this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
1203 points (86.6% liked)
Fuck Cars
9645 readers
488 users here now
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
Rules
1. Be Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.
4. Stay on topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.
Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.
Posting Guidelines
In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
- [meta] for discussions/suggestions about this community itself
- [article] for news articles
- [blog] for any blog-style content
- [video] for video resources
- [academic] for academic studies and sources
- [discussion] for text post questions, rants, and/or discussions
- [meme] for memes
- [image] for any non-meme images
- [misc] for anything that doesn’t fall cleanly into any of the other categories
Recommended communities:
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.
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.
I may not NEED private acreage, but I want it. If I own it no-one else can ruin it.
Their point is that developers are legally forced to build SFH even if demand says otherwise. Detached homes are a major tax burden on cities; their cost should reflect their real cost. If you want one, go ahead and get one (I will be doing the same!), but cities genuinely cannot be built to handle most of its land being single family, detached homes.
I may want a detached home for hobbies and space, but the most fun I've had to date was when I lived in a townhouse in the middle of the city and didn't need a car to get anywhere. Exploration and discovery is impossible in suburbia.
Hell, you can have suburbia, but it should still be walkable. And you do that by increasing the taxes on them (rightfully), adding regular busses, having bike lanes, including businesses in the mix, and having them not be so sprawling so that you are closer to the city itself.
I don't live in suburbia, I live in a tiny hamlet with cows for neighbours.
I agree that cities cannot be all detached homes, but likewise they cannot be all high-rise either. Where my wife and I come from ( France and UK respectively) high-rise experiments have always ended in poverty and decay.
I could buy a crappy little flat in a city with junkies for neighbours, or I could buy a massive house with space for a pool 40 minutes drive away. Which would any sane person choose? Am I saving the environment driving around in my SUV? Yes, because we hardly use it thanks to the internet and us being fit.
My feeling is the current status quo will continue:
Young people live in flats in town. Kid #1 comes along and it seems fine. Then #2 arrives (plus they start having a bit mor £€$) and things start getting a little tight. Also the downsides of city life start outweighing the upsides (people drinking and shouting at 2am is more annoying when you and your kids have work/school).
Obviously that is a gross generalisation, but I have seen the pattern all over the place.