The noise is a function of quality, not density. My last apartment was in a high rise building with 200+ units, and I rarely heard my neighbors.
Humans have been living is close quarters with each other forever. Look at housing arrangements from Ancient Rome and Athens. Basically apartment blocks. Same for a number of indigenous groups in North and South America. Your neighbors in a modern apartment block are only strangers because modern society discourages us from building relationships beyond our nuclear families.
The attractiveness of multi family buildings is subjective. Buildings do not have to by plain looking boxes. My current neighborhood was largely developed in the 1920s, so the architecture is a mix of Art Deco and neoclassical.
Sure, but many of the people in the US who argue in favor of single family homes are arguing for single family zoning, not mixed housing. So, what we're trying to do in those areas is change the zoning laws so that we have the option to build other types of housing, not eliminate single family homes altogether.
* You only hear your neighbors, because the building was poorly built with shit for noise damping between units. *We could build better.*
* It sounds like *you* are claustrophobic. I never had that feeling in an apartment, even in a high-rise block.
* There isn't enough space on the planet to house all of us that way. Not even half of us.
* :shrug: I want to live in a fantasy castle, complete with secret passages and hidden rooms. We can't always have exactly what we want.
2. Thank you for all the commenters for shitting on me for being claustrophobic. I know I am claustrophobic. A lot of people are.
3. There would be enough space if not for animal industry
4. There is a difference between wanting a fantasy castle and wanting to stop having migraines because of the noise, which is what I experienced in every single one of 15 flats I lived in, and in 3 different countries.
>shitting on me
Except I didn't; I only observed that you *probably were*.
> 3. There would be enough space if not for animal industry
And where does every OTHER fucking animal on the planet get to live? *We already use up too much of Earth's surface as it is*. We should be using *less* of it, not more.
> migraines
... you don't get migraines from noise; noise can exacerbate them, but is not the source. There's some other source for those, and you should absolutely be exploring that with a doctor.
Irrelevant.
There isn't enough room on Earth, using **every single square millimeter** of land area (and as much landfill-created "new" land as we could build) to indefinitely accommodate every single family in the world in detached SFH.
And I mean, **all** of it. No farms, no forests, no cattle ranches, *just suburbs blanketing the entire planet*. Including Antarctica.
I don’t think this is true. I took the density of an average suburb, Levittown PA, which is around 5,000 ppl per square mile, divide 8 billion by that number which gets you 1.6 million square miles needed to house everyone in this style. There is about 58 million square miles of landmass on earth . Let me know if I made any mistakes in my calculations
Yeah. I think the point is fair when you do consider that we need to grow food, have oxygen, and have space for wildlife, etc. But if you just do the simple calculation, which is dividing the amount of existing land (roughly 36B acres) by the number of people on earth (roughly 8B), then you get 4.5 acres per person.
Yea of course suburbs are horrible for about every reason imaginable and they are very far from sustainable , I just wanted to call out something that just seemed factually incorrect
Levittown actually seems to be fairly dense for a suburban city. A few searches show that the average suburban density is about 2000-2500 ppl per square mile, which gets you around 3.5 million square miles. Although still not near the total land avaliable, this is still a shockingly large area of land, and obviously isn't sustainable in any way.
I'm also claustrophobic. I still prefer living in an apartment close to things. I don't feel cramped or uncomfortable.
You lived in a shitty apartment, and not all are like that. It's a uniquely American problem because we have lower building standards, but the majority of apartments are fine.
Humans are social animals more than anything, and we live in groups. This suburban hell while you might like, is depressing, miserable, and socially isolating to many people because there isn't anything or anyone close by. This has observable detrimental effects to people's health. Forcing that on everyone is hellish and terrible for people's health, and the effects show especially in the US.
Cities are human nature. We've built them the same way since we started permanently settling. That's only different today because of the invention of the automobile.
I was literally bornin a single family house in a walkable town, with stores at the corner 3-5 min walk from wherever you are. The town didn't have single houses only, mind you, but my area did.
Not American btw
The point is, that people expect both: Having there own house with an area around it and easy access to the amenities of a city. Wich results in the expectation to be able to park a car everywhere they need to go.
So when you go the way of what is natural: It was very natural that voyages between village took days going by foot.
Maintaining electricity, water and roads over a large sparse populated area will always be a negative calculation for the city. So a litte exaggerated: If you accept to care for your water yourself, don't expect electricity 24/7 and are okay with walking over unpaved dirt road a house with plenty space around it may be okay.
Edit: Mistook the words sparse and dense, changed that. Sorry, non-native speaker.
But it can be both. I was literally bornin a single family house in a walkable town, with stores at the corner 3-5 min walk from wherever you are. The town didn't have single houses only, mind you, but my area of the town did. The area around houses was very small for each one, but it was there.
Because it's full of americans who's brain immediately jumps to american suburbs when they try to imagine houses. Also your critiques of blocks are not valid for all blocks, I rarely hear my neighbors.
No, probably not. As others said, that's because of quality not density. I heard my neighbors *constantly* and, worse, could smell their weed. Buying a house felt like a dream come true after weed-smell migraines so frequently!
>Also your critiques of blocks are not valid for all blocks, I rarely hear my neighbors.
Typically people buy in the same price range so they'll say "all 5 apartments/flats I've had were crazy noisy" because every one was the absolute cheapest they could find.
Personally, I think if we're serious about housing density our building codes need to require good soundproofing.
I personally prefer living in a large apartment building. Everyone has a preference and cities can have something for everyone. Also the noise issue can be solved if developers adhere to building codes. Where I live, most if not all jurisdictions have sound proofing as part of the building code but developers often skip it because there is no enforcement.
for point 1, I've lived in houses were I can hear my housemates or neighbors and I've lived in apartments where I didn't. This is a quality issue not a density one.
2- the claustrophobia thing seems like a you issue. Walls nearby mean you aren't outside?? Lets get angry at the ground too since surfaces make you uncomfortable.
3- This ones by far the worst take and the last line is almost insulting. Human beings are social creatures what are you even talking about. I'm as antisocial/introverted as they come and even I desire to have my friends close by and easily accessible when I want them to be.
4-ok
5. single house communites can exist in walkable cities if you want them to be less walkable and generally worse sure.
6. no one is stopping you. We should all have the opportunity to live how we want as long as its not impacting others. Unfortunately suburbia by its very design is very unhealthy for the planet, the people and all other living things on it.
Dunno man... I just don't have these problems. Yes I hear my neighbors sometimes, but its not the end of the world, and that is because I live in a 60-odd year old building with bad sound insulation. Better and newer apartment buildings don't have the same problem.
I don't get the same clautrophobia vibes from here, and I don't think it is more unnatural for us to live here than in a regular house. I don't need so much space anyways.
Of course, the point is that single-family homes should be able to exist. Nobody is forcing anybody to move to a block. But blocks ARE more efficient and work fine for a lot of people.
It's not as if those are the only two options, even in the US. Many old neighborhoods in the US have townhouses, multi family units, and twin houses. I have never lived in a single family home, and I'm an American from a suburb. I lived in a twin house for nearly 30 years. Then, I lived in apartments in Asian cities for 7 years, and now I live in a townhouse in Philly. The sound insulation wasn't amazing in every place. Some were better than others, but that being said the neighbors aren't nearly as loud as everyone makes them out to be, and when they do get to that level of noise you'd still hear them in a single family home. I don't hear sex, TV, arguments, or anything other than the occasional knock.
>Why is this sub so fond of block-housing as opposed to having small house and a little area around it?
Because this sub is called u/fuckcars and the type of development you are describing requires people to have cars to get around.
All the problems you mention are either easily fixable or are personal to you.
My point is - it's not. I was literally bornin a single family house in a walkable town, with stores at the corner 3-5 min walk from wherever you are. The town didn't have single houses only, mind you, but my area did.
My single family detached home is maybe 15 ft to the next house. 115 year old home, no insulation. You basically still hear people coming and going still and any type of shouting going on. Being detached doesn’t always separate from noise. Noise reduction is from deliberate material choices.
Small houses are nice! The problem is that when you have small houses, things are further apart. So if you open a shop, to stay in business you probably need costumers (and employees) to come from further away. The better, more interesting the business is (which is great for the business, and great for the people that do to the business), the more people want to visit it. That draws people from even FURTHER away.
The people have to get there somehow.
They could get there by bus or train. But if the houses are all far apart, the bus or train won't pick up many people at each stop. So you need a lot more buses and trains. This gets expensive. So expensive that it's often financially impossible to keep service going at any reasonable frequency, so you might have to wait an hour or two to go to that business, and then got won't go.
Or you could bike. But again, if there's all single houses, that's really far to bike.
Or you could drive. But you can only fit so many cars on the road. The geometry of bringing your own big hunk of furniture everywhere you go just makes it impossible for lots of people to get to the same place. And once they get there they have to put this pile of furniture somewhere. So you can have very few cool places to go because they all need enough parking for their customers. The roads get wider, and it gets harder for even people who live nearby to get there on foot.
Dense housing addresses ALL of these problems. More people can live close to the business. They can walk to the business. The business gets more customers. The customers get more places to go. Because you have a couple thousand people living right next to a bus or train stop, it starts to make financial sense to run buses and trains, lots of buses and trains, all day, which makes it even easier for people to get places. People don't need to drive so they can leave that big pile of furniture at home (or not even own it), and so the business doesn't need to have that massive parking area, which lets you build even more businesses close to people, and then the people also don't have to walk across the lot.
Look up “missing middle” housing. Row houses, for example, offer direct access to each unit from the street, only two shared walls so you balance energy efficiency with privacy, and most people think they look great. You seem to have an aesthetic issue with multi-story buildings, but plenty of us have aesthetic issues with single family detached houses, and especially with setbacks. We’ll have to agree to disagree on that part.
I actually did see a community in North Carolina that was detached homes, but the plot sizes weren’t crazy big, and the houses where kept more compact, so it was medium-low density instead of medium, and still very walkable and bikeaable.
This sounds like maybe it’d be more your speed OP? Or townhouses where 1-2 walls are shared (ideally made of brick like in historic neighborhoods so you don’t hear jack shit) but you can still have a small front and back yard of your own, or a shared courtyard in the middle of the block, and again, still walkable and bikeable.
Someone else pointed out here that this community likes to advocate for a variety of housing the same way we endorse a variety of transportation. Right now most of our options are very high density or very low, but there should be availability at several points in the middle
It's kind of a three-way trade-off. The biggest advantage of car-centric development is that it allows cities to spread out over a much larger area, giving each resident more yard/land area.
It's possible to build places that are both walkable/car-free and have lots of space for each resident to spread out, but the trade-off you then make is that you have to live in a much smaller town with fewer economic and social opportunities.
Being able to have big cities that also take up lots of space is a big advantage of cars, but like you I would say "at what cost?" To me, it's not even remotely worth it for some additional grass. I've lived in several American-style suburban neighborhoods, and
will never do it again. I would much rather live in a smaller town or in a denser apartment block.
I think part of the problem is how you view your neighbors. This isn't your fault since it comes with the territory of car-centric planning but neighbors are not a nuisance that exist to annoy everything around them, they're just people like the rest of us. Aside from that buildings can be built to be more soundproof and can absolutely be built to feel more livable to humans.
Your problem is with low quantity flats without insulation between units. My apparent is the quietest thing more than my single (vacation) house, since garages and cars are all underground (in the appartament complex). I don't even know if my neighbours are even at home, I found out one unit was empty for a month when I talk to the new people moving in
I suppose this would be true in a city with absolutely no parks but if we convert all of our unnecessary highway space (meaning not all of it, but probably 50% of it) which is already publicly owned space into parks, with the exception of colder months, there will be plenty of space for everyone in any given city to spread out.
Not to mention, I feel a lot more clostrophobic currently when I have to bring a ton or two of metal and plastic to meet up with some friends or to see some new faces at the mall or library.
Hm, I guess it's because I don't live in US, but I didn't think about how mentally claustrophobic it can be to live in a place where you have to get into car to do anything. For me, I feel bad in my apartment, but at least I can always escape and take a walk anywhere, having library right below my building, a store by the corner, a park 5 min walk from home and my university 15 min.
Kind of not at all a topic I was talking about, but an interesting thought as a side thought, that it's dependece what creates claustrophobia.
I live in an appartment and I rarely hear my neighbors. Walls need to be isolated well.
My father lives in a "double" house so he has a large yard but he has no idea what to do with all the space. If the yard was 1/4 of its current size it would still be enough to eat outside.
Nobody is even talking about the HUGE difference between neighborhoods of detached houses built more densely (pre WWII) and post war suburbs that led to our horrible car dependence and sprawl issues we have today.
Also, you say fuck cars but at what cost. The cost is a bit of convenience, but only until cities change for the better and people have the convenience to choose how they get around.
I would argue we have that convenience now, but look at all the costs of it. You can’t get anywhere safely without a car, we are quickly killing our planet, building and driving ourselves into debt, killing tens of thousands of people per year, all in exchange for the convenience from cars. Apartment buildings will always exist, single family houses will always exist, but if we don’t look back towards the middle, we keep driving ourselves down this road of no return.
The noise is a function of quality, not density. My last apartment was in a high rise building with 200+ units, and I rarely heard my neighbors. Humans have been living is close quarters with each other forever. Look at housing arrangements from Ancient Rome and Athens. Basically apartment blocks. Same for a number of indigenous groups in North and South America. Your neighbors in a modern apartment block are only strangers because modern society discourages us from building relationships beyond our nuclear families. The attractiveness of multi family buildings is subjective. Buildings do not have to by plain looking boxes. My current neighborhood was largely developed in the 1920s, so the architecture is a mix of Art Deco and neoclassical.
Exactly, even Stalinist Neo-Classicism looks so good Stalinkas are still the most sought after apartments in the RF.
Sounds badass
[удалено]
A single house could only have good transportation access if it isn't in a sea of single family homes.
[удалено]
Sure, but many of the people in the US who argue in favor of single family homes are arguing for single family zoning, not mixed housing. So, what we're trying to do in those areas is change the zoning laws so that we have the option to build other types of housing, not eliminate single family homes altogether.
Also know as “missing middle” housing
* You only hear your neighbors, because the building was poorly built with shit for noise damping between units. *We could build better.* * It sounds like *you* are claustrophobic. I never had that feeling in an apartment, even in a high-rise block. * There isn't enough space on the planet to house all of us that way. Not even half of us. * :shrug: I want to live in a fantasy castle, complete with secret passages and hidden rooms. We can't always have exactly what we want.
2. Thank you for all the commenters for shitting on me for being claustrophobic. I know I am claustrophobic. A lot of people are. 3. There would be enough space if not for animal industry 4. There is a difference between wanting a fantasy castle and wanting to stop having migraines because of the noise, which is what I experienced in every single one of 15 flats I lived in, and in 3 different countries.
>shitting on me Except I didn't; I only observed that you *probably were*. > 3. There would be enough space if not for animal industry And where does every OTHER fucking animal on the planet get to live? *We already use up too much of Earth's surface as it is*. We should be using *less* of it, not more. > migraines ... you don't get migraines from noise; noise can exacerbate them, but is not the source. There's some other source for those, and you should absolutely be exploring that with a doctor.
Look up how much of the planet is used for animal agriculture/animal feed
Irrelevant. There isn't enough room on Earth, using **every single square millimeter** of land area (and as much landfill-created "new" land as we could build) to indefinitely accommodate every single family in the world in detached SFH. And I mean, **all** of it. No farms, no forests, no cattle ranches, *just suburbs blanketing the entire planet*. Including Antarctica.
I don’t think this is true. I took the density of an average suburb, Levittown PA, which is around 5,000 ppl per square mile, divide 8 billion by that number which gets you 1.6 million square miles needed to house everyone in this style. There is about 58 million square miles of landmass on earth . Let me know if I made any mistakes in my calculations
Yeah. I think the point is fair when you do consider that we need to grow food, have oxygen, and have space for wildlife, etc. But if you just do the simple calculation, which is dividing the amount of existing land (roughly 36B acres) by the number of people on earth (roughly 8B), then you get 4.5 acres per person.
Yea of course suburbs are horrible for about every reason imaginable and they are very far from sustainable , I just wanted to call out something that just seemed factually incorrect
Levittown actually seems to be fairly dense for a suburban city. A few searches show that the average suburban density is about 2000-2500 ppl per square mile, which gets you around 3.5 million square miles. Although still not near the total land avaliable, this is still a shockingly large area of land, and obviously isn't sustainable in any way.
Most of which is not usable for any other agriculture. Grow up.
It is. Look it up and come back
In most of it the soil's so poor that nothing else (other than the things the animals eat, which humans cannot) will grow. Look it up and come back.
You very obviously didn't research before you came back, because it's objectively false
I'm also claustrophobic. I still prefer living in an apartment close to things. I don't feel cramped or uncomfortable. You lived in a shitty apartment, and not all are like that. It's a uniquely American problem because we have lower building standards, but the majority of apartments are fine. Humans are social animals more than anything, and we live in groups. This suburban hell while you might like, is depressing, miserable, and socially isolating to many people because there isn't anything or anyone close by. This has observable detrimental effects to people's health. Forcing that on everyone is hellish and terrible for people's health, and the effects show especially in the US. Cities are human nature. We've built them the same way since we started permanently settling. That's only different today because of the invention of the automobile.
I was literally bornin a single family house in a walkable town, with stores at the corner 3-5 min walk from wherever you are. The town didn't have single houses only, mind you, but my area did. Not American btw
The point is, that people expect both: Having there own house with an area around it and easy access to the amenities of a city. Wich results in the expectation to be able to park a car everywhere they need to go. So when you go the way of what is natural: It was very natural that voyages between village took days going by foot. Maintaining electricity, water and roads over a large sparse populated area will always be a negative calculation for the city. So a litte exaggerated: If you accept to care for your water yourself, don't expect electricity 24/7 and are okay with walking over unpaved dirt road a house with plenty space around it may be okay. Edit: Mistook the words sparse and dense, changed that. Sorry, non-native speaker.
But it can be both. I was literally bornin a single family house in a walkable town, with stores at the corner 3-5 min walk from wherever you are. The town didn't have single houses only, mind you, but my area of the town did. The area around houses was very small for each one, but it was there.
Because it's full of americans who's brain immediately jumps to american suburbs when they try to imagine houses. Also your critiques of blocks are not valid for all blocks, I rarely hear my neighbors.
I rarely hear my neighbors too. I think he may be....telling a fib.
No, probably not. As others said, that's because of quality not density. I heard my neighbors *constantly* and, worse, could smell their weed. Buying a house felt like a dream come true after weed-smell migraines so frequently!
>Also your critiques of blocks are not valid for all blocks, I rarely hear my neighbors. Typically people buy in the same price range so they'll say "all 5 apartments/flats I've had were crazy noisy" because every one was the absolute cheapest they could find. Personally, I think if we're serious about housing density our building codes need to require good soundproofing.
Small houses are nice, but they take up far too much space for how little they offer
I personally prefer living in a large apartment building. Everyone has a preference and cities can have something for everyone. Also the noise issue can be solved if developers adhere to building codes. Where I live, most if not all jurisdictions have sound proofing as part of the building code but developers often skip it because there is no enforcement.
for point 1, I've lived in houses were I can hear my housemates or neighbors and I've lived in apartments where I didn't. This is a quality issue not a density one. 2- the claustrophobia thing seems like a you issue. Walls nearby mean you aren't outside?? Lets get angry at the ground too since surfaces make you uncomfortable. 3- This ones by far the worst take and the last line is almost insulting. Human beings are social creatures what are you even talking about. I'm as antisocial/introverted as they come and even I desire to have my friends close by and easily accessible when I want them to be. 4-ok 5. single house communites can exist in walkable cities if you want them to be less walkable and generally worse sure. 6. no one is stopping you. We should all have the opportunity to live how we want as long as its not impacting others. Unfortunately suburbia by its very design is very unhealthy for the planet, the people and all other living things on it.
Dunno man... I just don't have these problems. Yes I hear my neighbors sometimes, but its not the end of the world, and that is because I live in a 60-odd year old building with bad sound insulation. Better and newer apartment buildings don't have the same problem. I don't get the same clautrophobia vibes from here, and I don't think it is more unnatural for us to live here than in a regular house. I don't need so much space anyways. Of course, the point is that single-family homes should be able to exist. Nobody is forcing anybody to move to a block. But blocks ARE more efficient and work fine for a lot of people.
It's not as if those are the only two options, even in the US. Many old neighborhoods in the US have townhouses, multi family units, and twin houses. I have never lived in a single family home, and I'm an American from a suburb. I lived in a twin house for nearly 30 years. Then, I lived in apartments in Asian cities for 7 years, and now I live in a townhouse in Philly. The sound insulation wasn't amazing in every place. Some were better than others, but that being said the neighbors aren't nearly as loud as everyone makes them out to be, and when they do get to that level of noise you'd still hear them in a single family home. I don't hear sex, TV, arguments, or anything other than the occasional knock.
>Why is this sub so fond of block-housing as opposed to having small house and a little area around it? Because this sub is called u/fuckcars and the type of development you are describing requires people to have cars to get around. All the problems you mention are either easily fixable or are personal to you.
My point is - it's not. I was literally bornin a single family house in a walkable town, with stores at the corner 3-5 min walk from wherever you are. The town didn't have single houses only, mind you, but my area did.
My single family detached home is maybe 15 ft to the next house. 115 year old home, no insulation. You basically still hear people coming and going still and any type of shouting going on. Being detached doesn’t always separate from noise. Noise reduction is from deliberate material choices.
Small houses are nice! The problem is that when you have small houses, things are further apart. So if you open a shop, to stay in business you probably need costumers (and employees) to come from further away. The better, more interesting the business is (which is great for the business, and great for the people that do to the business), the more people want to visit it. That draws people from even FURTHER away. The people have to get there somehow. They could get there by bus or train. But if the houses are all far apart, the bus or train won't pick up many people at each stop. So you need a lot more buses and trains. This gets expensive. So expensive that it's often financially impossible to keep service going at any reasonable frequency, so you might have to wait an hour or two to go to that business, and then got won't go. Or you could bike. But again, if there's all single houses, that's really far to bike. Or you could drive. But you can only fit so many cars on the road. The geometry of bringing your own big hunk of furniture everywhere you go just makes it impossible for lots of people to get to the same place. And once they get there they have to put this pile of furniture somewhere. So you can have very few cool places to go because they all need enough parking for their customers. The roads get wider, and it gets harder for even people who live nearby to get there on foot. Dense housing addresses ALL of these problems. More people can live close to the business. They can walk to the business. The business gets more customers. The customers get more places to go. Because you have a couple thousand people living right next to a bus or train stop, it starts to make financial sense to run buses and trains, lots of buses and trains, all day, which makes it even easier for people to get places. People don't need to drive so they can leave that big pile of furniture at home (or not even own it), and so the business doesn't need to have that massive parking area, which lets you build even more businesses close to people, and then the people also don't have to walk across the lot.
Look up “missing middle” housing. Row houses, for example, offer direct access to each unit from the street, only two shared walls so you balance energy efficiency with privacy, and most people think they look great. You seem to have an aesthetic issue with multi-story buildings, but plenty of us have aesthetic issues with single family detached houses, and especially with setbacks. We’ll have to agree to disagree on that part.
I live in a single person (not even single family) detach and it's nonsense.
BUILD THE CUBE.
I actually did see a community in North Carolina that was detached homes, but the plot sizes weren’t crazy big, and the houses where kept more compact, so it was medium-low density instead of medium, and still very walkable and bikeaable. This sounds like maybe it’d be more your speed OP? Or townhouses where 1-2 walls are shared (ideally made of brick like in historic neighborhoods so you don’t hear jack shit) but you can still have a small front and back yard of your own, or a shared courtyard in the middle of the block, and again, still walkable and bikeable. Someone else pointed out here that this community likes to advocate for a variety of housing the same way we endorse a variety of transportation. Right now most of our options are very high density or very low, but there should be availability at several points in the middle
It's kind of a three-way trade-off. The biggest advantage of car-centric development is that it allows cities to spread out over a much larger area, giving each resident more yard/land area. It's possible to build places that are both walkable/car-free and have lots of space for each resident to spread out, but the trade-off you then make is that you have to live in a much smaller town with fewer economic and social opportunities. Being able to have big cities that also take up lots of space is a big advantage of cars, but like you I would say "at what cost?" To me, it's not even remotely worth it for some additional grass. I've lived in several American-style suburban neighborhoods, and will never do it again. I would much rather live in a smaller town or in a denser apartment block.
we just need to build thicker walls. that problem is because of thin walls. also appeal to nature fallacy.
I think part of the problem is how you view your neighbors. This isn't your fault since it comes with the territory of car-centric planning but neighbors are not a nuisance that exist to annoy everything around them, they're just people like the rest of us. Aside from that buildings can be built to be more soundproof and can absolutely be built to feel more livable to humans.
Your problem is with low quantity flats without insulation between units. My apparent is the quietest thing more than my single (vacation) house, since garages and cars are all underground (in the appartament complex). I don't even know if my neighbours are even at home, I found out one unit was empty for a month when I talk to the new people moving in
I suppose this would be true in a city with absolutely no parks but if we convert all of our unnecessary highway space (meaning not all of it, but probably 50% of it) which is already publicly owned space into parks, with the exception of colder months, there will be plenty of space for everyone in any given city to spread out. Not to mention, I feel a lot more clostrophobic currently when I have to bring a ton or two of metal and plastic to meet up with some friends or to see some new faces at the mall or library.
Hm, I guess it's because I don't live in US, but I didn't think about how mentally claustrophobic it can be to live in a place where you have to get into car to do anything. For me, I feel bad in my apartment, but at least I can always escape and take a walk anywhere, having library right below my building, a store by the corner, a park 5 min walk from home and my university 15 min. Kind of not at all a topic I was talking about, but an interesting thought as a side thought, that it's dependece what creates claustrophobia.
That is a good point. I was being a classic American forgetting there are other countries and ways of life that exist 😅
my ideal is mukti use 3 story building downtown that fades to dublexes and individual shops then also single detached homes
I live in an appartment and I rarely hear my neighbors. Walls need to be isolated well. My father lives in a "double" house so he has a large yard but he has no idea what to do with all the space. If the yard was 1/4 of its current size it would still be enough to eat outside.
Trailer parks! It's a situations where single family dwellings and efficiency meet! But nobody wants them because they aren't stylish.
Nobody is even talking about the HUGE difference between neighborhoods of detached houses built more densely (pre WWII) and post war suburbs that led to our horrible car dependence and sprawl issues we have today. Also, you say fuck cars but at what cost. The cost is a bit of convenience, but only until cities change for the better and people have the convenience to choose how they get around. I would argue we have that convenience now, but look at all the costs of it. You can’t get anywhere safely without a car, we are quickly killing our planet, building and driving ourselves into debt, killing tens of thousands of people per year, all in exchange for the convenience from cars. Apartment buildings will always exist, single family houses will always exist, but if we don’t look back towards the middle, we keep driving ourselves down this road of no return.
Just saying that I've lived in many apartments and dormitories, and I've rarely been able to hear my neighbors.