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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   17456 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026

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Get a bigger apartment.

Unless you're ultra-rich and can afford a NYC duplex or something, apartments are almost all smaller than modest houses.

Try windows and/or electrical lights, as well as building apartment blocks that are naturally lit.

Because apartments are attached to other apartments, you get only one or maybe two walls with windows, and no skylights unless you're on the top floor of a luxury building. And because of the built environment apartments are in, even those windows are often shadowed by adjacent buildings. Artificial light is inferior.

Build apartment blocks where walls aren't made of cardboard, and/or police noise.

Policing noise means micromanaging people's activity within their own space, which is another bad thing about apartments. Floors of thick concrete work, but are (except a few buildings for the ultra-rich) generally not economically feasible. Lesser soundproofing tends to be inadequate.

I must agree with the poster above, the American apartment hate is entirely a unique cultural thing, probably born of the abundance of land.

I suspect most people live in apartments for part of their lives, and learn to hate them there. Fights over noise from neighbors above, music, babies crying, etc. The abundance of land makes these failings seem like a problem with apartments rather than simply a fact of life... and that's true.

Again, most of those complaints sound like America just doesn't know how to build apartments. How come my country can build apartment blocks that don't shadow each other, and have soundproofing, and aren't dystopian pods 1 step across that you see in movies about South Korea or China, and can be afforded not just to rent, but to buy for many of the middle class?

One thing I'll give you is size of houses compared to apartments, but then again at some point I just don't see the value of having more space other than getting off on 'Murican gregariousness of life... and that point falls flat when in the same paragraph you're complaining that you can't afford a house. You got a family of 10 kids? Then sure, it makes sense to have a big house. How many families have 10 kids again?

I suspect most people live in apartments for part of their lives, and learn to hate them there.

I could possibly count on one hand the number of times where I've experienced something that could be fixed by having my own house in the 'burbs. Many things would be made worse. I'd need to drive to buy groceries, or to go to the gym, or do mostly anything that is done outside my own home. There'd be more shit to maintain. You can still have bad neighbors.

How come my country can build apartment blocks that don't shadow each other, and have soundproofing, and aren't dystopian pods 1 step across that you see in movies about South Korea or China, and can be afforded not just to rent, but to buy for many of the middle class?

They can't.

Have lived in apartments all my life, in the UK and Japan. With one exception, have never been troubled by noise from neighbours.

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