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Comment by cheriot | Hacker News Reader

Well, if you want to ruin their investment then issue building permits for more of them.

> They cast these huge shadows and block views

Talk about first world problems. Expecting a city skyline to never change is ridiculous. The only problem is that so few people use these buildings. The best kind of density regulation requires _more_ density.

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>Expecting a city skyline to never change is ridiculous

"In Athens, buildings are not allowed to surpass 12 floors so as not to block the view toward the Parthenon."

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

I'd say this isn't typical of most of the world, but it's not unprecedented.

I live in Edinburgh, and we have "key views" (example of the centre ones here https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/download/13259/key-vi... - there's 5 or 6 pages but no link to them all) there's dozens of the views in the city, and no planning will be granted that materially changes the skyline in the views!

It also constrains supply of real estate, driving up the value for property owners.

12 floors is huge. Nearly every building in Paris is 6 floors and it is already at near the maximum density humanly acceptable in my opinion. There will never be enough supply in some place, especially with speculation and foreign investors. The situation in NYC and these cities is nothing like SF.

> 12 floors is huge.

I live 40 stories up, surrounded by a lot of green spaces because the city doesn't need to mow down natural habitats for population growth. 6 floors seems quaint and archaic, all it's going to cause is endless depressing urban sprawl.

> There will never be enough supply in some place

We can always build higher, construction techniques are only getting better. I don't see why 60 floor buildings can't be a norm in most supply constrained cities.

The main constraint on taller buildings is elevators. The taller a building is, the more elevators it needs, and the more elevator shafts there are the lower the percentage of square footage available for other, paying uses.

The sweet spot for residential in Hong Kong is about 30-40 stories.

I’m also on 40 (out of 76) and while we’ll probably all die if there’s an earthquake, that’s true in a lot of NIMBYtowns too.

I could see whole cities of mostly >50 stories, but then unblockable views start to get immensely valuable right?

So as the city fills up and you discover which locations have more durable views, you need to start tearing down those skyscrapers to replace them with more luxurious ones.

Not sure if that’s dystopian, but I do quite like the view from up here.

> We can always build higher, construction techniques are only getting better. I don't see why 60 floor buildings can't be a norm in most supply constrained cities.

Because there is no way we can make infrastructure follow in the short term. Public transports are already saturated here, we could remove cars, but there is still a limit in how many people can be on the ground in streets, parcs, shops...

I find appropriately planned urban sprawl a whole lot less depressing than living in a cube 40 stories up.

Different strokes I guess.

I think some people won't be happy until we're all constrained to 10x10x8' rooms in 80 story buildings to satiate their desire for density and efficiency. Maybe we should just kind of be happy with 7 billion people.

Lolwut. Who? Ne'er-do-wells, haters, or rent-seeking bastards?

(I'm in a 1400 sq ft / 130 m^2 2/2 apt in ATX.)

Perhaps people like living in smaller quarters in cities - the market seems to indicate that, based on the price per square foot people are willing to pay for urban apartments compared with ... anyplace else in the world.

Urban sprawl is awful if there's only single-occupant vehicles, bad roads, and no reliable public transport anyone wants to use ... basically, you get Los Angeles. Terrible, crime-ridden, and horizontally dystopian.

As opposed to urban densification where everyone lives in the sky and the city is crowded, polluted, noisy, crime ridden and dystopian?

The average square footage of a Parisian studio would make NY’s tenements look downright palatial.

The average NYC studio is 50 m^2. The larger end for a Parisian studio is given to be 35 m^2.

On the other hand, there's nothing forcing you to live in intra-muros Paris.

I live in Nanterre, 5min away from the RER station, and my rent is 1200€/month for a 2-bedrooms apartment (50 m²). I have a <1h commute for about anywhere in Paris, and <20min for La Défense.

Point is, you can have affordable-ish rents in a business center without building humongous high-rises everywhere, as long as your public transport network can support it.

I don't know that sprawling density taking up land that could be used for nature is somehow supposed to be better than tall buildings.

Yes there is, circumstances.

There's nothing forcing you maybe, but plenty of people will be stuck there because of circumstances.

Hmm... I should turn my ATX apt into 4 "Parisian" studios then. Such underutilized space considering I have an almost vestigial "dining room" that has been used mostly as a dance floor and a gym area.

In practice, most American jurisdictions will not let one legally subdivide a living area into chunks as small as a Parisian studio. NYC regulations on how small you can subdivide are probably as generous as they get.

In the Parisian example, it is legal to have an apartment without an in-unit bathroom, and this is straight up illegal in virtually every American city. A list of requirements for NYC (not exhaustive): https://www.renthop.com/qa/nyc/what-makes-an-apartment-illeg...

/s woosh. LOL. ;-)

It's called tenement housing, in any case. Split the living room in half and rent the large walk-in closet, now a 2 bedroom is magically a 5 bedroom like an airline employee crashpad. :)

Some friends of mine were thinking about renting out an entire warehouse and constructing illegal residential tenement "apartments" in them.

All fun and games till 36 people die in a fire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Ship_warehouse_fire

12 floors is tiny if you're not used to it.

There's only ~75 buildings in Paris >6 floors because of the 37m height limit.

Cities either have to have faster transportation, build underground, build higher, or build out farther. Increasing costs by keeping transportation horrible or limiting supply for the rich squeezes money from the lowers and the middle classes.

Very fast transport from nearby satellite communities would be the most ideal solution because then locality doesn't matter as much to most people.

though for Paris, I think it's mandated by the local law, no?

Regarding Paris, at the current density, maybe it would be better to have higher building but with a smaller ground footprint (not sure if it's the right term), to leave space free for more parks?

China has done the same recently. They are moving away from skyscrapers. Strict regulation for buildings taller than 250m. No approval for buildings taller than 500m.

https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3115225/...

That's not really the same thing as Athens at all. 250m is ~60 floors.

I was pointing to the trend of curbing down on skyscrappers instead of a direct comparison.

250m is the limit for strict regulation. Newer buildings tend to be around 100m.

The article is paywalled for me.

I would imagine that has more to do with curbing local officials’ habits of encouraging land speculation to plump up their budgets. The central government is trying to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to property that needs to rise in value to boost wealth but also not become totally unaffordable for first time buyers, and overheating the market doesn’t help with the latter.

I guess they peaked in 447 BC.

This is also a thing in London where certain views towards St Pauls Cathedral are protected.

London isn't exactly a model of urban planning. There is a massive shortage of housing. And you end up with all new developments concentrated in a handful of areas.

I agree but if 100,000 homes became available tomorrow in London they’d sell in an instant. I don’t think any number will solve it - the problem is existing homes not being lived in and being used as income.

How many homes in London are empty? Numbers I see are in the region of 25,000, out of 3.6 million, under 1%.

It would be more interesting to see those numbers in square footage and not straight counts. I would expect the majority of the 'empty' homes are the £10M+ ones in Knightsbridge, Chelsea, Kensington etc.

Offices and hotels far more empty square footage

There is no evidence that this is a significant issue affecting housing prices in high-demand metros. Lack of supply is a much more straightforward and verifiable explanation. The spooky-outside-investor meme is conspiratorial nonsense and it’s beneath this forum.

Sorry, but you're spouting nonsense without knowing the facts.

In the US alone, there are over 17 million vacant residential properties. Average un-occupancy rates for urban areas run 10%. That is more than plenty to house every homeless and very poor person.

There ought to be massive taxes on urban vacation, vacant housing, and entirely airbnb properties to encourage utilization by those who require housing rather than being hoarded/exploited by those who use them for recreational/investment purposes.

Unfortunately, like everybody involved in the housing space, I’ve of course heard this claim about millions of vacant homes many times.

It’s a notoriously silly take.

Most vacant homes covered by that statistic are either 1) uninhabitable shells in low-demand rust-belt metros; or 2) houses that are for sale or between tenants. A small percentage of them are second homes. And while you could of course raise taxes on those homes (a policy I’d probably support in some form), it’s unlikely that it’d have much of an impact on the overall problem.

You could fit 59 Manhattans in the London Green Belt. Manhattan has 1.6 million residents. The problem is not building.

And iceberg mansions. The neighbors really love those.

Not just towards St Paul's, but also to the Palace of Westminster. See the City of London's "Protected views and tall buildings" planning docs [1] and the section "Protected vistas in London" in the Wikipedia page Protected View [2].

Also, see the Wikipedia page on Greenwich Hospital, London [3]:

An early controversy arose when it emerged that the original plans for the hospital would have blocked the riverside view from the Queen's House. Queen Mary II therefore ordered that the buildings be split, providing an avenue leading from the river through the hospital grounds up to the Queen's House and Greenwich Hill beyond.

The resulting effect is displayed well in this contemporary pic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Naval_College.JPG

[1] https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/services/planning/planning-p...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_view

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Hospital,_London

The Guardian did an interesting interactive story a few years ago on how these 'viewing corridors' are affecting the skyline: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/dec/11/city-of...

The city of Charleston, SC has a set of height regulations: https://www.charleston-sc.gov/DocumentCenter/View/14414/Heig...

Who says there's an expectation for the skyline to never change? Maybe it's ok if it changes for good reasons that benefit a lot of people, and not for the whims of the few ultra rich.

It's nuts that huge buildings are built, and then stand empty almost year round. That obviously doesn't help with density.

Yeah, more density, because all that matters is the size of cities and their economy. 90% of children never waking up to the sounds of birds around their house? Who cares? 90% of grownups never plant even a tomatoes? What does it matter! Families of four or more confined to single-bathroom, two-bedroom apartments? The cosier, the better! The most important bit is that the cheap workforce reaches their dull jobs in time to make the city work for the elite and God forbid they don't behave "ecologically efficient" when doing so!

> God forbid they don't behave "ecologically efficient" when doing so

I like how you casually take a dump on being environmentally friendly. Yes, city dwellers do have less of an impact on the environment. Like all animals we like as much space as possible. But unlike other animals we don’t need it to survive.

If more of us fit in cities, there would be more space that could be left for wild animals. Maybe that equilibrium will help the planet flourish for longer. That’s actually a good thing, even if your condescending comment won’t acknowledge it.

- high density cities

- rewilding

- fast and expansive rail network

- right to roam

Get these things right and we can lower our environmental footprint whilst maintaining - or even improving - quality of life for the average individual.

A rail network is only part of the solution: It certainly won't visit many small towns. A robust bus service truly needs to be in place as well so that folks can travel from town to town to train.

Heck, trains don't even have to be fast for much of it: Simply making passenger trains a priority would be a huge improvement - right now, passenger trains have to wait for freight trains.

Rail networks in the UK once visited even small villages. It can be done but requires political will.

If the settlements are very small then the number of people driving to the nearest station will be low anyway.

I’m optimistic for services that are halfway between bus and taxi.

The US is considerably less dense than the UK. We could afford lots more rail in higher density areas, rail to everywhere doesn't make any sense (we have freight tracks, the part that wouldn't make sense is frequent passenger service).

My county is rural but not that rural and has a density of 12 per km². It's a 2 hour drive to a small city.

When we talk about where would rail work there are really only two or three places worth talking about; California and everything east of I-35.

As an example, the Midwest has roughly the same population as France, and the TGV network overlaid kind of lines up with major population centers. https://pedestrianobservations.com/2021/04/04/european-urban...

> It certainly won't visit many small towns.

Some people who constantly advocate for dense urban often would also rather small towns just didn't exist. Dense urban for everybody! They imagine utopia to be a hand full of dense cities, surrounded by wilderness untouched by human habitation, with high speed train tracks crisscrossing that wilderness to get people from one dense city to another. No roads, no cars, no suburbs, no towns or rural villages. Just pack everyone into these urban islands. Things like bus service, and "last mile" are not needed in this utopia.

A lot of Americans (including some density advocates) also do not realize that you can have very small scale density.

Three narrowish three-story houses replacing one McMansion is still a tripling of density on a single lot. Take this Dutch village for instance: https://www.melbtravel.com/edam-netherlands-village-preserve...

I mean... I don't think I've ever planted a tomato in my life, and I don't feel like a hollow shell performing a simulacrum of life?

(I have planted potatoes though)

I recall my niece visiting my new house in the bundus. She saw the milky way for the first time at 11 years old. It has been raining and foggy on the way there but it cleared up a a bit before we got to the house. She had no idea the night sky isn't a dull shade of orange with the moon. All she might have seen was sparse clouds and a blanket of shining stars too numerous to count, almost like a diamond dress (her words not mine)

Consequently, it's not something we consciously think about. We just assume everyone has seen the night sky. I certainly never thought seeing the stars and the milky way would mean so much for an 11 year old. She wanted to stay outside so she could stare at them all night. But the mosquitoes, bless them, put a stop to those plans.

Nah mate, tomatoes are completely different from potatoes. Truly life changing. I pity the 90% who hasn’t planted one. /s

It's the best way to get truly acquainted with the repeated deaths of life forms you care for.

I had a similar relationship with the phrase "can't even boil an egg". I never liked eggs growing up, so I learnt to cook quite a few significantly more complicated dishes several years before I learnt how to boil an egg.

Notice the sleight of hand in this comment. Those who oppose development posture as if it’s urbanists who are interested in enforcing their way of life on everyone else, but it’s quite plainly the other way around.

Only one side in this debate wants to make laws that encode their particular housing preferences in law. It’s the side that wants to prevent new construction, not the side that wants to allow people to make free choices in an open market.

Bigger city density means less demand on outskirts and easier life for anyone who wants to live there, i.e. cheaper prices, less regulations, smaller commute.

Well, we know what the alternative is. People have less tomato planting time because they spend longer commuting.

So we optimize to put people close to their jobs so they get lots of leisure time with their family.

If they don't want that they can always live farther out. That way everyone is happy.

That's not the alternative at all. The alternative is sensible city planning with mixed zoning neighborhoods that create comfortable centers all around the city. Add metros, bike lanes, and parks and you have a pleasant city instead of a concrete jungle or a suburban sprawl.

I'll believe it when I see it. Every American development like this is a massive money hole.

Look around Europe and you can see it. The reason US city development is a money hole is because you do city-level urban services in sprawling communities. The tax-payer density is just not high enough to economically support the cost of that infrastructure.

Sure, I used to live there. But that's no model for US cities. It's like transplanting a cow's stomach into me to help me digest grass.

The political situation and the relative expectations of the local communities are sufficiently different so as to cause European style urban planning to fail here. You have to engineer to the human and political constraints as well.

US towns and cities are drunk on debt and bailouts and that is a competitive constraint on growth.

> 90% of children never waking up to the sounds of birds around their house?

As someone who grew up in such an environment, 90+% of my peers spent the entirety of our adolescence doing as much as possible to get away from suburban hells like that. And you know what's ironic? I have way more access to actual nature now that I live in a city close to some national parks than I did when I was younger and was trapped in endless suburbia.

In London there are "protected vistas" - it's the reason why the shard and the walkie-talkie buildings are odd shapes.

https://mappinglondon.co.uk/2011/londons-protected-vistas/

Or tax empty apartments? Not sure if that's done in the US

>>Expecting a city skyline to never change is ridiculous. The only problem is that so few people use these buildings. The best kind of density regulation requires _more_ density.

You're right, yet there are many cities that still restrict building development in the name of protecting certain views.

One example is the City of Vancouver that has a page dedicated to explaining the views they are trying to protect for real estate zoning.[1]

[1] https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/protecting-va...

Austin, TX has laws dictating certain views of the state capitol building are not to be blocked. Personally I don't have an issue with it, there's still plenty of other views to block so the real estate people should be happy, but probably not land owners who would earn a lot more for their land if the laws didn't exist.

> Well, if you want to ruin their investment then issue building permits for more of them.

That will just expand the market for such investments and make even larger areas unlivable.

Not even. plenty of first-world cities expect skyline changes. This attitude toward change (anti-change) comes from SF and has migrated elsewhere. NYC was the antithesis to this attitude but apparently it's not immune to this line of thinking.

It's like they think mountains do not move. Rivers always run the same course. It's comical and tragic.

> This attitude toward change (anti-change) comes from SF and has migrated elsewhere. NYC was the antithesis to this attitude but apparently it's not immune to this line of thinking.

NYC created the world's first zoning laws in response to a building casting shadows: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/zoning/background.page

This was back from an era where the main contributors to disease were thought to be lack of air and light.

The zoning described was actually quite generous by modern standards; you could technically build as much as you wanted as long as it fit the prescribed cake tier shape, and you could build theoretically unlimited height on a certain portion, I believe the center quarter of the lot. There is no city in the US today where you could build something as tall as the Empire State Building as of right; and yet the older regulations allowed that.

> There is no city in the US today where you could build something as tall as the Empire State Building as of right

I'm not sure what you mean by that. 6 buildings taller than the ESB have been completed in NYC since 2014, mostly residential towers of the sort described in the OP.

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

When I say "as of right" I mean that all you need is ownership of the lot in question. The Empire State Building was built only with ownership of the lot it was built on and the owner was legally allowed to build as tall as they want.

Nearly all tall buildings in New York these days are legally built through assembling "air rights." Zoning has predetermined height/FAR limits for all lots, but in certain areas it is possible to sell currently unused rights and transfer them to the owner of another lot. This allows some developers to build taller but keeps overall neighborhood square footage around a prescribed limit. This way, you can build a spiky tower or two here and there on Billionaire's Row (the general name for the area) but the street cannot become a wall of them.

More info on air rights: https://streeteasy.com/blog/what-are-nyc-air-rights-all-abou...

I see, thanks. The term "as of right" was not familiar to me. It looked like a typo for an intended "as of right now".

Yeah planning and property jargon could afford to be more inclusive.

But these days in most American cities there is surprisingly little you can actually do with your property without subjecting yourself to additional review or exceptions.

Some amount of community review is good at a base level, but the gone wrong example YIMBY activists likes to trot out is the ridiculous example of San Francisco's "historic laundromat" saga. https://missionlocal.org/2018/06/the-strange-and-terrible-sa...

Even once a building is built, zoning legally constricts what you can do inside it. Most residential developments do not allow operating small businesses from the home (you can't be a hairdresser in your own house). I'm not sure how exactly this will play out once the pandemic is over and nosy neighbors start poking around at who's WFH. In fact this already happened to a Seattle cidery: https://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/food/article/yonder-cide...

The insane height of these building is far beyond the argument for vertical density, though.

Yeah I think 10-12 floors is plenty and still "climbable"

"Well, if you want to ruin their investment then issue building permits for more of them"

For the past 30 years this has not happened even once in a major city. Developer will not build so many building as to drip the price. Maybe its time to accept that you are perpetuating a myth.

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