Comment by thewebguyd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thewebguyd | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The problem is when every neighborhood is NIMBY, something has to give or the problem will never be solved. At the end of the day, valuing aesthetics, parking, or quiet is a preference. Having shelter near jobs, schools and public transit is human necessity which is what should be prioritized.

Freezing the SFH neighborhood also doesn't protect the community long term, as NIMBYs believe. When supply gets restricted, prices go up. It prices out the local teachers, service workers, aging family, and even the NIMBY's own children get priced out, until now it's just a neighborhood of million dollar+ SFHs with no young families, no local workforce. It's economic segregation.

Continuing to allow local vetoes and restrictive zoning just pushes us out further and further into unsustainable suburban sprawl, without the transit to match, and boosting emissions.

Not popular in individualistic America, but when we have the housing crisis we do, the needs of the many are going to have to take priority over the needs of the few NIMBYs.

But why does the high density housing have to be where the SFH are? Why does it need to share the parking, facilities, retail, roads, schools, etc. of something that was built and has been maintained and evolved for 50-100 years? Why not build the high density with it's own transit, roads, malls, parks, schools etc?

This is how it's done in the rest of the world, certainly Korea, Japan, and China. I see this in England and France as well. They develop a high density area with new facilities that can grow and evolve for how people want to live there, rather than mowing down houses (in communities of color) or plopping 5-7 story apartments without parking or parks right next to single story SFH, as developers like to do in the US.

I assume it's because it's more profitable for the developers. They don't have to build anything, but the part they can immediately sell, and they ride on the value of the neighborhood created by the people who already live there. I think some infill near commercial districts or malls also faces much less "NIMBY" criticism.

To give a more personal example: I like the location and view of where you live. I like the plants you water, and you keep the house looking clean. I want to just build another large room on top of your house, where me and a bunch of friends will live. We'll just share the stairs, hallways, and front door, and of course our share of the water and electric bill. We probably won't be too loud most nights, and usually when friends come over they won't use your bathroom or take anything from your rooms, or at least we'll ask them not to. Sorry about the construction noise while we do it, and just think you'll get to meet so many new people! Sorry that the part of your house you still own will be worth less than your neighbors when we're done, but that's the price you need to pay for living in a nice place and keeping it up.

The argument that SFH infrastructure repair is subsidized by new building is a much better one. Of course that was true of the tax increases and subsidy of the original town, when the SFH were built as well.

> But why does the high density housing have to be where the SFH are?

It depends on where said SFHs are. Cities need to eventually grow upwards! If we never allowed land-reuse Manhattan would still be 2 stories on the whole borough.

I live in Toronto and the harshest NIMBYs are adjacent to downtown and/or subway stops. They fight tooth and nail against even 6 story condominiums on the major high streets (Margret Atwood, who lives in a large SFH close to downtown was among them recently-ish). The ultimate result is that we have a handful of extremely dense clusters of condominiums centred around a few subway stops that then super-concentrate people and cause extreme crowding on transit, amenities, etc. It would be better if you had mid-rise multi-unit dwellings more spread out.

It's actually become an acute problem in so many ways. The people who own the SFHs tend be over 50 and childless. The result is that many schools in these neighbourhoods are at barely 20% capacity, while the condominiums (where most younger families can afford to live) are causing the schools near them to be overflowing with kids.

> This is how it's done in the rest of the world, certainly Korea, Japan, and China. I see this in England and France as well.

The countries broadly speaking default to higher density than North America for historical and economic reasons. They have their own issues, but the majority of Koreans live in high rises and Japan rebuilds their buildings constantly: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/nov/16/japan-reusabl...

All of Tokyo was basically rebuilt after the war, because it was bombed. Much of it was not originally built to earthquake standards. Rebuilding high density in bombed US SFH neighborhoods, would certainly make sense.

I completely disagree with broader point of "cultural reasons" why Asia built high density, because it is all so recent. Mostly in the 1970s-2010s. They built entirely NEW infrastructure, with transit (e.g. subway, highspeed rail), malls, streets, commercial and residential buildings. Look anywhere in Korea, look at the rise of Shin-Yokohama (outside Tokyo), look at the highrise Urbs outside of Paris (out all the way to Rennes).

Why is the center of Paris still only few stories high after the Hausmann era when it was laregely built over 150 years ago. Why don't they put 50 story skyscrapers in Paris... because they don't want to, and they push the "density" to the edges where new facilities can support them. But the housing prices in Paris are astronomical (just as they are in London).

If you want to talk about closing schools, because there aren't children for them... then great! Build new high density where the school used to be. Build a school into the building, put a subway under the school with a connecting mall. Then at least the surrounding neighborhood that has been paying 70 years of taxes doesn't have to deal with the extra traffic/parking of the new construction. Maybe they'll even enjoy the new mall, and foot traffic will help support existing commercial infrastructure.

> If you want to talk about closing schools, because there aren't children for them... then great! Build new high density where the school used to be. Build a school into the building, put a subway under the school with a connecting mall.

You realize the same people in those neighbourhoods fight things like this for the exact same reasons? These people (much like London/Paris) are externalizing housing costs onto others. Now those people in far out areas need enormous infrastructure to move them to work, etc.

> Then at least the surrounding neighborhood that has been paying 70 years of taxes doesn't have to deal with the extra traffic/parking of the new construction. Maybe they'll even enjoy the new mall, and foot traffic will help support existing commercial infrastructure.

(In Toronto at least) the lower density areas are subsidized by the higher density areas (much of which is also commercial). It costs more per capita to lay sewer, pave roads, police, etc these SFH areas. Also, they would fight the same conversions of schools in their neighbourhoods for the same traffic/shadows/etc reasons. And you can't economically build a subway to a smallish "dense" footprint in a former school ground, and even if you could you'd be recreating the same "ultra dense" problems that Toronto already has.

Look at this image: http://images.unoapp.com/boxdata/asset52207/images/4800Yonge...

There is essentially only expensive SFH and relatively expensive to build high rises with almost nothing in between. You're saying that to protect (and continue to subsidize) a bunch of people's lifestyles that new residents should only be expanded into the outskirts of urban zones?

Where in the United States do you see space within existing urban areas that people live/work today, where there is empty space for high density housing, transit, retail, etc, which does not abut or live on top of low density SFH suburbs?

Because I've lived in a few of the largest urban areas and the answer is "nowhere near the jobs."

So you're saying that they build giant malls, office building, and (what is left of) manufacturing in cities by tearing down SFH?

Certainly, not what I've seen. So people coming for "the jobs" DESERVE the kind of nearby, low cost, transit friendly housing that does not currently exist, while the people who live there DESERVE to have it taken from them at a price lower than the housing will currently bring?

Why?

I think you might be surprised at what percentage of the residential land in basically every metro area, and even percentage of all land in the metro area, is zoned for SFH only[1]. In the USA, he last century of development was zoned for SFH, and there's not a budget or state capacity to build sufficient transit out to the exurban areas where there is land for new neighborhoods.

[1] Here are some for reference: City / Metro Area Residential Land Zoned Single-Family Only (%) - San Jose, CA 94% - Arlington, TX 89% - Charlotte, NC 84% - Seattle, WA 81% - Chicago, IL 79% - Portland, OR 77% - Los Angeles, CA 75% - Minneapolis, MN 70% - Washington, D.C. 36% - New York City, NY 15%

Seattle, Chicago, and Los Angeles are surprisingly high, but hundreds of square miles of SFH offsets a lot of lakefront high-rises.

But this is the whole reason people complain about NIMBYs - there are no other backyards left!

You might be onto something. Maybe the lack of central planning in US, and most reliance on private developers, prevents the introduction of denser housing.

Not to go full Hausmann (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann's_renovation_of_Pari...) and eminent-domain the half of the city and rebuild a 1/5 of the city in higher density buildings, in 15 years. But we could ramp it up and start with the low hanging fruits, with empty buildings, parking lots, gas stations, etc. Show results. Show the building owners that they could building higher on their lot, do the math for them, stream line the permitting, help with financing.

Here is also pace to consider. We are biological creatures, and we only support change at a certain pace, without going fully stressed.

> parking lots

This would do a lot on its own. Remove parking minimums and pull out the parking lots. This is why transit is important, and single occupancy vehicles as the primary means of human transport in urban areas is just not sustainable nor is it efficient.

We waste so much space to parking that does absolutely nothing but act as property storage.

They built it somewhere someone lived and owned the land, they do not built a town in England of high density in a field that no one has occupied for generations, connected to new roads that didnt exist before.

Yes as we add density we do add some items like extra schools, sure, as the population is growing.

No one is going to build a town of 100,000 off a new non-existent highway they also built somewhere in CA. It's going to go somewhere that has some density already (and has that density usually as it is near something desirable).

They also dont built is near where THE sfhs are (as in all), they built it near SOME of it. Thus the NIMBY desire for it to fall somewhere else. We cant make ALL the sprawl dense, we don't have the people for it. If the Bay Area counties had pop density of urban areas of East Bay across all of it, it would fit every CA resident with none left to populate LA, San Diego, Sacramento etc (not a recommendation, just a note that density can't be everywhere).

From the outside, it seems like Canary Warf was where most of the high density building in London was done. That wasn't nearby lots of low rise single family homes, was it?

Certainly, some people are moving to the Bay Area, but the rate of home building well exceeds the population growth rate of California (or England) which are occasionally negative. It's mostly a question of new people wanting to move to particular places they like. But ask, why do they like them, and how was that created? Also ask, what fraction of the residential homes are occupied. In California (especially in desirable areas), the answer to that is likely <90%. Nobody (especially not developers) want to raise taxes on empty houses/apartment/condos/retail, but maybe it would fill up if they did (and lower prices for people who want to rent/move in.

If all the things you describe came to fruition, the current residents will have to live with the consequences of their decisions and suffer a lower quality of life (which they don't want to do), and the problem would resolve itself.

Or in reality, desirable locations remain desirable, and the current residents who had a hand in making it desirable have a right to prevent a reduction of their quality of life for the benefit of people who would prefer to live there but are unable to successfully compete with others in the housing market.

Excessive land use restrictions and downzoning inherently reduce the "compete" of the housing market, on purpose, for winners of prior cycles (frequently the deceased relatives of current owners).

Absolutely, but this is just the opposite logical extension, corollary to "if we allow infinite development, there will only be a dystopia of super-high-density living everywhere".

Both things are bad, and we must "prioritize" a balance, not one or the other. It's perfectly possible to build inward/upward in some places, and outward in other places. It's perfectly possible to build affordable/high-density housing without ruining existing areas. It's perfectly possible to accept that some places are highly desirable because an infinite number of people can not live there - that certain amounts (high amounts) of development defeat the entire point by removing the desirability of those locations. We can strike a reasonable balance between allowing developers to do whatever they want without regard for infrastructure or community, vs, on the other end, not allowing any new construction in already-populated areas.

We can expand existing desirable areas reasonably, while also building new desirable areas, but that's difficult because it requires time and investment, and in the meantime it's not as "desirable" as people would like. The simple fact is that people are reproducing within and migrating into desirable areas at a rate that is not compatible with keeping those areas desirable, and developers are leveraging this conflict to pretend they can't build anywhere else, hence the crisis.

More shortly: You're understating the importance of quality of life (the concept of "home" is one of the most important things in the history of humanity), and implying a false conflict that we can't both have both quality of life and more development.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com