[oluwie]

Beats living on the streets if that’s the only thing you can afford.

Like the article said, there’s fine hotels for some and some truly terrible ones for others. Still beats being homeless. Also, just because something isn’t perfect and has its flaws, doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile.

[cyberax]

See? Exactly the decay I was talking about.

There are no other options. Like smaller cities with a lower cost of living. The big cities just suck away life from everything.

[parlor7751]

There are no jobs in the small cities, plus they typically try to keep out anyone that doesn't fit their white picket fence ideal.

[cyberax]

Well, yes. See above about the urbanism death spiral. Large cities suck the life away from smaller cities.

This is the direct consequence of allowing dense housing, and it's made _worse_ by allowing abominations like SROs or "microapartments". And then bunk beds (already happening in Singapore).

The correct action here is to STOP doing this. Prohibit building dense housing and, more importantly, dense office space. Provide tax incentives for remote work and for offices outside of city cores. Ideally, start un-densifying cities by creating more park spaces in place of dense housing.

[array_key_first]

How the fuck would de-densifying cities help with housing costs? The denser housing is, the cheaper it is per unit.

Also, remote work doesn't work like that. You, yes YOU, rely on actual real people to do stuff for your community to make your life worth living.

That means construction, food service, sanitation, etc. Already, this type of work is not very viable in suburban or rural areas because they're too inefficient. Many rural areas are essentially subsidized by the cities around them - they couldn't afford to have roads or electricity otherwise.

If everyone is spread out everywhere, how do you provide them with the stuff they need in an economically viable way? That's the entire reason urbanism exists!

[cyberax]

> How the fuck would de-densifying cities help with housing costs?

That's the reality. The _only_ way to make housing less expensive is to reduce the dense population. Examples abound: Austin, Denver, etc.

> The denser housing is, the cheaper it is per unit.

Nope. The denser the housing, the MORE EXPENSIVE it gets. Even on a per-unit basis. That's why we have this drive to allow SROs. It'll push prices of all housing even higher.

> Also, remote work doesn't work like that. You, yes YOU, rely on actual real people to do stuff for your community to make your life worth living.

_Most_ of the modern post-industrial work is divided into two areas:

1. Office work. Can just as well be WFH.

2. In-person services (restaurants, childcare, hospitals, etc.). They work _better_ in suburban areas. That food truck owner in Manhattan can't afford to live there, so they likely spend hours every day to commute. In a suburban area, they can afford to buy/rent a house nearby.

There are some areas that will require specialized communities around them, like universities or large hospital centers. But they for sure don't need 4 million people monstrosities like NYC.

> Many rural areas are essentially subsidized by the cities around them - they couldn't afford to have roads or electricity otherwise.

It's vice versa. Most of the economic value in the US is created by people living in suburbia. This is easy to see if you look at personal income tax stats.

Cities receive the majority of _corporate_ taxes because corporation HQs are located in cities (duh).

> That means construction, food service, sanitation, etc.

Construction, food service, sanitation and so on are _cheaper_ to do in suburban areas. Why? Because of the planning overhead. Materials cost less than planning.

If you want to change a sewer main in Manhattan, you'll spend several years getting all the permits, creating temporary infrastructure to pump the sewage while you're working, then spending several months carefully digging through the streets to avoid severing unmarked pipes carrying who-knows-what.

In a suburban area, you just ask nearby houses to temporarily live in a hotel for a week, do the dig, and you're done. Even if you need more raw material, you end up spending less.

This is not a theory, btw. There's a study that shows that the city efficiency peaks at around 300k people.

[array_key_first]

> Construction, food service, sanitation and so on are _cheaper_ to do in suburban areas. Why? Because of the planning overhead. Materials cost less than planning.

> They work _better_ in suburban areas. That food truck owner in Manhattan can't afford to live there, so they likely spend hours every day to commute. In a suburban area, they can afford to buy/rent a house nearby.

> This is not a theory, btw

You're right, it's not a theory, it's literally just wrong. Like, obviously so.

The idea that people in the suburbs commute less is patently insane. It's just so obviously not true that I legitimately cannot believe someone could think this. Have you lived anywhere, ever, for any period of time?

The more rural the area you are in, the longer your commute will be, because where you live has no economic activity. So you have to drive somewhere that does.

Consider sanitation: why don't we have this in the suburbs? Because turning 1 sanitation facility into 100 distributed sanitation facilities across 100x more land, all while servicing the SAME AMOUNT OF PEOPLE, is insane. So we don't do that. So then you drive.

It is indisputable that density brings efficiency. From computer chips, to transit, to cities.

> If you want to change a sewer main in Manhattan, you'll spend several years getting all the permits, creating temporary infrastructure to pump the sewage while you're working, then spending several months carefully digging through the streets to avoid severing unmarked pipes carrying who-knows-what.

Okay, this is a perfect demonstration.

If you change 1 mile of sewer in Manhattan, you've serviced 100,000 people. If you change 1 mile of sewer in the suburbs, you've serviced 100 people. Are you seeing the problem?

Yes, there is obviously more friction to getting stuff done, but the amount of stuff you need to get done to impact the same people is orders of magnitude less. The cost ends up being much, much, much lower. This only works if you're comparing like and like though.

A lot of people will compare dense areas to the suburbs and they won't compare the same amount of people. Yeah, that's cheating. NYC has about as many people as north Texas. When you put it that way, then it seems clear that the efficiency of NYC is orders of magnitude higher than your average suburban hellscape.

[rangestransform]

Smaller cities aggressively eject the target demographics of SROs through aggressive zoning and outright buying bus tickets to the nearest large city

[cyberax]

Rent for a real apartment in a smaller city costs less than an SRO in a large city.

[array_key_first]

That's because many smaller cities and suburban or rural areas are economically defunct, so property is cheap because it's essentially worthless (you can't make money off of it).

Property is expensive in, say, NYC because you can use that property to do A LOT of economic activity. Property is cheap in Ponder, Texas because you can use that property to do fuck all, so you better take what you can get.

You can choose to live in Ponder, Texas, but the economics of that aren't too hot.

[cyberax]

> Property is expensive in, say, NYC because you can use that property to do A LOT of economic activity. Property is cheap in Ponder, Texas because you can use that property to do fuck all, so you better take what you can get.

Well, exactly. And allowing SROs and then bunkbeds will only make this _worse_. Your housing costs in NYC will keep _rising_, while the living conditions for _everyone_ will keep going down.

Death spiral, in other words.

[array_key_first]

The COL goes up in cities because they continue to be more productive, and that's just how money works. I don't know what to tell you, there's just no way around that. Opting to anarchist mode implode the economy so you get slightly cheaper housing is insane.