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A comment on Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers. Parent comment

Re:Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers by jamiek88 on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @11:46AM (#18969609)
Just a point on the population of Manhattan, it’s be careful with those numbers and applying them to modern day. People used to cram into death trap tenements 10 to one windowless room in some cases.

Hundreds of thousands would live on a street that now houses a thousand people.

I don’t think that density is coming back or desirable.

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Re:Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers by CydeWeys on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @12:57PM (#18970459)
You're exaggerating the population density. It definitely wasn't hundreds of thousands per street! Some figures here: https://urbanomnibus.net/2014/10/the-rise-and-fall-of-manhat... And it's worth pointing out that the peak population density in walk-up tenements was still well below what can be accomplished with tall modern day residential apartment buildings.

No one is saying the tenements were desirable, or wishes for them to come back. What we want is the construction of more dense residential housing that can meet or exceed that population density while providing good quality of life. Said construction is entirely possible, doable, and profitable, except that zoning prohibits it in most places.

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Re:Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers by ams6110 on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @02:48PM (#18971721)
SROs have also largely gone away. Not that many of them were very nice, but better than the street for a single person with limited means.
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Re:Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers by kaybe on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @05:39PM (#18973360)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy

to save anyone else a search.

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Re:Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers by zkms on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @12:29PM (#18970159)
> Hundreds of thousands would live on a street that now houses a thousand people.

> I don’t think that density is coming back or desirable.

I think there's plenty of examples of dense cities (certainly far denser than most US cities) that aren't full of death-trap tenements and it's borderline intellectually dishonest to equate density with that.

In fact, letting NIMBYs have free rein to obstruct/delay/interdict housing construction is far more likely to cause overcrowded/unsafe living situations (which include homelessness) than the other way around.

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Re:Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers by cimmanom on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @01:05PM (#18970551)
Yes, in 1880 people were crammed into tenements. Today we live roughly as densely as we did in 1960 (maybe slightly more densely due to more high rises), but housing is far, far more expensive.
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