"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.
The average NYC studio is 50 m^2. The larger end for a Parisian studio is given to be 35 m^2.
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.
There's nothing forcing you maybe, but plenty of people will be stuck there because of circumstances.
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...
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.
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?
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.
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.
The sweet spot for residential in Hong Kong is about 30-40 stories.
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...
Different strokes I guess.
(I'm in a 1400 sq ft / 130 m^2 2/2 apt in ATX.)
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.
https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3115225/...
250m is the limit for strict regulation. Newer buildings tend to be around 100m.
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.
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.
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.
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