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Comment by ryukafalz | Hacker News Reader

Even if you ignore the racist roots mentioned in a sibling thread (and I maintain that you shouldn’t), we will need low-income housing as long as there are people with low incomes! And it’s best for everyone involved if that housing is commingled in every community rather than being concentrated in one place. It’s well documented that the neighborhood you grow up in has a huge impact on how upwardly mobile you’ll be if you’re in a low-income family.

Look to Vienna’s social housing program for an example of this done very well. That doesn’t look like it attracts problems, now does it?

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I don't know what to tell you. I just don't want to be surrounded by high-rise apartment buildings. I didn't buy a nice house in a nice suburb to stare at giant cement buildings. It's that simple.

You're building a straw man.

The reality is that in a suburb far from infrastructure, investors won't want to build a 30 stories building.

But they might want to build a 3-4 units building, something 2-3 stories maximum. But this is currently ILLEGAL. Only a single house is possible and ANY densification is impossible.

You go to the downtown of older cities and you don't see giant cement buildings. But you do see livable neighbourhood with buildings that are just slightly higher than the norm and can house multiple families.

I'm not building a strawman at all. Let me make my position even more clear: I don't want to live near multi-family housing. I want it to remain illegal for it to be built near me.

Leave the suburbs alone. Every single place you people infect with your ideas turns to hell.

People need to live somewhere and the population is growing. Where do you suggest that the kids of current residents live?

Maybe Im naive, but whats wrong with building entirely bew towns and cities? Last time I flew across the US, I saw vast wilderness with a few tiny populated places here and there.

There’s nothing broadly wrong with building entirely new cities, but it’s incredibly difficult to do for a variety of reasons. Most attempts to do this fail. Expecting new cities to absorb all of the increase in population is unrealistic.

If you’re talking new suburbs of existing cities, well, that’s basically the only expansion we’ve done in many places. Some problems with that:

- It leads to more driving needed to get to the city (and thus more emissions, exactly what we need to avoid right now).

- If the implication is that you’re building outward because the inner suburbs are getting more expensive to live in (which will happen if they don’t densify at all and the population grows), then you’re basically forcing most kids to move far away from their parents/grandparents/etc. Some people won’t want to live near their family but many do, and being able to maintain those close family ties feels important.

low density suburbia only survives by siphoning funds away from the nearby city.

So a lone farm in the middle of nowhere must be an economic blackhole that siphons money even from suburbia?

if you run electricity, water, sewage, fiber optics, and roads to it, absolutely! The problem with suburbs is that they demand the same utilities as dense areas without paying the increased cost of that infrastructure.

Who builds the roads and power grids for suburbia? Is it city dwellers or rural folks? Where do they get raw materials and construction equipment? Who produces food? Who makes furniture, cars and all other stuff? So what do city dwellers actually do to subsidise suburbia and rural country?

who is you people and what ideas are we talking about?

"And it’s best for everyone..."

How exactly is it best for the well-off? I'm curious what pros and cons it would have for them.

Where I live, the hospital is struggling to hire nurses due to the lack of housing options. That's not even the 'low income' bracket. Teachers struggle to find housing as well. Those are both things that high income people need, especially the former.

Restaurants are shutting down for want of workers. Because they can't afford it.

Low income workers provide valuable services in our communities. Telling them they can't live where they work creates all kinds of problems, both social and environmental - they often drive in to do those jobs, creating more pollution and traffic.

Especially along the restaurant line, it seems the rich people would rather be stingy than pay people enough to perform those services and live in the same community. It seems that being able to pay the lowest possible is still a benefit to the rich, even if it's detrimental to society.

One practical benefit for the well-off is having people in close proximity who can staff their local restaurants, shops, schools, etc.

It's much easier to hire and retain staff for your business when your pool of potential employees isn't a 30+ minute bus ride away.

For the well-off residents, it means better and more consistent service at their neighborhood grocery, coffee shop, restaurant, pharmacy, etc.

That can be good. I guess many of the cities I've lived in or near had cheaper housing within 30 minutes of most areas.

Social cohesion and avoidance of class warfare.

Historically, the decline of most late-stage empires was triggered by spiraling economic bifurcation.

Sometimes, it's better to be less wealthy but on top of an ordered country vs more wealthy and without the rule of law as society breaks down.

That's good for society. I doubt that many of the moderately wealthy would really be a cause of this. It seems the ultrawealthy are the main cause in the downfall of empires, as they hold the most influence and become leeches off the people working. And now we democratize those negative decisions via things like REITs, so everyone's 401k is part of the problem.

It promotes empathy with and reduces bias against those of different racial and economic backgrounds, for one. It’s easier for stereotypes to take hold in highly segregated environments because you don’t get much interaction with those outside your own groups.

I mean, that's good for society. But that's not a benefit for the well off who rely on their "network" (aka nepotism and cronyism).

When there's no more food to eat, the poor will always turn to eating the rich, if we want to take this to the extreme (or, well, when there's nowhere left to live, they'll live inside the rich, I guess?).

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