this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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[–] DivineJustice@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If the buildings are actual size, then those apartments must be the size of a closet

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[–] pm_me_some_serotonin@lemmy.zip 24 points 1 year ago (8 children)

If you look at land use maps, you will see that the urban areas are so small compared to the agricultural and livestock area needed to support the population. This is the biggest cause of deforestation, and population density actually makes it much worse, because it centralizes consumption and requires more logistic costs to deliver the needed food, with much higher rates of wastes. If we lived in less dense areas, perhaps we could do with local, smaller-scale agriculture instead.

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[–] stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

I mean is the building owned by its tenants or one entity/person who gets to own the building and a large amount of peoples homes thusly?

[–] WarlordSdocy@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean there are genuine reasons you might want a house over an apartment. If you have a big family or the fact that you own it and don't have a land lord that can just raise rent and force you out. You gotta have a mix of types of housing that actually matches what the needs of the people are, which is still the exact problem we have now.

[–] door_in_the_face@feddit.nl 21 points 1 year ago (5 children)

You can also own an apartment and live in it. The problem in the US, as far as I know, is that many cities make it very hard to actually build apartments or rowhouses or really anything other than a single family house on a big lawn.

[–] Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Spot on. In pink below is all the land where it's literally illegal to build anything but a detached, single-family house. And that's not even touching on all the other restrictive land use regulation, such as the insanity that is parking minimums. If we want to have a mix of housing types, it needs to actually be legal to build more than one type.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/18/upshot/cities-across-america-question-single-family-zoning.html

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[–] And009@reddthat.com 19 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Or everyone could plant trees instead of just grass?

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[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (14 children)

I work in municipal develpment.

The thing with developers is that they build that density, but over ALL of the land. Apartments kill more trees and create more impervious cover than any other type of housing.

Our city requires parkland dedication for development. Single-family developments build public parks and preserve trees wherever possible. Apartments just pay a fee in lieu for tree mitigation and parkland dedication and improvements because they absolutely will not have a millimeter of land not dedicated to housing.

[–] Cryophilia@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That sounds like the sort of thing that could easily be fixed by making it not legal to do that lol

It's not a problem inherent to apartments, it's a problem with lack of regulation in your area.

But more importantly, if that many people need housing, it's better to put them in apartments than single family houses. Less nature will get destroyed. What are we gonna do, not give them housing?

The point of the graphics is 100 homes vs 100 homes. If you say "well, in the second picture developers would just keep building" then you're comparing 100 homes to like 1000 homes. It makes no sense.

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[–] BilboBargains@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I couldn't live in a place that didn't have a workshop, that's what deters me from apartment blocks.

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[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 19 points 1 year ago (5 children)

This isn't how this would work. You'd get 100 houses, or 100 high rises.

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[–] mycroft@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (9 children)

If the people living in apartments had a say in how they were built... yeah

Nobody chooses to live in a fucking tin can hanging from suspension wires that is so poorly insulated you can hear every bird flying into the windows as though you're inside a bass drum.

The sounds of my neighbors at 3 am snoring are not a feature you can call part of the "shared experience."

The prospect of being trapped together because the elevator went out and there's a fire... oh so joyous. Not to mention all the people's pets that get left at home throughout the day and I can hear crying with desperation to be let out as though they're in the next room...

I'm quite happy not to live in a fucking modern apartment thank you very much.

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[–] betwixthewires@lemmy.basedcount.com 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Maybe the problem isn't the houses. Maybe it's the grass lawns.

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[–] Colour_me_triggered@lemm.ee 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Throw 99 families into the sea and live on my private island.

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[–] Harpsist@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Build a co-op garden around the apartment and you've got yourself a deal.

Everyone in the place gets X amount of space. More then 60% of people won't garden at all and their share can be maintained by the gardeners.

Fruit trees and berry bushes will be grown for all to use.

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[–] systemglitch@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

I love my own yard with privacy and a firepit where I can get drunk, loud and high as a kite without anyone bothering me.

Apartment living was hell, it's what convinced me to get a house.

Best decision ever

[–] Mojojojo1993@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (13 children)

Sounds like a literal nightmare to me. No garden to enjoy. No vegetables. No privacy. No ability to get solar panels.

No room for improvement. Basement second levels. Changing plumbing windows etc. No ability to charge your ev.

Fuck is this some corporate bullshit

[–] Krachsterben@feddit.de 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (13 children)

As someone who's lived in apartments since birth:

A lot of apartments in Europe have a communal garden, or you can simply rent a plot of garden nearby for larger projects, or use your balcony for small things like herbs.

Idk what you mean with plumbing windows/basement second levels but there would be an underground garage where you can charge your EV

You also don't rely as much on solar panels because apartments are already so much more energy efficient. They are cooler in summer and warmer in winter

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[–] The_Mixer_Dude@lemmus.org 15 points 1 year ago (13 children)

In this image I can't help but notice how much infrastructure cost there is here. Consider need for water treatment pipes run to and from each house for water and sewage as well as sewage treatment infrastructure. Keep in mind that failure rate increases with each house and by length of these runs that you are adding and fire hydrants being added every so many feet, shut off valves. Don't forget that we now have significantly bigger demand for water as we now have a lot more vegetation to manage and a higher reliance on emergency services as we are spread out over a larger area so we now have to increase ems, fire, and police spending. Then you add the costs for electrical infrastructure with your sub stations and transformers and all the costs set to maintain that especially since these are underground lines apparently and ofcourse we have increased risk of failure again per service and foot run and higher demand on those services which will require more workers which turns into money being spent outside of the community. You then add the cost of data lines and phone lines including the costs associated with maintaining and upgrading those which are also apparently underground which means your upgrades may be significantly more expensive and will take much longer to deploy. Now that we have all these houses separated we will now have a population that will be more dependent on vehicles so now we have to factor in all of our road maintenance costs and our public services will not require far more vehicles as well which means we will also need mechanics to repair and maintain these vehicles. Now with roads alone when we consider the costs involved things get rather expensive quickly. Cost to maintain roads, even roads that are seldom used, is surprisingly expensive and require a lot of workers to build and maintain as well as vehicles, machinery, and land to store, recycle, and create materials needed to repair and build the roads. On top of that there is also an often missed statistic of vehicles which is public safety as they are a leading cause for injury which is another stressor on our little community.

This is far from all the possibly missed costs of our suburban/rural neighborhood but I feel these are some of the important ones people live to overlook.

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[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca 15 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Have you not heard of mixed density? There should be houses, semi, townhomes, 3 story walk-ups and apartment buildings. You could probably do all that and still keep 50% of the island nature.

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[–] Poggervania@kbin.social 15 points 1 year ago (15 children)

Might be a silly question, but would it be better if we somehow turned suburbs into being more akin to rural towns? Like the suburbs could maybe have nearby town centers that they could walk to in 10-15 minutes that would allow small businesses to operate in.

I don’t live on the mainland, so no idea how it actually works.

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[–] CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (5 children)

When I see the image what came to mind was that experiment where they had an overpopulation of rats in a cage and how all of the rats turned on each other and killed each other.

Too much human density is not good. You have to be sure to get the percentage of humans to a acre of land just right, to prevent the rats situation.

Nature is important, but Humanity moreso.

[–] Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

Part of the thing is humans aren't rats, so we can't necessarily extrapolate from rat behavior to humans.

And another thing is space is 3-dimensional. If people have spacious apartments and access to good parks and public spaces, we don't necessarily need as much private acreage.

And a final thing is different people have different preferences. Some people enjoy and prefer those tiny houses. Some people prefer a homestead with acreage. Some people are happy with a condo in a high-rise. Some people want a rowhouse with a little space for a garden in the back.

But -- at least in North America -- we make it literally illegal to build anything but the houses on the left on the vast majority of urban land.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/18/upshot/cities-across-america-question-single-family-zoning.html?mtrref=undefined&gwh=FF365D597898BD763ABC57B0B9DDEC48&gwt=pay&assetType=PAYWALL

http://www.datalabto.ca/a-visual-guide-to-detached-houses-in-5-canadian-cities/

If we're going to talk about forcing people into living conditions they don't want to be in, we should be talking about how we're systematically shoving most people into sprawling, car-dependent suburbia.

I know that, growing up in suburbia, I felt trapped like in a cage because I couldn't get anywhere without getting a ride from my parents. The internet was the only escape really.

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[–] Rooki@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (6 children)

The only thing i can see on the right bad is that many people dont like beeing cramped in with many other people. + want to have a garden Balcony can be a "garden" but not as good. I have nothing against the right, but keep in mind not everyone is the same.

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