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Comment by wilde | Hacker News Reader

Tokyo. It requires building way, way more units in more compact ways than Americans would currently be comfortable with.

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Some Americans are certainly comfortable living in such situations (there’s no shortage of people creatively making it work in Manhattan, for instance, and tiny homes have a following and even TV shows)

The problems are with pearl-clutching neighbors.

You mean the problems are with people who bought their homes because of XYZ, which you now want to change out from under them, even though a PROMISE was made to those people by the Government in the form of the zoning rules in place. But rules that destroy what made a person's MOST VALUABLE asset VALUABLE to them shouldn't matter if that gets in the way of what YOU WANT, right? Their entire lives should be able to be disrupted, they should be forced from their home, because you no longer want to keep the promise made when they invested THEIR ENTIRE LIFE into their home. You want to move in and change the rules, just like the guy who guy who buys the house next to the airport then tries to get the airport shut down. You do know that you can, like, move to Manhattan, right?

Sorry the little people are getting in the way of this great leap forward you wish to make at their expense.

EDIT: Anyone who wants to force high density housing on others should ONLY be allowed to take vacations on community loving cruise ships. I mean, there is no valid reason to not want to vacation on cruise ships, and by putting all vacationers together it improves efficient, maximizes space, and reduced impact, right? That is the only acceptable vacation.

All of these rules were put into place in the later half of the 20th century. This is a really recent development in the country’s history.

These high density areas, and even many low density areas, have a housing shortage. A lot of the current inflation is being driven by rent. Now grown ups cannot buy homes in communities they’ve grown up in. Is the alternative supposed to be abandoning social networks or living in the streets?

I'm afraid it's slightly different. Many Americans are not comfortable with fellow Americans living that way near them. They have a strong in-group bias. You'll see that in the surveys about "want to live near people like me".

It's why SF has transplant as a pejorative. Personally, I am comfortable living around people not like me or who have chosen a different path. And I think there are many Americans who do and that the thrust of progress here comes from those people: the ones who are comfortable with change.

People don't like high density because it sucks. I want a yard, not a tragedy of the commons communal space. I want to be able to remodel without having to get a commities approval. I want to have lavender flowers in my garden because they remind me of my mom. I want to sit on my porch and drink coffee in peace, not have communal tables. I don't want to come home and not deal with vomit in my entry way/elevator. I don't want an HOA/COOP Board gatekeeping and policing me.

People don't leave college and move into dorms of 'in-groups' that meet their bias.

Do you make up in your head your partners movitions, frustrations, wants in your head too? Or do you just dehumanize motivations for people who don't hold your 'correct' opinion?

There's a big gap between SV and Tokyo.

SF has half the population density of Brooklyn, not even close to Manhattan.

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