Comment by toss1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by toss1 | Hacker News Reader

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Ah, returning to counterfactual over-dramatizing

I'm not talking about a garden city or walled fortress of any kind, and I said so above. I'm talking about a semi-rural town where people have valued nature and open space.

And no, destroying that to supposedly make housing for low-income people who are "fighting to the death for a place to live" will help zero of them. Because even if you gave the housing for near free, there are zero local jobs and zero local public transportation options to jobs, or even to groceries (nearest is 15min+ drive away). So, they'd need to jump up to meet the expenses of a two-car household, with car payments, insurance, maintenance, fuel, etc.. Plus spend hours commuting to work. Plus daycare, not cheap in the area. If you are that low-wage and have to support the automobiles and commuting, it literally costs more to get to work than you earn. You will have destroyed something of great value created over decades at vast personal expense, and helped no one.

The point is to put the housing where it makes sense. E.g., near jobs and public transport, and where it doesn't destroy open lands or literally endangered species habitat.

New York city could put plenty more housing right in Manhattan, but you don't see even the most radical pro-housing types suggesting they build over Central Park to do it.

> New York city could put plenty more housing right in Manhattan, but you don't see even the most radical pro-housing types suggesting they build over Central Park to do it.

Central Park acts as counterweight to the very dense urban area of Manhattan, which doesn't have that much place for building anew. Your merry walled garden doesn't have that excuse.

In fact it does have exactly the same reason for being. Stop arguing non-facts, and microscopic context. There is no walled garden, or gated community of come imagined tycoons here (I'm sure there are elsewhere, but not where I'm talking about).

The town I'm talking about is well outside the city, but also one of the closer ones that actually has habitat, and in particular habitat for endangered species. It is EXACTLY this kind of preservation (and in fact, much larger zoning) that is needed to serve as a counterweight for high-density development.

I'm all for wherever it is already dense enough to basically exclude natural habitats, increase the density. But wherever it is sparse enough to have maintained natural habitat, decrease the density, not increase it.

You evidently have not noticed we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event, the previous one being the Cretaceous (~65 million years ago) asteroid impact catastrophe, and this one being entirely human-caused.

Simply encouraging blanket urban/suburban sprawl will only exacerbate that catastrophe. Which would be particularly tragic, since the need is entirely temporary, as birthrates are declining and the problem will be the opposite in a few decades as population declines (and already is in many countries), but the endangered species will already have been killed off never to return.

Personally, I paid substantially higher cost, of hard-earned money, and continue to pay taxes on a lot where 75% of it is absolutely unbuildable - I can't even cut a tree in that zone without permission. If I were greedy, the best move would be to advocate for ending zoning and environmental regs, and let me fill in the wetlands and build multiple units and subdivide. Doing that would easily yield enough money to retire wealthy in less than two years. But fortunately, there is a town where most people value the environment. It was actually hard to find, since there are many, actually MOST towns around prioritized development, because, money.

So, yes, just like Central Park, on a larger scale, this is one of the counterweights, and we pay more and incur large opportunity costs to maintain that counterweight.

Bla bla bla.

Got it. You post simplistic opinions based on overdramatized notions of things that exist only in fiction, and consistently ignore facts and never actually engage with a real situation or reasoning that might change your opinion. Plus a quick check of your other comments shows similar uninformed yet strong opinions, failure to provide substantive answers to questions, and even admonishing others to "grow up". Wow.

Sorry, my mistake to reply above. Have the life you deserve, but here is not the place for it.

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