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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29637 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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I'm sorry, but this is just sloppy demagoguery. If you're being priced out because supply is artificially restricted to such brutal extremes as housing in California, you don't blame the other people who are similarly being screwed over, you blame the people causing the artificial restriction! Anyone telling you otherwise is probably manipulating you.

This is going too far the other way. If your food supply is limited, you could cut down more of the forest for farmland or you could just refrain from inviting the next tribe over for dinner!

To put it another way, I like my hometown the way it is, I like the countryside the way it is. Yes, we could concrete over ever more of my small country, or build more hideous skyscrapers. Or we could just stop inviting in hundreds of thousands of foreigners every year.

I don't know the situation in your country so that very well might be true. However, it is definitely not relevant in California where there actually is huge space for building more housing without much disruption (as many other posters have given various arguments for).

In addition, people tend to overestimate how full their cities/countries actually are. There are very few places in the world that are as densely populated as Somerville, Massachusetts which is a super pleasant place looking like this on Google streetview. No skyscrapers needed and with that density, the countryside can be kept clear too. I suspect that your country could build housing for hundreds of thousands of more people while still only looking like Somerville and avoiding what you want to avoid.

Thanks for the serious reply.

The country is England, just for the sake of clarity. I might be wrong, but Somerville looks like a pretty standard suburb to me, I think we’re already building in at least that level of density in most areas. Here is a randomly chosen town street. It is nice, though :)

We seriously lack accessible green space anywhere near the big cities, which are constantly expanding. And big chunks of land are rock moorland and difficult to build on (including most of Scotland).

You have to tear down old buildings and start building massive multi family units

This is putting way too high of a standard. Buildings are demolished and replaced all the time! If you don't allow this, you get nonsense like the "historic laundromat" in San Francisco. Putting all the cases like this together, there's a ridiculous amount of space in San Francisco itself for more housing when so much of the city looks like this.

Buildings are torn down and rebuilt all the time as they age and wear out. In the absence of zoning restrictions, homes in high-demand areas would be replaced piecemeal with taller and denser structures over a period of many years. We don't need a massive government intervention to flatten entire neighborhoods and remake them from scratch, we just need to give people the freedom to build what they want on their own property and market forces will take care of the rest.

They might like their neighbourhood, but they probably like $5 million for their quarter acre a lot more. Then big developers can consolidate and build something that can house more people and sell the units for $1 million each. Everyone wins: the people who sold their house, the developers, the people who now get to live affordably in the bay area, the government (a lot more tax for them) etc. etc.

Only losers are busybodies who want to restrict what others want to do with lan they own.

New housing gets built and rich foreigners like Indians come in and pay 100k over asking

This is a signal that supply nowhere near matches the level of demand. It's a sign we need to build even more, not control building.

Why would they keep buying it if the value of that housing is being diluted by all the new housing? Foreigners buy houses in these markets as an investment. The only reason the sunset is a good investment is because the supply of houses is fixed by the boomer death grip. If you could actually build something there it would cease to be a good investment.

The entire sunset district could look like Manhattan. It’s not like we don’t know how to build buildings that are taller than two stories. It’s a completely self-inflicted space constraint.

Well, the appeal of living in gigantic skyscrapers does diminish a bit when you're living in an earthquake zone. Even being in a fourth floor apartment during a 3.2 a few years back was a deeply unpleasant experience, and I say this as someone who slept through the '92 Northridge quake as a kid.

Well, the appeal of living in gigantic skyscrapers does diminish a bit when you're living in an earthquake zone.

Tokyo disagrees with you.

That depends on the quality of the skyscrapers. High-rises in Taiwan can easily withstand magnitude 7 or higher quakes that had they occurred in Chile, Turkey, or the Philippines would have devastated thousands of one or two-story buildings.

Lots of people do this (see Taiwan, Japan). Even in San Francisco there are tall buildings. There's no shortage of demand.

Not saying you can't do this. Just that it's unpleasant.

I have literally never heard a Californian complain about the unpleasantness of earthquakes.

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