Hacker News Reader

Comment by Sapph | Hacker News Reader

On a related note:

The majority of Beijingers used to live in courtyards flanked by houses by four sides: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siheyuan

Growing up in one, you get to know all of your neighbors really well since you see each other every day. My mom who grew up in a one, still knows all of her childhood friends and they have regular reunions.

Wish they were more communal spaces like this today where you're bound to regularly run into and interact with your neighbors.

View on HN

While making life-long friends growing up is great, there are many problems and inconveniences caused by sharing your living space with other people.

Hence nowadays when people have a choice, most choose to live in their own apartment as opposed to share with others.

Certainly that is part of it, but I think a bigger part of it is that finding a group of people you'd like to live with a space that enables communal living is really hard. Therefore developers build for the plug-and-play self contained dwelling.

Stated another way, the prevalence of independent living is more a consequence of high "coincidence of wants" costs and not of preferences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coincidence_of_wants

Typically the choice is to either have your own space entirely, or share everything but the bedrooms. There's approximately nothing available like what's described above, with a shared courtyard and separate adjoining houses. How can we meaningfully be said to have a choice when they don't exist?

In Los Angeles you see quite a few of these. Big courtyard with one entrance from the street. Inside of it small houses facing the courtyard.

I noticed lots of spaces like this in a trip to northern Italy, as well. Buildings push right up to the sidewalk, and surround private courtyards with a single entrance.

Not sure how communal these spaces are, but I presume not all of these blocks of buildings were owned by single families.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com