09-07-2020, 06:57 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-07-2020, 06:58 PM by danbrotherston.)
(09-07-2020, 06:19 PM)ac3r Wrote: Some people want that, though, so we're always going to have suburban areas. jeffster is right in saying that not all people don't want to live in urban areas in a tiny apartment. I have spent most of my life growing up in Europe and there are tons of people there who would love to have a detached home like so many people over here have. It's pretty natural to want your own independent home with your own tiny plot of land to use, so much so that in countries like Russia it's common to own a dacha in addition to an apartment in the city. There's no need to get passive aggressive over it. The city has spent the last two decades trying to densify and urbanize, but we can't exactly force people to accept that nor expect it to happen in an instant. There needs to be a balance and we're at least trying to work towards it.
First of all, this belief that the only choice is a "tiny apartment" in an urban area, is just missinformation, it is entirely possible to live in a dense urban area and live in a townhome, or a walkup, or any number of missing middle housing forms. It is also entirely possible to live in a large apartment, as I do. Just because our broken policies have made building these types of housing impossible, does not mean that they can not exist.
Second of all, as I explained in my first comment, those who want to live in a car dependent suburban hellscape have a nearly unlimited selection of locations in the city. It is those who want a walkable livable complete community who find it nearly impossible or completely impossible (depending on one's budget) to find a location that suits their needs.
I am not being passive aggressive, I am being very direct, I am tired of missinformation and missrepresentation around the issue of housing. The city has not spent the last two decades doing anything of the sort. In the past two decades the vast vast VAST majority of the housing built has been in the form of suburban housing trackts that are impossible to live in without a car. The remainder has been in the form of tiny apartments that are limited to a few tiny areas of development and that has only happened in the last few years. You can probably count on one hand the number of small scale missing middle developments that have happened in walkable areas in the city.
The ONLY people forcing someone to live somewhere they don't want to is those who oppose densifying the city. We are working towards balance sure...but we've barely even moved the needle away from complete car dependence.