• Dojan@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    You can still have trees and plant life in low density housing. You don’t need green deserts everywhere.

      • Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.worldOPM
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        1 year ago

        Yup, tons more parking and tons more road space per capita as well. Low-density sprawl just needs a lot more stuff per capita.

        • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          They should pay a significant land tax instead of leeching off the high-density dwellers.

          • Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.worldOPM
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            1 year ago

            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.

            • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              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.

              • Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.worldOPM
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                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.

                • ShoeboxKiller@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  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.

            • spitfire@infosec.pub
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              1 year ago

              At least give some kind of mention to Henry George for being the magnificent bastard that came up with this. His history is fascinating and most people don’t know who he is because he pissed off all the major landowners (ivy league colleges) who blackballed even mention of his name.

              • Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.worldOPM
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                1 year ago

                A fellow georgist, I see! But yeah, the legacy section on his wikipedia page is absolutely insane, and yet I had never even heard of him before about 2 years ago (which of course led to me promptly becoming georgist). Not a whole lot of people learn about the guy and about georgism without swiftly becoming a georgist themselves lol.

          • AA5B@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            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

            • spitfire@infosec.pub
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              1 year ago

              There won’t be any other taxes for them to pay, so they will have more purchasing power. Chances are, they’re still going to have the same place unless that retired guy decides to build a hotel or something on it.

            • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Sounds like they should sell their house - which has netted them a nice profit - and downsize. Or do a reverse mortgage.

              • iheartneopets@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                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.

                • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  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.

                • AA5B@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  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

      • Dojan@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • rexxit@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            It’s like a dystopian future where you can’t own anything or have private space.

            That’s our dystopian, low-density present.

            • rexxit@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              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.

              • rambaroo@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Don’t bother. The regulars on this sub are totally out of touch with reality and normal people.

                • rexxit@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  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.

          • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            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.

        • lemming934@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          In this case, the communal space is a forest far from housing. You can avoid people by walking alone through the forest.

          I think that’s a better experience than walking around your backyard

          • Dojan@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I suppose since my country is very low population but very large I don’t really see the problem. Everyone could have a house here and we’d still have plenty of room to space.

            Sweden has a population of 10.5 million, ish, and an area of 447k square kilometres. Germany by contrast, has a population of around 80 million, and an area of 357k square kliometres.

            That said, I believe low density can work just fine. You don’t need highrises to improve population storage efficiency. Simple two-three story buildings work just fine too.

            You could also lower the population, something modern society is managing just fine right now anyway. I personally really don’t believe overpopulation is going to be a significant problem in the long run.

            • lemming934@lemmy.sdf.org
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              1 year ago

              Everyone could have a house here and we’d still have plenty of room to space.

              You may not run out of wildlands, but if everyone is in large enough houses, it becomes difficult to get to the wildlands (or anywhere else you need to go) without using a car. For various reasons, !fuckcars@lemmy.world, is against designing cities around cars.

              That said, I believe low density can work just fine. You don’t need highrises to improve population storage efficiency. Simple two-three story buildings work just fine too

              I agree. The problem comes when you have large houses with big yards. If you instead have rowhouses, you have plenty of density to avoid car dependency (if the city is designed properly).

        • activ8r@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          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.

  • rah@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    Why not prefer apartments in your own town?

    Noise. Neighbours being closer.

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Ownership. You will not own your apartment, it will be owned by your landlord and you will pay him whatever he demands. You will not own the forest, either. The state will, or some private entity will. No trespassing.

      • J4g2F@lemmy.ml
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        You can still own and buy appartements in most places in the world. Then there are many forms of social housing.

        Rent to own is also a possibility but not seen in most countries.

        Seems your problem is not ownership but landlords.

        Some countries in Europe have the right to roam on any land. State owned and private owned. (Maybe more countries somewhere else have it to but I don’t know)

        It does not need to be so terrible. In some places it just is because of profits

        • neatchee@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Owning an apartment and owning land are wildly different. The housing structure alone is not the entirety of home ownership.

          • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Since we’re just talking hypotheticals anyway, let’s say in the second image the land is actually owned by the owners of the apartments, like a co-op.

            • neatchee@lemmy.world
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              That’s still not ownership. That’s co-ownership. I’m not free to do what I want with it, when I want.

              Same reason I hate HOAs

              • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                The vast majority of places where you own a house, you still can’t do whatever you want.

                • jj4211@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Whatever reasonable thing you want will tend to fly though. Versus HOA which often dictate crazy restrictions.

        • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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          There is no such thing as universal right to roam in the US. Likewise, apartment ownership (we call them “condos” when you can own one rather than rent) exists here, but by far is the minority option in multi-family housing. You can claim you want to buy a condo or apartment as much as you want, but that doesn’t do you any good when no one is selling. Units are built to be rented which is a recurring revenue stream, which big capital likes a lot more.

          The significant problem is not that nobody is whacking out slabs of apartment housing fast enough. The issue is that our underlying capitalist system is fucked, and a simple anti-car attitude is not going to fix that.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah that’s my main concern. Also less space to store things like my bike.

        Then there’s the upstairs neighbors. Like I get that the kids are loud. But also could the kids stop throwing stuff at my bird feeder. And their upstairs neighbors flooded the dang place

    • baseless_discourse@mander.xyz
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      1 year ago

      Uh yes, the suburban tranquility of non-stop leaf blowing, lawn mowing, and pickup humming.

      Musics to my ears.

      • Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.worldOPM
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        I live in an apartment with actual good sound-proofing. It’s almost dead silent inside except for the quiet hum of my AC. It’s legitimately so much quieter than my gf’s family’s house, where you constantly hear the rush of cars driving by on the street. Not to mention leafblowers and lawnmowers.

          • Neato@kbin.social
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            We need the insulation we saw in the Fight Club movie. The entire apartment blew out the window and everyone else was fine.

        • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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          You realize you are speaking from a very lucky position right? Everyone here agrees quiet apartments with clean facilities are pretty nice, but a large majority of apartment dwellers live in older, very noisy, very poorly managed facilities.

          It’s very fair to want the conversation on improving apartments, it is super important. But you.have to acknowledge that people’s response about their apartment history is informed from lived experience.

          • biddy@feddit.nl
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            1 year ago

            It’s not luck. Things are built for a reason, the regulations and structures of society are designed, and it artificially dictate s what is built. Perhaps they live in a place where the regulations mean that sensible livable apartments are fairly abundant. Perhaps you don’t. That’s not luck, those places were designed that way.

            • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              The homie was pooped out in a place where it was possible, and that was luck.

              • Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.worldOPM
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                I was born and raised in suburbia and only moved into where I am now. It is indeed partially luck that I had the capability and opportunity to move to a new city that has abundant apartments, missing middle housing, and a sane rental market. As a result of the abundance of apartments available, landlords have a credible threat of vacancy, and thus rents are lower, there are fewer restrictions (e.g., pet restrictions), and having decent sound insulation is common.

          • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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            I think the phrase “lived experience” should automatically disqualify someone from speaking about any topic. They’re just anecdotes, usually in contradiction to actual data.

            • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Ok?

              So for example the “lived experience” of black folks in the southern US in the 60s isn’t valuable I’m the discussion of racism in America? Of course it is. Their first hand experience (indeed anecdotal as you say) is meaningful.

              In the context of apartments, especially in America, millions of units are no where near the soundproofing or quality OP was describing. You could determine that by age of the buildings alone.

              Do you have sound dampening data for apartments across the country?

              Anecdotes are only problematic when they are purported as data. By definition someone relaying their lives experience suggests they are describing their individual life to you. It’s fine to want to move from anecdote to data, but when you talk about “disqualification” from discussion you’re just being a gatekeeper. There is no data rigor here, this is a message board about a meme.

              Lastly the person I responded to described THEIR lived experience (the quiet apartment they have) so that further insulates myself and others from any objective requirements to comment.

              • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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                So for example the “lived experience” of black folks in the southern US in the 60s isn’t valuable I’m the discussion of racism in America?

                When their “lived experience” is “no, I’ve never seen any racism!” then no, it’s not really valuable, and it’s incredibly suspect to boot.

                It’s fine to want to move from anecdote to data

                Let’s just start with data. Anecdotes are supplementary. The way “lived experience” is usually used (and is used here) is to provide the primary support to an argument.

                • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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                  Again you’re expecting a rigor beyond the venue of discussion, especially given that the person I replied to started with an anecdote as well.

                  If you have data on the soundproofedness of apartments across the US to contextualize the common consensus to the level you expect I would be happy to browse it.

                  Until then I’m comfortable believing anyone (as in the many commenters here) who say their apartment was loud. The several I lived in were as well so I have no reason to question it

      • Uranium3006@kbin.social
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        All the fun of overbearing neighbors telling you what you can or can’t do with all the inability to take the train anywhere

      • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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        It’d take it over the sound of the upstairs neighbor fucking his microwave while bowling at the same time

      • rah@feddit.uk
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        I don’t know about that. I don’t live in America and I’ve never lived in suburbs. I have lived in flats (apartments) and in dense areas.

        • baseless_discourse@mander.xyz
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          I lived both in dense neighborhoods, rural neighborhoods, and suburbs. Trust me, the more things you give your neighbor to do, the more shenanigans they will make, especially in place where everyone is bored out of their mind.

          • rah@feddit.uk
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            I don’t care how much they do, I care about how close they all are to me while they do it.

            • baseless_discourse@mander.xyz
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              What about going to your doorstep to tell you that you need to maintain a lawn? your door needs to be a certain color? Or you cannot park your car on your own property? Or you cannot park somewhere simply because "they have always parked there? Or deafening motor noise that can be heard a block away right across the road from you? leaf blower and lawn mower so loud that literally require the person to wear a head phone to operate safely, right next to your house?

              These are just a few things I have seen in the suburbs. Are these count as “close enough to you”?

              • rah@feddit.uk
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                I don’t see why you would expect an absense of these things in a city?

                • baseless_discourse@mander.xyz
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                  No, I have experience none of these in the cities, because a lot of time, there is no HOA, most places do not have lawns, and I dont need a car in the city.

                  Also there are in general lawn mowing and leaf blowing are much more moderate in city, because they know they are surrounded by people.

    • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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      This isn’t a particularly convincing analogy. Islands have limited space. The suburbs where I live border tons of open space and parks. Meanwhile, our school district is already overwhelmed with children, so converting commercial spaces into apartments will merely add to congestion and sprawl. NIMBY’s make a convincing argument against denser residential construction.

      A better focus would be the ability to simplify public transit and walkability. Town centers and public spaces could be more accessible with denser residential construction, and the additional green space can be closer to where you live without everyone needing their own half-acre yard to mow and water.

      • rah@feddit.uk
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        This isn’t a particularly convincing analogy.

        I think you replied in the wrong place? I didn’t give an analogy.

      • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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        The suburbs where I live border tons of open space and parks.

        Yeah but then they build more houses and destroy more of those open spaces to make room for more suburban sprawl

        • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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          Yep, Toll Bros buys a horse farm and makes half acre mcmansions. There are some big properties that have covenants that prevent it, and the zoning in my township won’t allow new subdivisions less than 2 acres, and we have some great municipal parks which will never be developed. But that means everything is spread out to make public transit untenable. You need a car to get to the nearest train station, and then you need a car when you get off the train at any stop outside of the city.

          There’s no one-size solution to combat sprawl. High density housing makes a lot of sense some places, and not so much in others.

    • FederatedSaint@lemmy.world
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      God I hate living in high density housing. Dogs yapping, bass and loud music booming, smelly, loud, animal poop and pee on every green/natural area, higher crime, more traffic, etc.

    • IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social
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      That’s only true if the apartment is a shitty American 5 over 1 stick building. In a modern concrete apartment with concrete internal walls you wouldn’t hear the neighbors.

      • blueson@feddit.nu
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        Exactly. Here in Sweden if you live into a newly built apartement you are basically guranteed grade A sound isolation.

        Even older ones usually hold high quality because of renovations.

        • SolarNialamide@lemm.ee
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          Take it from someone who is autistic, highly introverted and has only lived in apartments in my adult life: you do not ever need to see or interact with your neighbors. It’s as optional as with a house. The most I see of my neighbors is that once every few weeks I might stand in the elevator with one of them for 15 seconds.

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            1 year ago

            The instant I step out my door I’m surrounded by people in an apartment. Sorry but nothing you said is true. I’ll never live in an apartment again.

      • TauriWarrior@aussie.zone
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        We lived in a concrete apartment, couldn’t hear the neighbors in their apartments but could in the hallways, and smell everything too, could hear the cars revving outside, and had to put up with the weekly (if not more often) fire alarm at 2am which meant evacuating the building. And no space for anything, no hobbies that might generate noise. Also have to deal with STRATA, hope you didnt want to put anything on your balcony cause they didn’t want that, hope you can wait 12 months for the leaking ceiling to be fixed thats dripping and growing mould.

        Also it cost a fortune to heat or cool the place, we’re in a bigger place now that costs 1/2 as much to heat/cool

      • rambaroo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Oh so you’re also going to rebuild all apartment buildings in the US now? Lol

      • theparadox@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Well, I live in a America and can’t wait to get out of apartments. I’ve moved a lot in my life and have a lower middle class income. I’ve never found an apartment or condo where I didn’t have to deal with hearing neighbors yelling, stomping, talking outside my front door in the hallway, opening sliding doors, listening to music, etc. Only twice, when I lived with a friend in their house, did I feel like I had any peace or privacy.

        Sure, there would be lawns mowed and all that, but I’d take that over the things I’ve heard and worried about my neighbors having heard.

        If I could have real privacy in an apartment I could afford I’d continue to rent, assuming I don’t get priced out of the market completely at this rate.

  • AKADAP@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • AdmiralShat@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    The issue is that all of those apartments are owned by one person getting filthy fucking rich from rent.

    • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      Well if that much housing is needed then the idea of not providing it is kind of… monstrous? evil?

      • kier@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • rexxit@lemmy.world
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      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.

      • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’d rather have a few cities and a lot of unspoilt nature than no cities and no nature, just suburban sprawl everywhere

        • rexxit@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          How about nice green suburbs with single family homes and a lot fewer people?

          • BartsBigBugBag@lemmy.tf
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            No, im good on suburbia, it’s inherently damaging to both our mental health and the natural ecosystems of the planet. You cannot have a sustainable single family suburb.

            • rexxit@lemmy.world
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              Ok, well surely you recognize that there are lots of people who agree with me - who feel single family homes are nice and living elbow to elbow with your neighbors in maximum density is not in any way desirable.

              Unfortunately, ultra-urbanist zealots are very loud online. I suspect many of them will change their tunes with age.

              Edit: what’s damaging to the ecosystems of our planet is PEOPLE! There’s no law of nature that states a suburban density isn’t sustainable, just that it’s unsustainable for 8b people. You’re proposing eco-austerity because human population is out of control

                • rexxit@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Let the population contract to <<1b as it was for thousands of years of civilization before industrial agriculture caused a very recent explosion in population the past 2 centuries (predominantly the 20th century)

              • BartsBigBugBag@lemmy.tf
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                1 year ago

                Do you have an example of a sustainable single family suburb that exists currently, or ways in which to offset the inherent inefficiency present in such structures?

                Why is not living in a suburb austerity? Is all of every city and rural population living in austerity?

                • rexxit@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Have you ever been to a small city? I can’t find a logical way in which a small city surrounded by undeveloped land would be unsustainable.

              • Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.worldOPM
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                just that it’s unsustainable for 8b people

                So is your solution global mass genocide just so you can enjoy your sprawling suburbs?

                • rexxit@lemmy.world
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                  What part of “naturally contract” implies genocide? I swear, the resistance to understanding is willful.

              • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                there are lots of people who agree with me - who feel single family homes are nice

                Lots of people believe in “drill baby drill”

                Fuck em.

          • barsoap@lemm.ee
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            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.

            • rexxit@lemmy.world
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              “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.

              • barsoap@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                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.

                But that’s illegal in the US.

                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.

                • rexxit@lemmy.world
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                  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

          • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            More suburbia does not reduce the number of people. It just spreads them out…into what was formerly nature.

      • Ian@Cambio@lemm.ee
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        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.

  • Skyrmir@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

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    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.

  • wheeldawg@sh.itjust.works
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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.

  • The Menemen!@lemmy.world
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    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!

  • Izzy@lemmy.world
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    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.

    • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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      And fuck the 900 poor people, they can live in the fucking sea where they won’t bother me.

      • Izzy@lemmy.world
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        It’s more like we wouldn’t birth 900 more people because the density of livable space doesn’t allow it.

          • Izzy@lemmy.world
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            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.

            • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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              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.

          • Izzy@lemmy.world
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            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.

  • TheBlue22@lemmy.world
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    I live in an apartment. I want to live in a house.

    Cunt upstairs neighbour smoking cancer sticks on the balcony, making my room smell like shit when he does it, dumbass neighbour to my right who phones some other dumbass at 6 in the morning, screaming into his phone, waking me up. No garden, can’t have a cat or a dog.

    I don’t want to live in a suburb where I am forced to use a car, but you can live in a house and still be able to get anywhere you want without a car.

  • kurzon@lemmy.sdf.org
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    I won’t consider living in apartment buildings unless they have good soundproofing and proper open spaces. I don’t want to be cramped in with noisy neighbors and have no privacy.