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Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, no.

I spent time in Singapore. Incredible transit system, carefully designed "Garden City" with plenty of outdoor areas, modern, efficient, affordable public housing.

And what did people aspire to? Single family homes, with their own yard and a car. What HN sees as "people are forced to live in the suburbs", is in reality, people just choosing what they like best.

Same in all the other countries I've lived in. Sure, 20-somethings love living in "hip" cities with "trendy" restaurants and "fun" bars to go and are willing to trade all that for tiny apartments. I don't deny that.

But a very substantial part of the population don't want that. They want space, quiet neighborhoods and are willing to have to drive to get that.

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I'm very confused. Singapore doesn't have the space for single family housing. The vast majority of homes there are flats/apartments.

https://www.singstat.gov.sg/find-data/search-by-theme/househ...

Yes, but the most valuable are the freehold GCBs.

I think what he means is that, given the choice, people there would opt for a good class bungalow (essentially your 'detached home', but most will never be able to afford it).

That is an obvious statement, but the analogy breaks down a bit as in Singapore, whether you live in a GCB or in HDB (social housing), everything is relatively close by regardless. Hence, there isn't really much of a trade-off at all - living in a GCB just affords more space and privacy (at an exponentially inflated cost).

Good class bungalows are not your typical single family home. They are on huge lots even for a US single family home.

There are townhomes (shophouses), duplexes, single family homes as options as well.

“To qualify as a GCB, the property must have at least 1,400 square metres (approx. 15,070 sq. ft.) of land area, and the bungalow itself is limited to a maximum of two storeys in height”

People in HDBs want to live in condo, condos want to live in shophouses, shophouses want to live in detached freehold homes.

Everybody wants more space. And despite the great transit system, parts of Singapore can be more remote to the point a car being almost a requirement. And that’s what many people strive for.

Sure. Everyone also aspires to fly private.

The point being we need to figure out how to not destroy nature while allowing people to live meaningful lives and the suburbs ain’t that.

That may be true in some countries, but it's not true in the US or Canada. In fact your comment is just bizarre when you look at the numbers.

The US has enough land to give every single person (man, woman, child - not household) almost 7 acres of land.

The idea that we need pack ourselves in to <1% of the land mass in dense urban cores or else, as you put it we can't live "meaningful lives" (do you decide what's meaningful?) or "destroying nature" is just wrong.

And the best part? We can afford it! We don't need the federal government backing "jumbo" leans for $1M apartments in San Francisco - instead they can back mortgages for 5 homes in the mid-West.

And this is a big shocker - a lot of it's already developed because we need places to grow food!

How do you economically electrify all those those evenly-spaced 7-acre plots of land? How do you build roads to all of them? How do you deliver mail to all of them? How do you get water and sewer lines to all of them (wells don't work everywhere, and septic tanks pollute and just generally suck)? Hell, what company is going to lay down fiber or even coax to all of them? How do you build grocery stores such that people don't have to drive 90 minutes to get one, but there aren't so few customers per store that most of the produce spoils before it can be bought?

I know you're exaggerating for effect, but every degree that you spread people out means greater and greater investments in infrastructure and utilities you need to build and maintain, and some things we take for granted today just become infeasible.

And I agree that it's ridiculous to pay $1,000 per square foot (or more!) for housing in San Francisco. But that's not because of some sort of natural consequence of things, it's actually because it's not dense enough, and the political will to force more building just isn't there. Housing is so expensive here because, despite all the bad things about the city, despite the alleged COVID exodus, we still have far far more people who want to live here than the available housing can support.

Who pays for the infrastructure to connect all of these places?

Why, the taxpayer does.

Usually the developers of the subdivision? Hence the buyers of the property?

I take you’ve never asked utilities the costs for hook ups? They are happy to give you a quote.

It’s sure not the taxpayers the next town over paying $50,000 for a sewer hookup.

Wow you really hate nature huh?

Like sure the space exists (ignoring the fact that most of that land is inhospitable and/or already used for agriculture), but maybe we should leave something for the other species?

But hey, maybe your 7 acres is at the top of the Sierra and you can get some good fire insurance.

For what it’s worth I have 0 aspiration to fly private and also 0 aspiration for a suburban McMansion.

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