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Comment by edoo | Hacker News Reader

They forget the human cost. Increasing density decreases quality of life. The people are the product of the cities in the commercial sense. The well being of the people is lost in the drive for infinite growth.

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You opinion on density is just that, your opinion, not everyone agrees.

Density means a larger selection of jobs, increased variety in entertainment (ie: more likely to find something you personally love), increased selection of medical professionals, increased variety in food, ability to avoid driving commutes, kids who can self-manage without being driven everywhere, etc. To some people that's worth more cramped living, to others it's not. Quality of life is taken as a whole and not based on part of the whole.

However, density taken to the extreme eventually leads to bedspace apartments, which seem like a pretty dystopic outcome.

I don't necessarily mind density and I'm not trying to invoke a slippery slope, but sometimes reading the pro-density folks it sounds like there is no recognition that there could be such a thing as too dense.

Please remember saying this and reflect on how you feel the quality of life has changed when the city you live in doubles in population. Portland is going to be a great case study for this. They just outlawed single family residences. I will be highly surprised if in 30 years people think the place is better than now.

> You opinion on density is just that, your opinion, not everyone agrees.

Sure but curious why that comment is downvoted and yours is not?

Disagreeement != downvote.

It's not stated as opinion, and has some ridiculous statements like this in it:

> The well being of the people is lost in the drive for infinite growth.

There is no drive for infinite growth, that I have found. People are just trying to have enough housing for everyone, yet this "infinite growth might happen therefore we are going to impose housing austerity" is the attitude that has been prevalent in older suburban homeowners, and that's exactly how we got into this mess of a housing crisis.

Categorically dismissing the large number of people that choose to live in cities because they prefer them is ridiculous. If it really were worse, prices would be lower in the cities than outside them. More people want what cities have to offer than are allowed to access them.

> There is no drive for infinite growth, that I have found.

What about Carbon emission projections. Isn't that proof of 'drive for infinite growth' ?

That doesn't make sense, unless your definition of infinite growth is not infinite.

Rather, I suspect "infinite growth" is a hyperbole to stand in for "everybody has it as good as I do."

And carbon emissions are a particularly bad example of that because carbon emissions are falling per person without a decrease in the standard of living for people, or for the amount of useful energy they use in their lives.

no, thats just growth

> Disagreeement != downvote

The founder of the site disagrees: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

In addition to what umanwizard posted, there is this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314

Don’t many people love cities specifically because of density and the diversity of opportunities that usually follows?

Yes many people love big dense cities like NY, which is why they live there.

The problem is when people love low density cities and make it a great place to live. Then new people want to change it into denser cities with everyone living in apartments. Who should win out?

"The problem is when people love low density cities and make it a great place to live. Then new people want to change it into denser cities with everyone living in apartments. Who should win out?"

How related is this question to the gentrification of poor neighbourhoods and cities? If we go historically, the newcomers with new money always win out via (often violent) eviction. See: The People's History Podcast regarding Boston's government-supported gentrification of its public housing.

I feel that if we would take the stand to be against sparse neighbourhoods being changed into dense cities due to increased population, we should also protect and support low-income neighbourhoods and public housing from gentrifying construction projects and income-related displacement. But broadly the latter is often viewed as a sad but inevitable phenomenon, and therefore I don't know why that same logic shouldn't apply to increasingly dense cities.

This is exactly the problem. Lots of people love low or medium density cities because they make great places to live. And then other people who want the same thing start moving there, not asking what made it great in the first place. When lots of people do that, the prices go up and then the newcomers demand that they be accommodated at whatever price they want.

Also the hate against rent control here is myopic. Rent control is meant to protect those incumbents who were a part of the community prior to rapid growth / increase in prices. It allows low supply (protection of quality of life) to work without displacing incumbents when faced with rapid growth. Now we can argue about how effective specific implementations if rent control are, but a lot of folks misconstrue the underlying goals.

I think the argument is that we’re better off decentralizing opportunity than increasing density, considering long term sustainability (ie, we have a lot of room to decentralize) and human well-being (ie, mega-cities aren’t great — and get worse the higher density).

There's a trade-off though, if it comes at the cost of smaller and worse living accomodation for themselves. And you have to be careful that the transport and other infrastructure can keep up. Transport in particular always seems to get ignored.

What do you mean? Transport, considered to be the time it takes to get to your relevant destinations, has been objectively worse in pretty much every suburb I've lived in.

A 15-minute drive at maximum speed still takes longer than a 5 minute walk to the supermarket. Most suburbs end up experiencing traffic jams, with no option of foot traffic, subways, or other alternatives.

I mean that if you blindly shove more housing capacity into an area without considering upgrading your transport links, you'll end up with more traffic and more chaos.

Right but lets focus on one problem at a time. With more people in the city, you have a bigger tax base, meaning more tax revenue, meaning you can spend more to improve infrastructure like public transit.

The population of SF has only increased by 111K (14%) in the last 20 years. Imagine what we could do with twice as many people contributing tax revenue?

It isn't just tax base. If you have a lot of people taking transit you can recover the costs of the system just from riders paying their fare, and the riders are saving money over the cost for insuring a car for a year. Less dense areas cannot do this, both because people need to go farther (less dense means you have to go farther to get there), and because there are less riders.

Dense areas need less taxes in general: the cost difference of a big pipe vs a small one isn't nearly as much as the amount the big pipe can carry. However this is more than made up by the fact that the more people to spread it out with means many services that were not affordable are now cheap and those cheap things add up (you don't need a library, and at farm density you can't afford one - but at city density it is cheap per person so you pay a little more), you need to ask if those extras you can have are worth it.

I am not so sure that dense areas need fewer taxes. Some of the most heavily taxes areas are dense cities.

They NEED less taxes for the same amount of infrastructure. They have more anyway because things less dense areas cannot afford at any price are affordable. That is they are getting more for their money, but also spending more.

I'm making two assumptions above: corruption, and higher cost of living forcing higher wagers are both not significant issues. Both are factors, but I'm going to contend they are not significant - you get to decide if you believe me (different answers for different cities are likely!)

I think if you don't take transit into account before hand (public and road infrastructure) you're likely to end up with more people, more traffic and more of what parts of California is already famous for... hours-long tailbacks!

Not being able to afford a house decreases quality of life infinitely more than some increased density.

Wouldn't the world simply increase population where this is still the case even if we build more housing though?

Tends to go the other way. Fertility is strongly negatively correlated with development, of which housing is a component. America's birth rate is already well below replacement (1.8 births per woman), and relies heavily on immigration to maintain a steady population. There's a stark graph of page "4074" (page 4, figure 1-E in the PDF) of fertility rate vs HDI. [1] I bet if you build more housing you'd have fewer kids still. It's in a way counterintuitive, but very pronounced and well-studied.

[1] http://ijp.mums.ac.ir/article_7680_7828694c3909aa70d156fb9c8...

> Fertility is strongly negatively correlated with development, of which housing is a component. America's birth rate is already well below replacement

Wouldn't this imply america already has affordable housing ? Why are there endless articles in news that this isn't the case.

HDI is a composite score of which housing is an element. It includes all sorts of things like access to water, access to health care, etc, etc. I'm suggesting that continuing to develop the US through the addition of housing units would likely not lead to an increase in population but rather a decrease as tends to happen with development more broadly. I'm unaware of any studies which correlate specifically housing with fertility in isolation.

Maybe I confused you with two definitions of "development" in the same context -- developing houses, and human development / HDI of which housing is diffuse factor. See [1] for more info if you're curious.

[1] http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi

> develop the US through the addition of housing units would likely not lead to an increase in population but rather a decrease as tends to happen with development more broadly.

That doesn't logically compute though.

Decrease in population is correlated with housing shortage in US.

Only conclusions we can draw from this is,

1. Housing is irrelevant to population growth

2. Decreasing housing will lead to further population shrinking.

3. Housing has unknown effects on population growth. In which case it can go either way.

I don't see how you it can lead to your conclusion.

> Wouldn't this imply america already has affordable housing ?

America has plenty of affordable housing, but it's in places that are not experiencing significant economic and population growth.

The affordable housing crisis, as defined by a high price to income ratio, is specifically occurring in areas with growing economies and populations [1]. There are many reasons for this, but the biggest is simply the recent large scale internal migration to the booming metros.

1. https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/price-to-income-ratios-are...

Because most journalist jobs and thus journalists are in over demanded hip cities, instead of random rural flyover country, and thus write what they know.

I don't think I've ever been linked to a site in Iran before. Odd.

So your argument is to build less housing and force people to be homeless so they don't have kids?

Yea I don’t understand how urban activists can claim “induced demand” when discussing road supply but joy housing supply. There’s no obligation for any town or city to keep growing and accommodate continued population increases. That doesn’t serve the incumbent population, which is why those populations have chosen to enact zoning laws in the first place.

If you can't afford a house there maybe you should consider moving somewhere more affordable.

Right but there's no reason for that if you just allow developers to build up. You can live a few blocks from work, next to some nice allocated park land, and if you want to visit nature, take a train.

That's far more humane than demanding your fellow citizens commute hours from the outskirts every day so your real estate investment performs better. If you want to live somewhere greener perhaps consider the commute for yourself?

This may not have occurred to you, but a lot of people simply can't afford to move and leave the safety net of friends and family. They may also lack skills that would help them secure employment elsewhere. There people are especially vulnerable.

With respect to quality of life, there are far denser cities with much higher quality of life.

Building more homes for the middle income families and individuals absolutely helps everyone, except landlords.

Neither of you are incorrect as it's about preferences, but the real problem is one of balance.

A city needs all kinds of people. Affordability and density needs to be moderated so that there's enough diversity in families and employment to function well. Also some of the most affordable areas in the USA are also the most sparse.

> A city needs all kinds of people to function and affordability and density needs to be moderated so that there's enough diversity in families and employment to function well.

I don't necessarily see how one follows the other. So long as there's diversity in, for instance, bedroom count on units, what difference does it make if the units are stacked horizontally as they are today or vertically? To be clear, I'd love your thoughts, I'm not sure myself.

> Also some of the most affordable areas in the USA are also the most sparse.

Indeed because building up is expensive, so it requires demand. There's no demand in the middle of Idaho even comparable to what SF has.

Further, I'm proposing scrapping constraints on new development, not taking peoples 2 story Sunset units via eminent domain and throwing up SoMa style 50 story skyscrapers.

I think it's not an unreasonable place to start by doubling all height restrictions across all of SF. No more of this prime real estate on 17th and Brannan (the SFMTA bus lot redevelopment) getting wanged by a 4 story cap. That should be 20+ no question.

Stacked vs horizontal makes differences for some uses and not others. If we are vertical I care is you start a kitchen fire as I have to evacuate just in case, Horizontal makes that need much less likely. There are a lot of hobbies that include large objects that are easier to have in horizontal development (any collector of large objects, a grand piano).

Though the number of people who do that is small in the scheme of things. Grand pianos are often moved via crane - if you only do it once in a lifetime the cost isn't much but if you move regularly it is expensive.

4 - 5 floor is the sweet spot for balancing cost and price, if you go up from there the cost per sq meter increases. The places where economically is worth to go higher than that, is where the land is very expensive and you have to recover that cost having more units.

From what I have read, it's probably more like 4-8 floors. With 8 still being totally possible with with a podium floor or two and wood framing above that. (DC does this now)

> What difference does it make if the units are stacked horizontally as they are today or vertically?

One difference is how far things end up to be after. If they are spaced vertically, everything ends up far from everything.

Not enough people living in the geographic area means that stores wont be there, playgrounds will be empty, school will be far away. Visiting friends means longer drives, commute to work means longer drive.

Different strokes for different folks. Some people like living in dense cities. No reason not to build for them if they apparently enjoy it.

If you don't like the density, maybe consider moving somewhere with lower density?

Already did. I never realized how bad I had it.

Often times the density hawks are the newcomers, asking to be accommodated. This is true in the bay are and Seattle, for example. So I don’t think it’s fair to ask the incumbents who make up a community to leave.

You actually can have both: dedicate some parts of the city for single-family homes for upper-middle class,other parts for high rise buildings. That's how many cities in Europe look like: high density central districts, then some suburbs. The choice is then: do you prefer short commute and living in apartment, or a bit longer commute, but your own big house.

Having to move away from your family, friends, job and the life you know also decreases quality of life. A lot.

If you don't like the increasing density then maybe you should consider moving somewhere less dense.

Which also has a human cost if you have social connections with the other humans around you.

You can always get to "decreased density" simply by moving away from the urban core. The jobs might not be as good, but that just goes to show that increased density does not necessarily involve a human cost.

Similarly the people who complain of unaffordable housing can simply move to places where they are affordable. Same logic

there is no drive for "infinite growth". However so far the population keeps increasing at about .7% per year. Housing has to keep up to keep prices stable. If not, where do you suggest the people live?

.7% growth is an exponential rate. Cities are corporations and the ones that push density are looking for money.

Higher density construction makes more room for low density everywhere else.

You’re tone deaf. CA is in the midst of their worst homeless crisis ever. Density is a long ways behind my concerns for the middle-class homeless whom have been priced out of any meaningful housing options.

Is “middle-class homeless[ness]” a significant/common occurrence, absent mental illness or drug addiction as complicating factors (excluding those as changing housing supply/demand point is likely not the solution there)? That would indeed be depressing but also fairly surprising to me.

What would “middle class” mean if it didn’t include secure housing as a significant part of the definition?

In San Francisco what the rest of the US considers middle class incomes are not enough to afford a place to live.

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