I live in the 14th floor of a 18-story building (4 apartments per floor), and next to me there are other ~20-story strictly residencial buildings. Life is amazing here, I have swimming pool, gym and sauna in the condo and it costs me next to nothing since the costs are shared between all residents. And it's never crowded. But the best part is that there's a positive side-effect: since I have everything at hand, I don't need to leave my home often and that made me switch to remote work full-time (the office started to seem boring).

It means, I'm living in a densely populated building and commuting less than I was when I lived in a smaller apartment complex.

I really think cities should consider this for their future: taller buildings with built-in amenities, ready for remote work. Make people want to live there and also don't want to commute. You get the density without the associated traffic congestion.

I have family in Europe too. They live in a 4 story townhome in a small German city with their own garage and driveway and front door very similar to American townhomes. It's the middle of town next to a three story American style mall built right into the town center near a castle tourist destination. But it's also so rural there's nothing if you drive even 10 minutes out of town. And there's nothing to do at night.

They also own a small piece of land nearby where my grandparents hang out all day and grow food. In essence it's not much different from an American lifestyle just with excellent walkability and a train direct to Berlin or Hamburg

The point is that you shouldn't need a car.

The first problem is that we don't need to frame this discussion as "cars vs no cars". I'm not advocating for getting rid of cars because that wouldn't make sense and would be wildly impractical. Instead, what is being advocated is not having car-first infrastructure.

The second problem is that this preference, like other "decisions" is done without complete information or a feedback loop besides a monthly payment and gas prices. You don't feel the weight of the maintenance and taxes that go to paying for new highway construction. You don't really experience climate change in a feedback mechanism. You also aren't presenting equivalent options. Would someone prefer to walk over to the neighborhood grocery store to get their groceries or drive 5 miles away to a big-box retailer? I bet if you actually polled people you'd get 90%+ preferring the former. Framing it as "I want a car" versus not having a car presents the person being asked a question which implies taking something away from them, which is bad practice.

The third problem is that people prefer to own cars because we intentionally design our cities such that owning a car is the only choice. There's no competition. But you can clearly see that this isn't society's actual preference, because walkable neighborhoods across the country built before cars were prevalent usually have higher property values than the suburbs in the same city. If there was a mechanism such that people could choose neighborhoods they'd vote for or buy medium-density mixed-use neighborhoods where they can have a car with street parking or in the garage behind their house for less frequent activities and then they'd walk to the local grocery store, let their kids walk themselves to school, etc.

Would they? Because I have actually had it both ways and I much prefer driving to a huge supermarket. Prices are lower, quality is better, selection is better.

> But you can clearly see that this isn't society's actual preference, because walkable neighborhoods across the country built before cars were prevalent usually have higher property values than the suburbs in the same city.

Per acre of land, sure, because you can cram in tons of apartments in the same area that one house would take up. That doesn’t mean more people actually prefer to live that way.

It is nice to be able to walk to school or church or whatnot, but when it comes to commercial retail, my experience is that suburban car-bound freeway mayhem is pretty fucking great. From my current suburban house in Texas I can reach almost any retail or commercial business I need within 5-15 minutes, and those are full size, full service retailers. Instead of a “neighborhood grocery store” that’s barely one step above a convenience store, I can go to H-E-B and get almost any kind of food I can imagine for extremely reasonable prices. Instead of a neighborhood hardware store I can go to Home Depot or Lowe’s. Either one. I used to live in an apartment in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, close to an actual supermarket (which kind of sucked), and even then I had nowhere close to the same access to retail. Maybe the biggest point in favor of walkable neighborhoods was that it was relatively cheap and easy to go to bars, but at some point I realized I could save money and drink with my wife at home (especially if we can drive to a cheap big-box liquor store!)

I do understand the appeal when it comes to things that are more community oriented than commercial. For instance, I understand that Orthodox Jews tend to live within walking distance of their synagogue because they can’t drive on the Sabbath, which means they live within walking distance of everyone else who goes to their synagogue, which means they can have physical communities. And that sounds really nice. But for the typical secularized, atomized American, what’s the point? Living cheek to jowl with total strangers and learning to ignore homeless people fucking sucked and I’m glad that part of my life is behind me. And the reason most of this country is built out the way it is, is that most people actually feel the same way.

You can see that this is true because when you visit an actual neighborhood there are lots of people walking around and bikes and greater levels of economic activity. I'm not sure what metro area you live in but if you live in one I bet you have an area like I'm describing. It's probably where you and your friends or significant other go out for a nice dinner. Most of the country could be like that and you could still drive your car to Costco once/week.

Even if you disagreed with some or all of the things I've said, dismissing them as an "invented problem" is pretty unfair.

In this case, the people who don’t want to own cars are the small minority. And I was one of those people for about a decade.

Enough better for transit is complex. It is a factor of cost, how nice it is, ability to get places when they want to, traffic, and a few other factors. The denser the city the more likely it is that transit is better.

Life is amazing here. I exercise outside, explore the landscape and the hiking trails surrounding me, and not only is it never crowded, it’s also safe, quiet, and beautiful.

The best part is that since I have everything at hand, including natural beauty, I don’t want or need to leave my home often, and have worked remotely for a Bay Area company for several years.

I often walk out my front door and go for a hike before starting my work day.

Living in an 18-story building surrounded by 20-story buildings would be, for me, a hellish existence.

You couldn’t pay me enough money to want to live there.

Since I've grown in the countryside, surrounded by all the forests and hills, I really find the cosmopolitan life I've there more exciting.

It may change overtime, sure, but at least I will never have to complain about having lost my time commuting.

In theory? They can coexist. If you want density, move to a dense city.

In reality? Activists and developers are constantly pushing to upzone and pave over everything in sight.

You’re not taking school taxes and costs into consideration.

In my school district, they spend $18,211 per student each year. Average school taxes per house are $8,100.

So a house with 1 child costs $10,111 per year. But the average house with children has 2.1 kids costing over $30,000 more than is paid in.

This is a very common problem and why development, especially of larger homes (with likely more children) is a net drain on the local tax base.

True, but doesn't seem relevant to the discussion. GP said homes pay as much in taxes as they receive in services.

I disputed that by pointing out that even with very large homes, the people in the home receive far more educational services than their taxes pay for.

Your response to that is to say children need education?

That somehow is because they tax people that don't have kids in school. In fact, municipalities can nudge this.

Approve a 55+ community and it will give the community a net tax benefit. Same thing with a condo community. But approve a plan for a community of single family homes with 4+ bedrooms and you will have a huge drain on the tax base literally forever.

A neighbour gym would also be crowded all the time, all my friends that have to go out for the gym always complain about that.

The public sauna seems ok, but I've never seem any of that in the streets besides "erotic saunas" that are not really intended for the same purposes...

It is as hygienic as any other swimming pool. Unless you literally have your own pool in your backyard, which overwhelming majority of swimmers dont, you are not getting more hygiene.

> A neighbour gym would also be crowded all the time, all my friends that have to go out for the gym always complain about that.

This may depend on locality, but fair solution to that is allowing simple capitalism and more businesses. Someone gonna build second gym.

(Former) private pool owner here. I'd bet most public neighborhood pools are much more hygienic than a private pool where we'd only test the water when algae started growing. Public pools have proper maintenance and much better systems for chlorination/salt cleaning.

Meeting other people might be scary at first. But ultimately sharing is caring.

The progressive position in the 90s was anti-gentrification, anti-greedy rent-seeking developers; “the evil developer” was a common trope in pop-culture.

Now? Dust off your ceremonial hard hat and golden ground-breaking shovel, because apparently, facilitating a massive and permanent wealth transfer to those same greedy developers is now progressive orthodoxy.

Density proponents are just unpaid lobbyists.

(And maybe, just maybe, you might not know what you're talking about, living all alone in the forest, far removed from all this.)

I don’t know about America but in Germany apartment buildings are often owned by the residents and they have to work together in a financial collective for certain things like roof repairs, city negotiations, fencing, etc. But then internally to their unit they are able to make many permanent alterations within limits.

I don’t list these constraints claiming them as benefits. No these are the hardships one must endure but the benefit is of course property ownership. The benefits of property ownership in general are well known, it’s primarily a matter of accessibility to those benefits that is being discussed.

I do think we should encourage individual home ownership, even in dense developments. And would have no problem with legal nudges towards this. I.e. upzoned for density only if units which will ultimately be individually owned.

Furthermore, in the majority of desirable areas, creating high-density, individually-owned homes would increase access to home ownership, as the unit economics would allow lower pricing than equivalent single family homes in the same location.

(And before someone pulls out the construction cost economics / high-price-only rebuttal, that's yet another topic, with a different set of fixes)