I'm not sure I follow. Low density housing is much worse for the environment than high density housing. Lower density means more transportation burden, larger energy costs to deliver utilities, greater risk of those utilities breaking, and more wildernesses being paved for roads and housing.
There's nothing environmentalist about low density sprawl.
Do you have any example of higher density real estate development leading to affordable housing? High density only seems to stress existing resources and infrastructure while making cost of living more unaffordable.
It’s baffling. And yet, we keep buying the myth of high density sustainability. This year is going to be the year I give up all delusions and stop being naive.
cul de sacs are the safest house planning template. i have never seen even one high density development be truly sustainable. this is the biggest lie stuffed down our throats.
nothing can be truly sustainable when the numbers keep increasing because resources dont renew as the same exponential rate of housing(related to population growth and nuclear families and weight of consumption indices),
what they mean by sustainable is really more housing(and hence more taxes) with the least amount of infrastructure and public services delivered to it due to the high density. this has nothing to do with the public or environment and the only loose affiliation 'sustainablity' has to high density is with city and state budgets because it allows them to bury more deficits while spending like crazy riding on unfunded liabilities on their financials.
anyone who believes that high density is sustainable is taken for a ride and is naive. anyone who sells that is either a charlatan or ignorant. or naive.
Low density can be sustainable if we live in clusters that are self sustaining. Form 4-6 Dunbar number sized communities and another bunch of them forming a bigger cluster. Intra city transport to be separate from Inter city transport..maybe underground or mag lev along with surface transport.
The problem is not low density. The problem is sprawl.
The solution is not high density and shaming people NIMBY or coerced altruism but cooperation. Giving people incentive to cooperate and share in return for something of non material value would work better than worsening quality of life for the productive and working folks.
High density can also be sustainable. Paris is a good example but it has public transport and its shaped like a snail. It would also mean segregation of regions according to income and ameneties.
Also..I can’t give you any example because no system lasts for ‘thousands’ of years.
I am rejecting your high density sustainable cities list but when I get the time, I will do my own research and if I am wrong in my intuition that you are off mark, I will certainly come back to you with it.
Again. You are wrong about low density meaning less education dollars. In California, we have a funding formula by which all the money goes to a common pot and then redistributed. The formula ...to put it simplistically...assigns more money to school districts with kids who need free lunches, English as second language etc. so this means counties that contribute less tax dollars and less property tax dollars due to low house prices get more of the education dollars. Highly educated households and English speaking households and those are higher income where kids don’t rely on school lunches get less education dollars.
This leads to no money for infrastructure improvements or overcrowding in schools and budget cuts. And yet..it’s these high property priced areas that have a higher influx of school kids. It’s not working.
Per student expense allocation in affluent cities is less than in areas that have lower property values. No child is truly left behind in California when it comes to education at least as far as $ redistribution is concerned.
The problems we have cannot be resolved by high density building in Bay Area and LA.
I'm getting off-topic here but can you share some resources on how low density developments are much more destructive? I'm usually very pro low density housing (and also very anti high density housing) so I'd like to have some new perspectives on this. Thanks.
What a complete non sequitur. Our lifestyles aren't unsustainable because of too much urban housing.
If anything, it's the exact opposite. Suburban sprawl and car centric development extending into unpopulated areas is unsustainable. Densifying already populated areas is much more sustainable.
How can we think of housing without considering resource constraints. It’s not just space to build vertically that determines how many homes can be built..it’s traffic, infrastructure, roads, water, power, schools, essential services, public services, public spaces, community amenities..the list goes on.
High density living is potentially more efficient than low density living (look European or some Asian cities, etc). Indeed, the US model of the low-density mega-city is the thing that has become unsustainable - commuting from city to suburb or suburb-to-suburb involves a huge amount of infrastructure that is simple to build but expensive to maintain.
The problem of the US in particular is that low-density has had the upper hand for so long that efforts to produce sane high density get sabotaged in a variety of ways (look the difference in cost per mile of public transit in the US versus Europe).
high density is sustainable, probably, whereas low density is probably not. how is that for a benefit? and don't discount how highly "fun" ranks in peoples' lives.
Let's be honest, it's far from factual that dense housing is problematic in any way. It's just your opinion, and you're mad about it because you stand to lose the most in a world where you have to pay cash for your externalities. The sewer and water system to your house is subsidized. Snow removal from your cul-de-sac is subsidized. Most people couldn't afford the suburbs if someone else wasn't paying for those things (usually future generations).
Many people enjoy living in a dense environment, as evidenced by how much they'll pay to do so. It's objectively better for the Earth, and pretty enjoyable for the people that choose that path.
It’s not precedented, wise, or even realistic to expect all of civilization to live in cities surrounded by unspoiled wilderness.
Highly efficient low density housing has a place. So does high density housing.
Everything you say about improving urban development practices is valid, but doesn’t mean that efforts to improve suburban/exurband/rural development are problematic. They’re all inextricably part of the future and they all have their own development needs.
Building cities is more efficient and cheaper that low-density suburbia. The problem we have is speculation and rent-seeking in RE has really made housing unaffordable in many cities.
I don't believe that any of this is true. Building more housing does (provably) lower housing prices. And developed urban areas are more environmentally friendly than suburbs. People are going to live somewhere, and density actually has environmental benefits.
But what is "habitat control"? I've never heard of that.
There's NOTHING good in building dense housing. It always (ALWAYS) leads to more misery down the road: higher housing costs, smaller units, more congestion, etc.
Want truly affordable housing? Bring jobs to smaller cities. You don't have ANY other option.
No, "transit-enabled" housing won't help you. No, banning cars and forcing people to bike won't help you. No, screaming at the "end stage capitalism" won't help you.
I don’t judge a developer of high-density housing for wanting to live in a low-density location. If you’re creating or financing the creation of housing, it’s an overall contribution to the solution. I don’t blame you for doing that but living in a lower density area any more than I’d judge you for creating a bunch of small, affordable housing units and living in a large, expensive house.
Low density development isn't sustainable because it greatly increases transportation costs, long term maintenance costs aren't sustainable
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