703
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
703 points (96.8% liked)
Asklemmy
43831 readers
874 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
If you live in the suburbs and commute into a major city then traffic going into said city is also unbearably slow. But to quickly counter this point, millions of people commute using the NYC suburban spurs for metro north, and south and I can assure you the desnity falls of a cliff as soon as you pass the NYC border.
Likewise there are plenty of alternatives even for suburbs involving things like park and rides and train stations with garages that can help funnel people into roads and on public networks. Ideally a good station should be centralized in the town and but walkable(Ive seen some NYC train stations literally be a random parkinglot in the woods and then there's GoTransit in toronto) but as it will take a long time to right the ship I think making sure theres spots to park your car is important too.
Moving forwards though there should be improvements in zoning law to help right the ship when it comes to car-centric american infrastructure and urban planning.
The frustrating thing is decent density doesnt mean high rises and big city concrete jungle. There are tons of east coast and midwestern neighborhoods that are mostly single family homes on lots, with some multifamily and low rise apartments mixed in on tree lined streets near parks and shopping areas that have densities of more than 11,000 people per sqmi.
The problem with multi-family housing is that it's ripe for abuse by building managers. Unless you own the entire building you live in and the entire plot of land it sits on, you don't own anything, and your home can be taken from you at will without meaningful recourse.
I gather this isn't an issue in Europe, where people have actual protections under the law, but as long as real estate in America remains the Wild West, living in single-family housing is and will remain an absolutely necessary act of self-defense.
Mixed zoning would be good, though. Being able to walk to at least a convenience store would be, well, convenient. If the prices there aren't ludicrously high, anyway, which is a serious problem with convenience stores today.
10s of Millions of people in the united states live in multifamily housing. You're responding to concepts like multifamily housing and public transit as if these are abstracts that huge numbers of americans dont already rely on. There are plenty of areas with bad infrastructure today for this, but thats all the more reason to improve. More missing middle density housing is important to make housing more affordable and improve density and supply.
We can certainly use better and actual proper public housing options like in places like the netherlands, and better renter protections to keep a landlord from upping your rent too much, but thats all the more reason to push forwards.
And every last one of them is made to abide by unnecessary and cruel rules, like prohibiting the use of air conditioners because they change the exterior appearance of the building. Renters are also getting fleeced like sheep and regularly evicted to make room for richer tenants.
Building more non-single-family housing will only exacerbate this problem, not solve it.
No, it's not. Those protections have to happen first, and in this country, they never will.