Please don't take HN threads into flamewar hell. Your comment was a noticeable step hellward. You can make your substantive points without swipes, name-calling, and flamebait, so please do that instead.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's a pretty well document fact that it has a lot of its roots in racism.

https://www.epi.org/publication/the-color-of-law-a-forgotten...

If that makes you feel uncomfortable, so be it.

Americans spend zillions of dollars every year visiting Europe, which is full of high density housing. And come home raving about how much they love it. It does not 'cause problems'.

There's a correlation between crime / neighborhood blight and low income residents.

That correlation may be because of historic and current structural racism, lack of access to mental health services and a social safety net, or a myriad of other socio-economic issues, but it doesn't change the fact that it exists.

Insinuating that anyone who brings up those issues is racist isn't helpful.

It would be more productive to say "Yes, I understand why neighborhoods might be resistant to denser, low-income tolerant development, and here are some ways we could incorporate that fact into a productive plan..." E.g. building more mixed-income developments.

Of course, they love visiting and perhaps the idea of it. Then they realize they can't have their larger houses, cars, etc that they want. And that government will be more involved in their lives (zoning, policies, prohibitions), which is fairly reasonable given the track record in many places in the US.

>It does not 'cause problems'.

Like with most policies, the details are much more nuanced.

Check out the history of the Gropiusstadt in Berlin:

https://www.goethe.de/ins/jp/en/m/kul/sup/boe/21633080.html

America is not Europe. It will never be Europe. Things that work in Europe may not work in America, and vice-versa.

This always strikes me as an unsatisfying response. What about America is so fundamentally different than Europe that would make the same policies that work there not work here?

Every time I’ve seen this type of argument brought up, it’s fallen flat when the same infrastructure is built here because it does end up working. We’re really not so unique.

> What about America is so fundamentally different than Europe that would make the same policies that work there not work here?

And yet, if I suggested that the US do something a lot of (all?) European countries do, like having to present ID when voting, I’d get an endless stream of replies about why that’s fundamentally impossible in the US (and racist, naturally). And that’s a FAR easier problem to solve than pie-in-the-sky “make everything more dense and have high speed rail everywhere and European-style public transit in every city” daydreams that are so popular.

Maybe some things really aren’t that easy to do in the US.

> like having to present ID when voting

Complaints about this usually revolve around the fact that voter ID laws aren't accompanied with increased funding for and availability of voter ID services. Show me a law where they added Saturday and late-evening DMV services, or pop-up voter ID registration services at grocery stores, pharmacies, post offices, churches, community recreation centers, and schools.

The purpose behind these laws is quite clear. It's fundamentally unfair to add voter ID laws to depress turnout under the guise of "election security".

Land area and population density?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_depend...

Well Sweden has a lower population density than the US and there is still plenty high density housing, so your argument is?

I think it would be good to do away with these simplistic this or that doesn't work here because... The US society was remodelled quite dramatically to be very car centred over a very short time and now people say that it can't be any other way because of the geography? The US was literally different 70-80 years ago.

Which doesn’t mean much as a comparison point in the US because much of that land has zero or approximately zero residents, and nobody’s talking about building high-density housing in the middle of nowhere anyway. Upwards of 80% of the US population lives in urban areas and those places certainly are comparable to much of Europe.

>Upwards of 80% of the US population lives in urban areas

Look up the US Census definition of "urban." In the town where I live, three houses around me are on 100 acres collectively--not to mention even more adjacent conservation land and that's classified as urban because it's near a smaller old mill town and only about 50 miles from a major city.

Apparently the new "urban" definition is something like:

>Adopting 500 persons per square mile (PPSM) as the minimum density criterion for recognizing some types of urban territory.

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/03/24/2022-06...

Which basically means anything "town-like" or higher is "urban".

So most Americans live in urban areas even if they are in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere.

Yes. Most people see urban and imagine at least a 2nd or 3rd tier city in terms of population. Not a 5K person town that may or may not be within a not too long a drive of some sort of population center.

Urban in the sense of "don't need to own a car" is a much smaller slice--especially if you aren't adjusting your expectations.

Yeah the census counts urban as “a cop or ambulance will show up in decent time” and rural as “you could detonate a cow and nobody would be around to notice”.

Without knowing exactly which town you’re talking about, I would posit that that’s likely still dense enough to have some pretty direct comparison points somewhere in Western Europe. It’s not like all of Western Europe is a city.

Which doesn’t mean that the same infrastructure you’d see in a dense European city would make sense in your town, mind you. I just think that Europe and America aren’t as incomparable as some people seem to think.

Well, it's a typical more rural New England town. There is zero public transit of any sort. Essentially no businesses in town except barely when they merge with an adjacent small old mill city. So even in the town center where there are some sidewalks basically nowhere to walk to other than the library or post office. About 7K population total.

About an hour drive from a major city.

Though not that different really from small English countryside towns I've walked through.

That's one thing that fascinated me about CT when I was up there.

It seemed bizarre that even "one strip mall" towns didn't have certain categories of business. Down in the south, you can't measure a mile without hitting two serviceable Tex-Mex restaurants.

Up north? The nearest Tex-Mex is often 30 minutes away, and the nearest pizza place (which often isn't great) is 20 minutes.

I'm not sure how much decent Tex-Mex I've seen in the Northeast generally. I do have a few decent pizza places around where I live west of Boston. But generally speaking I find I'm on my own with respect to food. Which is a reasonable tradeoff I make.

> What about America is so fundamentally different than Europe that would make the same policies that work there not work here?

The amount of violent criminality? Look at any major light rail network in America and they are nowhere near as safe as the European equivalents.

I love Costa Rica therefor I want all my food drenched is Salsa Lezao according to your powerful logic.

Even if you ignore the racist roots mentioned in a sibling thread (and I maintain that you shouldn’t), we will need low-income housing as long as there are people with low incomes! And it’s best for everyone involved if that housing is commingled in every community rather than being concentrated in one place. It’s well documented that the neighborhood you grow up in has a huge impact on how upwardly mobile you’ll be if you’re in a low-income family.

Look to Vienna’s social housing program for an example of this done very well. That doesn’t look like it attracts problems, now does it?

I don't know what to tell you. I just don't want to be surrounded by high-rise apartment buildings. I didn't buy a nice house in a nice suburb to stare at giant cement buildings. It's that simple.

You're building a straw man.

The reality is that in a suburb far from infrastructure, investors won't want to build a 30 stories building.

But they might want to build a 3-4 units building, something 2-3 stories maximum. But this is currently ILLEGAL. Only a single house is possible and ANY densification is impossible.

You go to the downtown of older cities and you don't see giant cement buildings. But you do see livable neighbourhood with buildings that are just slightly higher than the norm and can house multiple families.

I'm not building a strawman at all. Let me make my position even more clear: I don't want to live near multi-family housing. I want it to remain illegal for it to be built near me.

Leave the suburbs alone. Every single place you people infect with your ideas turns to hell.

People need to live somewhere and the population is growing. Where do you suggest that the kids of current residents live?

Maybe Im naive, but whats wrong with building entirely bew towns and cities? Last time I flew across the US, I saw vast wilderness with a few tiny populated places here and there.

There’s nothing broadly wrong with building entirely new cities, but it’s incredibly difficult to do for a variety of reasons. Most attempts to do this fail. Expecting new cities to absorb all of the increase in population is unrealistic.

If you’re talking new suburbs of existing cities, well, that’s basically the only expansion we’ve done in many places. Some problems with that:

- It leads to more driving needed to get to the city (and thus more emissions, exactly what we need to avoid right now).

- If the implication is that you’re building outward because the inner suburbs are getting more expensive to live in (which will happen if they don’t densify at all and the population grows), then you’re basically forcing most kids to move far away from their parents/grandparents/etc. Some people won’t want to live near their family but many do, and being able to maintain those close family ties feels important.

low density suburbia only survives by siphoning funds away from the nearby city.

So a lone farm in the middle of nowhere must be an economic blackhole that siphons money even from suburbia?

if you run electricity, water, sewage, fiber optics, and roads to it, absolutely! The problem with suburbs is that they demand the same utilities as dense areas without paying the increased cost of that infrastructure.

Who builds the roads and power grids for suburbia? Is it city dwellers or rural folks? Where do they get raw materials and construction equipment? Who produces food? Who makes furniture, cars and all other stuff? So what do city dwellers actually do to subsidise suburbia and rural country?

who is you people and what ideas are we talking about?

"And it’s best for everyone..."

How exactly is it best for the well-off? I'm curious what pros and cons it would have for them.

Where I live, the hospital is struggling to hire nurses due to the lack of housing options. That's not even the 'low income' bracket. Teachers struggle to find housing as well. Those are both things that high income people need, especially the former.

Restaurants are shutting down for want of workers. Because they can't afford it.

Low income workers provide valuable services in our communities. Telling them they can't live where they work creates all kinds of problems, both social and environmental - they often drive in to do those jobs, creating more pollution and traffic.

Especially along the restaurant line, it seems the rich people would rather be stingy than pay people enough to perform those services and live in the same community. It seems that being able to pay the lowest possible is still a benefit to the rich, even if it's detrimental to society.

One practical benefit for the well-off is having people in close proximity who can staff their local restaurants, shops, schools, etc.

It's much easier to hire and retain staff for your business when your pool of potential employees isn't a 30+ minute bus ride away.

For the well-off residents, it means better and more consistent service at their neighborhood grocery, coffee shop, restaurant, pharmacy, etc.

That can be good. I guess many of the cities I've lived in or near had cheaper housing within 30 minutes of most areas.

Social cohesion and avoidance of class warfare.

Historically, the decline of most late-stage empires was triggered by spiraling economic bifurcation.

Sometimes, it's better to be less wealthy but on top of an ordered country vs more wealthy and without the rule of law as society breaks down.

That's good for society. I doubt that many of the moderately wealthy would really be a cause of this. It seems the ultrawealthy are the main cause in the downfall of empires, as they hold the most influence and become leeches off the people working. And now we democratize those negative decisions via things like REITs, so everyone's 401k is part of the problem.

It promotes empathy with and reduces bias against those of different racial and economic backgrounds, for one. It’s easier for stereotypes to take hold in highly segregated environments because you don’t get much interaction with those outside your own groups.

I mean, that's good for society. But that's not a benefit for the well off who rely on their "network" (aka nepotism and cronyism).

When there's no more food to eat, the poor will always turn to eating the rich, if we want to take this to the extreme (or, well, when there's nowhere left to live, they'll live inside the rich, I guess?).