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What's the solution? Keep building up?

 

There are things like historical preservation that keep that from happening. My house is historically preserved, you literally can't do anything to the outside of this lot without clearance from a bunch of different people. My dad's entire neighborhood is historically preserved, and it's in the city. Even before that you couldn't build a building taller than 3 stories. NIMBYism at its finest, but I don't know what you'd do about it.

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1 hour ago, Fizzzzle said:

What's the solution? Keep building up?

 

Yep, across all segments of the built environment, not just the "hot" neighborhoods. When 90% of a city is zoned for SFH, the fire hose of gentrification gets blasted at a handful of "trendy" neighborhoods (which are usually the ones with intact, historic traditional built pattern). Every part of a community needs to be allowed to develop, incrementally, to the next level of intensity. You know, like how we used to do shit for thousands of years until the fucking automobile and suburban experiment. Most of what we have today is horrendously fragile and rigid, built to a finished state, with no hope for adaptation.

 

This post consists mainly of Strong Towns jargon. I suggest you look them up.

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14 minutes ago, Uaarkson said:

 

Yep, across all segments of the built environment, not just the "hot" neighborhoods. When 90% of a city is zoned for SFH, the fire hose of gentrification gets blasted at a handful of "trendy" neighborhoods (which are usually the ones with intact, historic traditional built pattern). Every part of a community needs to be allowed to develop, incrementally, to the next level of intensity. You know, like how we used to do shit for thousands of years until the fucking automobile and suburban experiment. Most of what we have today is horrendously fragile and rigid, built to a finished state, with no hope for adaptation.

 

This post consists mainly of Strong Towns jargon. I suggest you look them up.

 

The thing is you don't need skyscrapers everywhere. Paris is something like 50k people per square mile and that's just from basically the entire city being 5-6 story buildings, not from highrises. 

 

And since you mentioned Strong Towns, gotta love how people love to harp on about respecting homeowners but SFH owners are actually getting subsidized by apartment dwellers on the cost/person utilities, road maintenance, etc costs. 

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1 hour ago, Fizzzzle said:

What's the solution? Keep building up?

 

There are things like historical preservation that keep that from happening. My house is historically preserved, you literally can't do anything to the outside of this lot without clearance from a bunch of different people. My dad's entire neighborhood is historically preserved, and it's in the city. Even before that you couldn't build a building taller than 3 stories. NIMBYism at its finest, but I don't know what you'd do about it.

Reducing minimum lot width so to essentially legalize row homes in existing neighborhoods could more than double existing density with no noticable change to the neighborhood. Throw in legalized accessory dwelling units and permissive light commercial business zoning (think a coffee shop or small grocery in a neighborhood) and you've got the recipe for a good functional urban neighborhood

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1 minute ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

Reducing minimum lot width so to essentially legalize row homes in existing neighborhoods could more than double existing density with no noticable change to the neighborhood. Throw in legalized accessory dwelling units and permissive light commercial business zoning (think a coffee shop or small grocery in a neighborhood) and you've got the recipe for a good functional urban neighborhood

Sure, I just mean what do you do about historic preservation. A lot of laws need repealed to do anything about that. Repealing laws is a lot harder than enacting them.

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1 minute ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

Reducing minimum lot width so to essentially legalize row homes in existing neighborhoods could more than double existing density with no noticable change to the neighborhood. Throw in legalized accessory dwelling units and permissive light commercial business zoning (think a coffee shop or small grocery in a neighborhood) and you've got the recipe for a good functional urban neighborhood

 

NIMBYs think Tokyo is all Blade Runner but it also has lots of more residential areas with small detached houses where the neighborhoods are way denser than most of the US.

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2 minutes ago, Fizzzzle said:

Sure, I just mean what do you do about historic preservation. A lot of laws need repealed to do anything about that. Repealing laws is a lot harder than enacting them.

What about historic preservation? There's a lot of buildings with that designation that just aren't historical or even noteworthy. I live in Richmond VA and there's a lot of historical districts and overlays that just are not much of note other than the buildings are old. Even still, expanding the urban form from suburban to urban is a greater get, in terms of housing and land, than retrofitting historical districts

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5 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

What about historic preservation? There's a lot of buildings with that designation that just aren't historical or even noteworthy. I live in Richmond VA and there's a lot of historical districts and overlays that just are not much of note other than the buildings are old. Even still, expanding the urban form from suburban to urban is a greater get, in terms of housing and land, than retrofitting historical districts

I agree, I just mean how do you expand when historic preservation has become a NIMBY tool. If I'm making sense. In Portland, we have entire districts that are historically preserved. I remember the catalyst for my dad's neighborhood was a 3 story building that got built next to an old bed and breakfast, the whole area basically within a couple square miles got historically preserved within a year, now you literally can't build anything by law.

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I don't know who here has a Defector membership, but Burneko's take-downs of Elon Musk's dumbassery have been priceless:

GettyImages-1229892983.jpg?w=1080
DEFECTOR.COM

It’s not necessarily newsy or valuable to note that Elon Musk had a dumb idea online, but it’s important to note what, exactly, is dumb about the following idea, from very dumb idiot Elon Musk:...

 

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Just now, thewhyteboar said:

I don't know who here has a Defector membership, but Burneko's take-downs of Elon Musk's dumbassery have been priceless:

GettyImages-1229892983.jpg?w=1080
DEFECTOR.COM

It’s not necessarily newsy or valuable to note that Elon Musk had a dumb idea online, but it’s important to note what, exactly, is dumb about the following idea, from very dumb idiot Elon Musk:...

 

 

They can use the pedo submarines in the tunnels.

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This is absurdly overdue. You only need to try to walk the Brooklyn Bridge upper deck once to know this is true.

 

28nymayor-sotc-videoSixteenByNine3000.jp
WWW.NYTIMES.COM

Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to add bike lanes on the Brooklyn and the Queensboro Bridges to encourage cycling as the city recovers from the pandemic.

 

Qfjs1C0.png

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  • 2 weeks later...

In Houston they have started adding in the green marked bike paths, but the physical barriers are these relatively small road humps (I'd guess 6-8") tall. Enough to grab the attention of a distracted driver that veers into the bike lane, but not enough if they straight up lose control. They have built out some bike paths along the bayous where there are no cars at all. Pretty neat to see how much it's changed in just the last 2-3 years in the city. Our new drive in is being surrounded by 3-4 story multi family and row style housing, replacing a lot of traditional single family homes in the area. Only downside is that it's definitely forcing out folks who grew up in the area as it is mostly young white collar workers moving into these new developments.

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On 2/8/2021 at 6:34 PM, sblfilms said:

In Houston they have started adding in the green marked bike paths, but the physical barriers are these relatively small road humps (I'd guess 6-8") tall. Enough to grab the attention of a distracted driver that veers into the bike lane, but not enough if they straight up lose control. They have built out some bike paths along the bayous where there are no cars at all. Pretty neat to see how much it's changed in just the last 2-3 years in the city. Our new drive in is being surrounded by 3-4 story multi family and row style housing, replacing a lot of traditional single family homes in the area. Only downside is that it's definitely forcing out folks who grew up in the area as it is mostly young white collar workers moving into these new developments.

Without forcing developers to make below market housing, this is what will happen. (There still may be below market housing, just in SFH/townhome format) The alternative is these older homes stay and the current/traditional residents leave anyway. Gotta keep building, though. Houston is doing far better on home affordability than most other big cities, though it still has issues of its own like the displacement you mentioned.

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