[kakacik]

You should check Geneva then - they are building apartment buildings like crazy in past 5 years. Too much if you ask me - in very center, almost every small park or green spot is now 6 story concrete building. Only the biggest protected parks are untouched. City is visibly and permanently degrading into concrete field. Weirdly schizophrenic move - they try to keep pushing bike lanes everywhere, even where not safe to share the road, yet they also remove greenery and trees. I guess the money is too juicy. But not to just bash - they build on outskirts too.

Switzerland as a country usually strikes good balance between various extremes, much better than US or EU countries do. I have no doubt they will work it out, not ideally, but better than most. Immigration they tackled much better than rest of Europe for example.

And for the vote - its 1:1 Brexit. Vote for capping, damage your long term prosperity, and those unpopular jobs still will need to be staffed, or country will work worse, be dirtier etc. And if one can earn cleaning streets or putting stuff in shop shelves as much as cca doctor in France (with higher costs of life, but it doesn't have to be extreme), the amount of people willing to try coming and working is basically endless.

The idea one can freeze time and keep the country as some idealized image from their childhood (without the nasty stuff that happened ie in 70s to orphaned kids en masse, aka Verdingkinder), one would have to become second North Korea. Everything changes these days, massively and quickly. Dictators won't be sending their kids to study here under false names anymore, would they.

[diath]

These jobs are unpopular because the pay is shit, not because people don't want to do them, the government could simply have grants/bonus program for people employed in these positions so that the taxpayer money directly funds the bettering of the society and environment around them. Besides, Japan is a good real world example that you do not need to lean on immigrant labor to stop your country from becoming "dirty"; it's one of the most ethically homogeneous countries and also one of the cleanest places you can visit.

[throwaway2037]

    > Besides, Japan is a good real world example that you do not need to lean on immigrant labor to stop your country from becoming "dirty"

This was true before about 10 years ago. In last 10 years, there has been a dramatic rise (I mean millions of "technical interns") in low-skill foreigners living and working in Japan. (To be clear: I harbor no resent towards these people.) They work in any industry that needs cheap low-skill workers: agriculture, hotels, restaurants, supermarkets, convenience stores, manufacturing, construction, civil/civic maintenance etc. That said, the friction has been pretty low. The difference between the original late 1990s wave of highly-skilled foreigners (mostly bankers and lawyers) and the most recent wave for low-skill foreigners: The most recent wave arrives to Japan with some Japanese language. (They study in their home country and need to pass a test to demonstrate basic Japanese language skills.) In my experience, their "median" Japanese is much better than most highly-skilled migrants, which helps to reduce the integration friction. Also, the low-skilled migrants have a maximum number of years they can work in Japan. They either need to skill-up and get a better visa (I guess about 5-10% can do it), or they need to return home after their "technical internship" is complete.

[alephnerd]

> Japan is a good real world example that you do not need to lean on immigrant labor to stop your country from becoming "dirty"

Japan heavily utilizes foreign workers via a Gulf style guestworker program, and even that has led to the far-right Sanseito becoming Japan's highest rated opposition party and the far-right wing of the LDP winning internal party politics.

[deaux]

> via a Gulf style guestworker program

They get to keep their passports and can return any time, calling it Gulf-style is a bit much. There are abuses - so are there in Europe - but it's not like they sacrificed a thousand or so immigrant worker lives on the Tokyo Olympics in Qatar 2022 style.

[mothballed]

I think they mean gulf style as seen by westerners. You can get a visa but you'll never be seen as a "local" nor granted citizenship. In places like Dubai multiple generations live without ever getting citizenship or a path to it and always with the notion you can be booted at any minute if you inconvenient the wrong person or run out of money.

Though I don't think this is fully true of Japan -- it's one of the easiest countries to naturalize in if you give up your other citizenships but does have the quality of always being seen as a foreigner. It's just that few people naturalize as Japanese because their immigration is most open to people from developed countries who aren't interested in giving up their birth passport to acquire Japanese nationality. If you just want a Japanese passport though no matter the downsides, I think it's one of the easier citizenship to get for an American to obtain.

[throwaway2037]

    > it's one of the easiest countries to naturalize

This is no longer true. With recent legislation, you need to live in Japan for 10 years before applying for citizenship. In the old days, it was only 5 years, which is pretty short for a highly developed nation. UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are now much easier to obtain.

[aprilthird2021]

> Japan is a good real world example that you do not need to lean on immigrant labor to stop your country from becoming "dirty"; it's one of the most ethically homogeneous countries and also one of the cleanest places you can visit.

It's also one of the worst developed nation economies and has a massive old, shrinking population problem and is well associated with people having no kids, having no prospects for a better life, and having huge amounts of its population live alone shuttered from the outside world.

A good economy has many benefits and skilled immigration can significantly improve developed nation economies.

[ab5tract]

You would think that such a terrible, untenable, broken economy as I hear the Japanese economy described (oh no, it’s not growing fast! The horrors of checks notes equilibrium) would precipitate a very dirty landscape, vast swathes of nature torn down, civility breakdowns, mass homelessness, and a high murder rate, bridges collapsing out of nowhere, etc.

I’ve just described some famously “excellent economy” countries, but I certainly didn’t describe Japan.

[aprilthird2021]

Instead of those things, Japan has extremely high suicide rates, extremely low rates of coupling, extremely low rates of family formation, extremely high rates of loneliness, etc.

It's a place with no economic growth prospects, where you have to work far longer than people in other developed nations, and where your chance of companionship and having your own family is the lowest it can possibly be in the world.

But at least it's clean

[throwaway2037]

    > extremely high suicide rates

This is no longer true. Look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...

Sort by "All" and you will see Japan is #30, far below many other highly developed nations.

[aprilthird2021]

Okay, fair enough. The rest is still true.

They're also very unhappy on average: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250410/p2a/00m/0na/01...

[throwaway2037]

To be clear, the economic performance of Japan is pretty similar to Italy. They have incredibly low population growth (or shrinking), but their GDP per capita continues to increase year-over-year. Surprisingly, quality of life is pretty good in Japan and Italy (the second will be a bit controversial here). As long as you have a middle class job, your life will be pretty good.

[aprilthird2021]

People are incredibly unhappy with their lives in Japan. Why do people continue to believe otherwise?

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250410/p2a/00m/0na/01...

[throwaway2037]

I am going to make a wild claim: "Happiness" is a stupid metric for quality of life. So many of the answers are tainted by local culture. Most Japanese people would feel like they are bragging to say they are somewhat or very happy. The very question is flawed. And I guarantee the survey was created by people with mostly Western European culture. To be clear: I said "quality of life" not happiness. There is a big difference. Let me tell you what "works" in Japan: health care, education (primary, secondary, and tertiary), home buying/building (wildly cheap by world standards), labor protections, national pension, mass transit, personal safety, taxation... I could go on and on. Quality of life is objectively extremely highly in Japan when compared to other nations.

[actionfromafar]

Yeah... but aren't there many more poor people in Japan, too?

[jnwatson]

Geneva is the 2nd most expensive city to live in (behind Zurich). I commend any attempt at moderating prices by building more housing.

[tempay]

> in very center, almost every small park or green spot is now 6 story concrete building

I struggle to see this. Central Geneva is full of beautiful, well-maintained green spaces and children's play areas with plenty of larger parks scattered around.

[egorfine]

Geneva had an extreme shortage of housing while there were plots of land perfectly suitable for construction but older people willing to sacrifice their kids' future for the sake of today's comfort and for one more year of ignoring the world around them. This problem is no unique to Geneva though.

[account42]

Reducing parcel sizes and similar development decreases not only your own comfort but also those of people living there in the future.

[Schiendelman]

It doesn't.

I know that sounds weird, but bear with me.

Compare the no build scenario to the scenario where you build one more apartment, but that one new apartment is smaller than you want.

In the no build scenario, the person who wants to move to Geneva doesn't get to, or they have to rent a room in an existing apartment.

In the scenario where you build that one additional apartment, a person moves into it instead. So they make a choice that that was better than their existing situation.

That choice is someone increasing their comfort level. There are lots of housing situations that are worse than a new apartment, even a very small one.

The mistake is not realizing that everyone who moves into a new unit is increasing their comfort.

[lejalv]

I agree about bike lanes in Geneva, they should take the space away from cars. Their success is so phenomenal, that they are carrying more passengers/h in some sections than the much wider street they flank.

[aprilthird2021]

> Too much if you ask me

Good thing no one asked you. Why should you have a say in how someone else uses their land if all they are doing is building more housing units?