Why North America Can't Build Nice Apartments
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Thanks to Urbanarium for partnering with me to produce this video! Check out their Decoding Density competition at https://urbanarium.org/decoding-densityAbo...
  • CompostMaterial@lemmy.worldEnglish
    22·
    11 months ago

    TLDR: money. There isn’t a profit in making a pretty building when you can build a utilitarian one and still milk the poor bastards that have no other option but to leave there.

  • FireRetardant@lemmy.world
    192·
    11 months ago

    I like a lot of About Here videos. He does a good job of boiling down city policy and design issues without sounding condescending.

    • OminousOrange@lemmy.ca
      5·
      11 months ago

      Strong Towns is good too. They got a new media guy about 10 months ago and he’s put out some great videos.

  • mtchristo@lemm.ee
    151·
    11 months ago

    Even Europe has stopped producing those buildings. Each era comes with its own stylistics expressions. Amsterdam’s newer district is full of modern cubical buildings. Even if they look a bit better than the one’s shown in this meme, they belong to the same post modern movement.

    Another thing to consider is that every other extra luxury that is purely a stylistic addition will be an extra expanse on the end buyer

    • frostbiker@lemmy.ca
      6·
      11 months ago

      Living in an area that is beautiful matters, and our urban landscapes are a big part of that. Trees, decorated facades, town squares, they may add some economic cost, but why is that the only cost that matters? What about the emotional cost of living in an ugly noisy jungle of concrete and glass?

      • mtchristo@lemm.ee
        13·
        11 months ago

        Because other people’s right to have a roof over their heads and afford to buy a house out weights you presumed right to living in a Disney themed park.

        • frostbiker@lemmy.ca
          21·
          11 months ago

          That is a false dichotomy. Housing is expensive in Canada due to zoning laws forcing a very inefficient use of land, among other reasons.

          I lived in Europe for decades, so I know for a fact that making our streets pleasant to walk around isn’t some weird utopia, it is the basic reality in many developed countries.

          • BCsven@lemmy.ca
            1·
            11 months ago

            Not sure if that is accurate in BC, we have 3+ story townhomes with mainfloor being shopping/ services. Tons of quadplexes, and 50-100 unit condos like crazy.

  • LostWon@lemmy.ca
    13·
    11 months ago

    Anyone else notice Canada was the only country on the map with the two stairwells from 2 floors & up requirement and every other country started it with 3 or higher?

      • LostWon@lemmy.ca
        3·
        11 months ago

        I remember him saying (English) North America requires 3 floors and then I saw that map.

        This isn’t my first video of theirs, btw. I watched it before I even saw this thread, because I’m subscribed.

  • ExLisper@linux.communityEnglish
    72·
    11 months ago

    All the ‘nice apartments’ he’s showing are from beginning of XX century. No one builds like this in Europe anymore. Most new developments are exactly like the ones he shows in America.

  • Dearche@lemmy.ca
    4·
    11 months ago

    While I think this is an issue, I think it’s a minor one. If it was a big problem, we’d see a whole bunch of 2 storey apartments sprinkled amongst single family homes. But I’ve never seen one in all my time in Toronto. Because there’s a whole ton of regulations that make it impossible by just plain making it illegal without jumping through a whole ton of other hoops that make it far too expensive.

    I’m not saying fixing this won’t help, but it’s just one of dozens of issues, and a minor one compared to some of them.

    • naeap@sopuli.xyz
      10·
      11 months ago

      It seems to be more that houses in the USA were being built cheap and burn down easier. While Europe obviously had the same issue with fires (looking at you Brugge - how often do you wooden town need to burn down, until you place a fucking stone?), but they approached it with better, fire proof materials - like bricks instead of wood.

      The regulations in the USA seem to include those zig-zag stairs (probably I mixed up the name), where 2 stairways are on the same place, cross crossing each other.
      In case of smoke/fire or demolition of this block, I don’t see how those 2 stairs make a better exit, when they are in the same place.

  • Mr_Blott@lemmy.world
    34·
    11 months ago

    That was three minutes of info in a 12 minute vid

    Please fuck off with this shit, it’s ruining Lemmy