By Helen LuiWe constantly hear about the problems with density: tiny shoeboxes in the sky, looming towers and their shadows, traffic congestion, and overcrowding. But despite popular discourse, denser living can actually be good for us and our communities.Density as healthDensity brings public services, transit, parks, and amenities closer together. When we can walk our
Density is bad for ownership. You don’t own the land, you have no control over maintenance costs and end up subjected to huge fees. I’ve been hit 3 years in a row, 7k, 50k, and 16k. I owned a house for 20 years and never had these kinds of costs, the highest was my roof repair and replacing our fence which was 20k total. This was a decently sized property with an in ground swimming pool. To top it off, the bills didn’t even address the maintenance of my own apt. Fuck density, good for the rich, shitty for everyone else.
I dunno the status quo of reserving 80% of our major cities for multimillion dollar detached homes seems pretty good for the rich. I think densifying these areas to provide cheaper housing would be better for the “everyone else.”
Because we basically only have SFHs and high rises, this can end up with people having weird perspectives. The cost per square foot of maintenance goes up with building size for high rises, but a 3-6 storey building is much less likely to get hit by those massive costs than a high rise, and you’re more likely to have a say in building operations the fewer other people are involved. Like, if you live in a building with 12-30 units, you can probably get on strata if you want and make those decisions.
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I don’t have $4MM to buy a house, nor do I have $6k/month to rent a house for just me. I don’t think anybody but the rich do. Having density means I can afford to live here. What are you even talking about?