’s because the value of your asset has gone up. Either sell it or do a reverse mortgage. I have no pity for those profiting from the system, regardless of their age. Fuck you, Grandma, pay your taxes.
I feel like best plan here would be to impose steeper taxes on second-plus properties.
That’s definitely part of it, and more important than taxes on primary residence. But we should do both.
I feel like best plan here would be to impose steeper taxes on second-plus properties
I think we have that where I live, although after 20+ years of owning I still don’t really understand property taxes here.
Anyhow, the property tax has a basic definition but I believe you get a reduction in assessed value for primary residence. That effectively taxes second homes more
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.
Yeah, they’re welcome to go live in a box surrounded by crazy people - personally I’d rather be in a box six feel under than crammed in with them.
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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.
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.
well i’m certainly glad you have no legislative power because you sound pretty selfish.
Sadly, that’s more likely to happen. I like apartments more than houses, but it’s not just about building apartments alone.
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.
I’d rather have a few cities and a lot of unspoilt nature than no cities and no nature, just suburban sprawl everywhere
How about nice green suburbs with single family homes and a lot fewer people?
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.
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.
I’ve lived in multiplexes and small apartment buildings. For decades at this point. I fucking hate it and I know this is not an uncommon viewpoint. If people hated suburban homes, they would be selling at a discount, which is clearly not the case. You have to pay a premium to live in a less densely populated place and the lack of density is what makes those places expensive and desirable
More suburbia does not reduce the number of people. It just spreads them out…into what was formerly nature.
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.
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.
I’ve never been able to afford anything else
I truly am sorry to hear that. But the unfortunately all to common practice of shitty land lords building shitty buildings for quick money should (hopefully) not be what we are aiming for in the future. Landlords were able to get away with far too much for far too long because everyone wasn’t connected and able to video everything. Hopefully, again, it changes now
I don’t have any of the problems mentioned by the first commenter and I live in a relatively cheap apartment. I don’t even hear the people in the other room in my own apartment if I have doors and windows closed. That’s better than some houses I’ve been to and lived in.
How old is your building? Is it “stick-built” (wood frame construction) or something else? Are the walls plaster or drywall? Older construction tends to have quieter walls (but louder floors, in my experience).
At the latest it’s from 1975 (the elevator is from '73 I think). Concrete walls would be my guess but I’m not 100% sure.
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.
This meme is advocating it as the only option
Of course. Everyone can live in an apartment if they wish. I will be the one with the house at a reasonable distance.
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Condos don’t have random rent increases, but if there is a capital repair to be done to the building, and the Condo Association doesn’t have a sufficient reserve of condo owner dues to cover the cost, you better believe there’s going to be a sizeable special assessment you’ll have to pay as your share of the expense.
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Yes, it does. As an attorney with experience in the matter, though, the scale of the expense can be outrageous if the COA wasn’t properly funding a reserve account, far greater than typical home surprise expenses. Worse yet if you have a few units in the condo that are bank-owned in a state that basically gives banks a free pass from dues on foreclosed/REO condo properties (Florida, looking at you).
Some of the points are unrelated like yeah you got higher rent but that is if you rent, nothing to do with being apartment or not. The same with the mortgage comment, you can buy apartments you know.
Then clearly those apartments were shit, on mine I usually don’t hear anything of the other neighbors except if I am next to the wall connecting to them and they really make super noise or in the bathroom due the vents. And the smoke thing yeah… That also points to shitty insulation and air can get in.
The workshops thing yeah I get it. Technically you could setup something, of course small, if you have a spare room but based on the noise things you said probably not a good idea you might have gotten noise complaints.
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.
Judging from the top rated comments, this post is surprisingly controversial for fuckcars.
I would literally kill myself if I ever had to live in apartments again. I have severe social anxiety and agoraphobia and general anxiety. I started hallucinating when I lived in apartments (but never before or since). I became paranoid of people. There was never any solitude. Plus right now there’s no way to get around apartments without landlords (though I understand ideally there might be ways around this, it’s not likely to happen any time soon). When I lived in an apartment I considered just being homeless and hiding in the woods (and stupidly, isn’t legal).
We sure could stand to make more stores and businesses into high rises though. I live near Detroit (but not IN Detroit) and going down our streets it’s just a ridiculous waste of space. How many tire shops do we even need? Why does every business need its own lot with so much space around it? Everything being more “mall” style would waste less space.
There’s a great point in here about ‘business density’. Shops and restaurants would benefit from higher density in world less populated by cars.
Another important idea here is that higher population density requirements should build in protections for residents’ mental well-being: Sound proofing, minimum square footage per person requirements, ceiling heights, green spaces, and convenient access to goods and services. People aren’t meant to live in cages.
The vast majority of people do not have any sort of medical need for a house. This does not contribute to the conversation.
That’s not really true though, most people are much happier in a house and have far fewer sources of stress in their life. Also high density housing is an awfull place to bring up kids, that’s the exact reason London is knocking down all the old tower blocks like elephant and castle, all the studies showed it was a horrible place to live for everyone there.
I know you want this solution to work because no one likes American suburbia but it doesn’t have to be a choice between two types of hell, there are actually good options like European suburbs with local shops, bus and cycle routes to pedestrianised shopping areas and lots of green spaces.
Studies actually show that medium density low rises allow for more housing and are more ecologically efficient than supposedly high-density high rises. I was surprised, but the models are irrefutable. It’s mainly due to the structural footprint of large buildings.
So that’s my ideal. Paris, not Manhattan. Side benefit is it just looks nicer and feels better.
You mean the rich areas of Paris? Not banlieue 93
I’m sure New York has areas similar to Montmartre where only rich people can afford to live, and areas like Seine Saint Denis where they cram all the poor people in awful environments which result in criminality and cyclical poverty
Um…yes? Idk much about Paris geography but who gives a fuck, you understand what I’m saying.
You might have a point but you’re being an insensitive ass and it’s definitely possible that there are under-researched/discussed potential mental health side effects to apartments / city living. There is certainly a conversation to be had.
Sure, but it is not this discussion and bringing it up is derailing.
How is it “not this discussion”? The general topic is about peoples’ housing/aparment preferences and Rukmer’s concerns are perfectly valid.
No, because it’s such a small number of people it’s not worth changing the whole of society for. Obviously, people with disabilities will be accommodated for. This one person having agoraphobia doesn’t change the fact that society-wide we should be striving for more dense housing.
We literally change every building we touch to make “reasonable accommodations” for people who have handicaps.
I’ve noticed that once a post gets enough up votes (and presumably starts to appear in people’s ‘all’ feeds), some different opinions start to appear.
Imo it’s because most of the “fuckcars” types are not “pro density” or “pro transit” types. They literally only care about “fuck cars, bikes rule”. Usually upper middle class WASPy types. High overlap with NIMBYs.
What is going on in this comments section? Building dense is massively better for the environment than SFH, both in the construction phase and for the life of the units as far more residents can be served with less infrastructure sprawl. It also doesn’t mean that detached housing will suddenly stop existing if we let developers build densely packed housing. Doesn’t even need to be high rises, it can be townhomes, duplexes, five-over-ones, etc. You’ll still be able to get a white picket fence suburban home or a farmhouse on some acreage if you want. In fact, it will become cheaper because all the people who want to live in cities will actually be able to move there and not take up space in that low density area you want to live in.
But instead of a population of 100 with small houses you will get a population of 1000 because they built 10 apartment complexes. I think I’d prefer the small houses didn’t have lawns and left the nice trees and natural growth.
The point is for any given population size, a city is a better way to house them. Though IMO this drawing makes the difference too stark. Personally i think the optimal is a medium-highish density city of separated buildings with nature interspersed, rather than a single super high density mega block building.
Yeah, the image is really just for illustrative purposes. Imo, if we just abolish restrictive zoning codes and other land use restrictions that essentially mandate sprawl, then tax carbon appropriately and build good public transit, that would likely achieve the overall “optimal” outcome. No need for a mega-arcology, but no need for government-mandated car-dependent sprawl either.
And fuck the 900 poor people, they can live in the fucking sea where they won’t bother me.
It’s more like we wouldn’t birth 900 more people because the density of livable space doesn’t allow it.
now if only this was true
Agreed. They would just be birthed elsewhere. It has yet to be seen if we can hit a global population cap. It seems like it has to be reached eventually.
There is a population cap but it’s societal, people have fewer children as they get more education and higher quality of life.
Which is the solution that conservatives don’t want to acknowledge, if you think overpopulation is a problem then you solve it by making people not live in such abject misery that they need 6 kids to make sure enough of them survive to take care of their parents when they grow old.
That’s not how anything works
We are in a hypothetical plot of tiny land that can be thought of as the entire world. If you have an argument to make based on this rather silly hypothetical world we are talking about then feel free to make it.
Chewbacca defense. Nice.
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Name one good reason the average apartment experience could ever be better than living in a house.
People live in apartments to afford shelter, you’d be hard-pressed to find one that actually likes it better.
Sure you can make arguments about the concept of centralized feeling being better for nature, but no one actually wants to do it.
Change the apartment to a condo and the answer shifts quite a bit. Condos offer lots of amenities and more luxury. Many people choose condos over houses because they like the lifestyle of not maintaining property and living in a dense area with lots of things to do. Even people living in suburban houses like dense cities, they just spend an hour driving to the city for evening or weekend recreation activities that a condo resident can walk to.
One problem with the picture is that if you want to spend much time doing certain things in nature, such as camping or kayaking, you need storage space for equipment. Condos and apartments tend to lack storage space.
I think problem there is more that people think you need huge pipes of stuff just to go camping. I don’t know of single person anymore who camps with a tent. They just can’t handle being so close to nature, I guess, even though that’s purportedly the reason they burned 100 litres of fuel hauling their
mobile home40 foot camper to thetrailer parkRV site.
you’d be hard-pressed to find one that actually likes it better.
It’s definitely a cultural thing. Here in Korea, the vast majority prefer apartments. Lower maintenance. More security. Convenience. The social aspect.
Well tiny countries pretty much have to set it up that way just due to sheer lack of area. In the US, that isn’t a problem.
We probably have meadows bigger than north and south Korea combined.
Have to or not, Koreans definitely favor apartments. There are western style houses here, and they’re just not as popular as apartments. Which is great. I’m living in a house that’s quite a bit bigger than a similarly priced apartment.
As a student, I would rather rent in a modern apartment building than a house. No yard to take care of, closer to other stuff (grocery store is literally across the street), safer, no insects. I would 100% rather have a nice apartment over a meh house.
I’d choose a nice apartment over a nice house too. My dream is a nice two story apartment with big windows for lots of light and an open plan living space.
I’ve been living in a small one bedroom apartment in a modern 16 floor building for a bit over a year now. The only time I hear my neighbors is when they’re taking their dogs out for walking, you can hear them in the hallway. The hot water pressure is better than any house I’ve lived in in the past. I have a beautiful view outside and my own balcony. These are just some complaints about apartments I’ve heard from other people.
The reason I compared a nice apartment to a meh house was to be closer in cost, but I agree and would also prefer a nice apartment over a nice house.
People live in apartments to afford shelter, you’d be hard-pressed to find one that actually likes it better.
I might want to live in one so that I could avoid doing 90% of the stuff that needs to be done in and around my house and focus on things I like doing.
You assume the landlord will do it?
Now that’s an lol moment.
They don’t do shit in general. Just barely enough to fulfill the letter of the law. Nothing even close to trying to maintain property value, just enough to keep them out of court.
Mfers even used “I might want” because he has never actually experienced living in an apartment enough to understand.
Yeah, I haven’t lived in a shitty apartment that everyone seems to be referring to here and elsewhere.
You assume the landlord will do it?
Oh, I don’t mean rent.
There are reasons I chose to live in my apartment.
Make it 100 appartments in 3-4 times the space (in 4 smaller buildings with balconies, community gardens, shared spaces, picnic areas and so on) as a compromis and I am all in!
And lets add commercial/restaurants to the bottom floors of those buildings, and lay them out so that their central courtyard area is a pedestrianized plaza connecting all the residents and businesses and not a massive parking lot.
Agree. That style is much more interesting, a great in between
An island of this size should probably have neither.
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.
I think not having sprawling cities means you can have nature nearby a lot moreso than in endless suburbia though. Unless you count lawns as nature.
Nearby is relative to the quality of public transportation though, as not everyone can afford a car, and even if they can, it kills the environment and quality of living in the city to have traffic. And public transportation infrastructure is sadly still next to non-existent in many metropolitan areas in the world.
Public transport is cheaper too when cities are not sprawling. We are talking about the benefits new dense development, where public transport should be a core consideration and not an afterthought.
Don’t forget “We’ve had a pandemic going for over 3 years, I’d like to not be around a bunch of sneezing and coughing people” at this point, particularly because public transit is objectively better for cities than driving, but also a better place to catch COVID than your car.
fair enough
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
More people. More problems. Crimes happen where people are.
Imo, we should have dense, walkable villages in rural areas to serve farms and whatnot, and they should have train stations connecting to the nearest city. That way neither our cities nor our towns are sprawl, but rather compact, walkable, and transit-oriented.
After all, that’s how we traditionally built cities and villages before all this modern automobile malarkey.
Really the only argument against tight packed cities is “I don’t like people”.
I’m sorry, but that’s a really great fucking argument. I don’t like people. I don’t want to share walls with people. I want a quiet, private, green space to live in without the density porn half of this thread is fellating (and a significant number are also condemning).
Dense cities are uninhabitable to me, and I can say it from experience - having lived in cities having from 1-10m people including NYC, and including not owning a car and being fully dependent on public transit. The city life was always worse in every way than living in the suburbs. In the suburbs, it’s easier to get groceries, it’s easier to enjoy nature, it’s easier to go to the gym, or get to work. Everything about living in the city was harder, shittier, and more expensive.
At least in the US which has a lot of non-dense areas, there is so much land that there is still a ton of land for nature, and a lot of the biggest consumers of nature are non-residential developments like farmland
I wish I had a way to share a certain GIS-generated image of projected development growth in my US state over the next 50 years without doxxing myself. Needless to say, it’s ABSOLUTELY INSANE - with planning relegated to Counties (some of which don’t even have zoning), and those counties being ruby red with their local governments captured by builders and developers that don’t care whether the world looks like a strip mall or a forest, sprawl is the name of the game and it is eating into both farmland and forest on a scale that is hard for a person to fully comprehend.
Yeah but then I gotta listen to my upstairs neighbor make tik toks.
Better than listening to your upstairs neighbor beating his wife. I would call the cops, but they couldn’t do anything unless she pressed charges, and she never would. We would get quiet for a couple of days though, but then he’d be doing it again.
Insulation
the only time i hear any neighbours are when they’re either outside, or the upstairs neighbours drop a fucking anvil on the floor, then i hear a slight “thunk”.
I know this is a joke but I wanna hijack this comment to say you could spread out the housing a little to not be apartments but still only take like 30%
But what if your neighbour shoots porn?
Density doesn’t save nature. Habitat protection laws save nature. Make sure that’s part of the plan.
Also, the picture shows the saved nature very accessible to the density. This is not usually what these zoning plans have in mind.
Many important species, especially insects and their predators, can absolutely make good use of patchy suburban habitat if it is properly managed, moreso if it is networked, and natural space nearer homes benefits residents and the environment.
We can’t keep saving mountaintops and deserts, we need to rehabilitate more of these nice valleys and riversides we all like to build cities on.
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…
Found the American!
Lol, you Sir flatten me (never been to or from the US, but I know why I plan to keep it that way)
The what?
Home Owners Association, it’s a sort of mob made up of Karens that people in US suburbs like to impose onto themselves.
Bermuda is a variety of grass, easy to grow but not so fast as to require too much mowing, it needs a lot of sun though.
HOAs like to dictate stuff that residents need to do in order to keep the neighborhood “look good” and increase home valuations, like what kind of grass to grow on their lawn (because, y’know, a uniform neighborhood is a rich neighborhood… or something)
It’s simple: blocks are not built in cities to minimise the footprint like in your meme but to build cheaper and sell more and in the same time externalising the costs of infrastructure development.
A mid density block is something, a heavy packed “bedroom” neighborhood is another.
![[meme] How would you rather see this land developed?](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f6ec67a5-2636-4875-8dd4-fa5241a3083c.jpeg){kind=link}
