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Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

People in Spain and the rest of the Mediterranean have managed to live without AC for millenia. Some old houses, centuries old, are cool as a cucumber during some of the worst months of summer.

And yet, in my experience, it’s like Americans are allergic to insulation and building houses appropriate to the climate. Something is very weird when houses in SF look just like houses in Portland which look just like houses in every suburban photo of the US I’ve ever seen.

In Europe architecture changes with the climate, in the US it doesn’t seem to (or at least I haven’t noticed and please tell me that i’n wrong)

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Not sure if Spain is the best example since AC is already very popular there and growing in popularity: http://www.ine.es/jaxi/Datos.htm?path=/t25/p500/2008/p01/l0/...

> Some old houses, centuries old, are cool as a cucumber during some of the worst months of summer.

Those places also probably don't routinely hit 90% humidity levels. You sweat profusely even in the shade here (think Florida in the summer if you've ever been).

In places as hot an humid as the American south, pretty much everyone gets AC as soon as they can afford to do so. If they do not have AC, it is because they are too poor to afford it.

I'm actually kind of a hippie minimalist at heart. I'm willing to give up my car and bike everywhere. I'm willing to go vegan to save the environment. I'd even be willing to crank the AC up to 80 degrees to reduce power consumption. But I would never live in a place with no AC whatsoever, no matter how the building was built. It's one of the last luxuries I'd give up, along with daily showers.

The average temperature in Madrid in July is 9C cooler than in Phoenix. Good insulation would reduce the cooling costs (and it's sort of absurd how many homes in hot areas don't have good insulation), but no amount of insulation will keep a house cool when the ambient temperature doesn't even make it down to 25C at night for a month or longer.

Portland and SF have similar climates, so you would expect them to look similar. Portland has rain instead of fog, but both rarely get notably hot or cold.

99PI did a wonderful episode on this: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/thermal-delight/

Basically, the US abandoned their regionally different architecture once AC became common.

another case of technological dead end

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