12 floors is huge. Nearly every building in Paris is 6 floors and it is already at near the maximum density humanly acceptable in my opinion. There will never be enough supply in some place, especially with speculation and foreign investors. The situation in NYC and these cities is nothing like SF.

> 12 floors is huge.

I live 40 stories up, surrounded by a lot of green spaces because the city doesn't need to mow down natural habitats for population growth. 6 floors seems quaint and archaic, all it's going to cause is endless depressing urban sprawl.

> There will never be enough supply in some place

We can always build higher, construction techniques are only getting better. I don't see why 60 floor buildings can't be a norm in most supply constrained cities.

The main constraint on taller buildings is elevators. The taller a building is, the more elevators it needs, and the more elevator shafts there are the lower the percentage of square footage available for other, paying uses.

The sweet spot for residential in Hong Kong is about 30-40 stories.

I’m also on 40 (out of 76) and while we’ll probably all die if there’s an earthquake, that’s true in a lot of NIMBYtowns too.

I could see whole cities of mostly >50 stories, but then unblockable views start to get immensely valuable right?

So as the city fills up and you discover which locations have more durable views, you need to start tearing down those skyscrapers to replace them with more luxurious ones.

Not sure if that’s dystopian, but I do quite like the view from up here.

> We can always build higher, construction techniques are only getting better. I don't see why 60 floor buildings can't be a norm in most supply constrained cities.

Because there is no way we can make infrastructure follow in the short term. Public transports are already saturated here, we could remove cars, but there is still a limit in how many people can be on the ground in streets, parcs, shops...

I find appropriately planned urban sprawl a whole lot less depressing than living in a cube 40 stories up.

Different strokes I guess.

I think some people won't be happy until we're all constrained to 10x10x8' rooms in 80 story buildings to satiate their desire for density and efficiency. Maybe we should just kind of be happy with 7 billion people.

Lolwut. Who? Ne'er-do-wells, haters, or rent-seeking bastards?

(I'm in a 1400 sq ft / 130 m^2 2/2 apt in ATX.)

Perhaps people like living in smaller quarters in cities - the market seems to indicate that, based on the price per square foot people are willing to pay for urban apartments compared with ... anyplace else in the world.

Urban sprawl is awful if there's only single-occupant vehicles, bad roads, and no reliable public transport anyone wants to use ... basically, you get Los Angeles. Terrible, crime-ridden, and horizontally dystopian.

As opposed to urban densification where everyone lives in the sky and the city is crowded, polluted, noisy, crime ridden and dystopian?

The average square footage of a Parisian studio would make NY’s tenements look downright palatial.

The average NYC studio is 50 m^2. The larger end for a Parisian studio is given to be 35 m^2.

On the other hand, there's nothing forcing you to live in intra-muros Paris.

I live in Nanterre, 5min away from the RER station, and my rent is 1200€/month for a 2-bedrooms apartment (50 m²). I have a <1h commute for about anywhere in Paris, and <20min for La Défense.

Point is, you can have affordable-ish rents in a business center without building humongous high-rises everywhere, as long as your public transport network can support it.

I don't know that sprawling density taking up land that could be used for nature is somehow supposed to be better than tall buildings.

Yes there is, circumstances.

There's nothing forcing you maybe, but plenty of people will be stuck there because of circumstances.

Hmm... I should turn my ATX apt into 4 "Parisian" studios then. Such underutilized space considering I have an almost vestigial "dining room" that has been used mostly as a dance floor and a gym area.

In practice, most American jurisdictions will not let one legally subdivide a living area into chunks as small as a Parisian studio. NYC regulations on how small you can subdivide are probably as generous as they get.

In the Parisian example, it is legal to have an apartment without an in-unit bathroom, and this is straight up illegal in virtually every American city. A list of requirements for NYC (not exhaustive): https://www.renthop.com/qa/nyc/what-makes-an-apartment-illeg...

/s woosh. LOL. ;-)

It's called tenement housing, in any case. Split the living room in half and rent the large walk-in closet, now a 2 bedroom is magically a 5 bedroom like an airline employee crashpad. :)

Some friends of mine were thinking about renting out an entire warehouse and constructing illegal residential tenement "apartments" in them.

All fun and games till 36 people die in a fire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Ship_warehouse_fire

12 floors is tiny if you're not used to it.

There's only ~75 buildings in Paris >6 floors because of the 37m height limit.

Cities either have to have faster transportation, build underground, build higher, or build out farther. Increasing costs by keeping transportation horrible or limiting supply for the rich squeezes money from the lowers and the middle classes.

Very fast transport from nearby satellite communities would be the most ideal solution because then locality doesn't matter as much to most people.

though for Paris, I think it's mandated by the local law, no?

Regarding Paris, at the current density, maybe it would be better to have higher building but with a smaller ground footprint (not sure if it's the right term), to leave space free for more parks?