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by NonNefarious 1458 days ago
That doesn't follow at all. How will there "always be suburbs" if they're not protected from wholesale buyout and replacement with high-density housing blocks by developers and corporations?

Your last statement doesn't make sense either. If you want to live in a single-family-zoned area... you want to live there. If you don't like it, don't live there. WTF is the confusion?

1 comments

There will always be suburbs because a lot of Americans want suburbs (see this thread). America has plenty of land and so if people want suburbs and there is plenty of land to build them I don’t see them going extinct. In other places in this thread people point to places like Japan lacking suburbs, but the difference is that America is huge. If we allow denser zoning there will come a point at which enough dense housing has been built for the people that want it, right now that isn’t possible because it isn’t allowed.

You said “if you don’t like it don’t live there”, I’m saying that I would love to live somewhere besides the suburbs, but as others have identified most nice areas that are dense walkable are very expensive because they are no longer legal to build

"America has plenty of land and so if people want suburbs and there is plenty of land to build them"

Are you just floating nonsense to get attention? THEY'RE ALREADY BUILT. Why destroy them and then rebuild other ones elsewhere, instead of simply building the high-density communities in the "plenty of land" that you admit is available? That's just stupid.

"most nice areas that are dense walkable are very expensive because they are no longer legal to build"

That is bullshit. What dense area is "no longer legal to build?" Look at downtown L.A. It's not "illegal" to build there, and it's largely a shithole that could only benefit from a remake. Likewise for Koreatown and a lot of Hollywood. There's endless fake caterwauling about "the housing shortage," and California has just passed a monumentally corrupt bill that allows developers to construct 10 units where ONE house stands today... with no permits or review.

This allows the destruction of ALREADY-RESIDENTIAL areas, while doing nothing to provide "affordable" housing or to help the homeless... despite lies to the contrary being used to excuse its passage.

Meanwhile, huge buildings like former Macy's sit boarded-up in dying malls... areas that have already paid the price of super-high density, in the form of paved-over ground and tree removal. Why aren't THESE areas being turned residential, and offered to those who favor high-density living?

Because this entire movement is a lie, that's why. It's a sellout to developers.