The picture on the left is just an argument against lawns.
Right? And also...who needs space between two homes if there are no lawns? Just moosh all the outer walls together.
Come to think of it...that's gonna result in a ridiculously long line of houses. Maybe we could moosh roofs and bottom floors and stack 'em up a bit to make the line of houses only a half to a third as long, and then leave a little space between Consecutive House Stacks™️ - y'know, so that there'll room for more windows.
Lawns aren't the reason people want to have space from their neighbors.
It's amazing what insulation and proper sound proofing can do. Never lived in thicker walls than here in Germany. Other than the blasted church bells, it'd be hard to convince me I was living next to people if the windows were opaque.
Partially, even if you got rid of the lawns the houses would still take up significantly more space for both the road infrastructure as well as the houses themselves.
If the island were 100 times larger, the houses would take 1% of the land area, leaving 99%. The apartment complex would take up .04%, leaving 99.96%, which isn't much of an improvement. The proportions of our planet are much closer to my scenario than this made up island. That's a reason why we might not "prefer apartments in our own town."
There are good reasons you might want density, this just isn't one of them.
Yeah, but most people don't live in that other 90% . Most people live in urban and suburban areas where most if not all of the land is privately owned. Because of this the problem shown of fitting 100 households into 25 acres is way more common than your scenario of fitting 100 households on 2500 acres
And having trees and nature near urban venters is very much desirable, to help with air pollution (tho really not a lot), heat concentration and humidity.
If the island were 100 times larger, the houses would take 1% of the land area, leaving 99%.
Singapore government: if only.
Also wildlife, carbon capturing, and distance to everything. There's reason why denser city is easier to go around, in this island, you might not even need a car.
But then you have to live in an apartment…
The neighbors kids who live above you will stomp around at 2:00am.
The neighbors below you will complain when you make the slightest noise.
I guess that's just an argument for better made apartments.
That's really the foundational problem. If you could exist without bugging or being bugged by the neighbors dense housing would be so much more appealing
This is absolutely correct.
I live now in a well-made townhouse. I can't hear the neighbors, ever, even the living room, or the kitchen. Or the bedroom! I love this place compared to my last crappy townhouse, or any apartment I've ever been in, ever.
I’ve lived in shitty apartments but dated two people who lived in “modern” high rise appartments. In mine I heard the neighbours occasionally since they were clearly old motels that they half arsed into units. The modern apartments I practically never heard anyone.
Though “modern” apartment generally price out people who are up all hours making noise it’s more the fact that these appartments usually have body corporates or people that live on site. Being the typical “up all hours stomping around” type would be a quick way to have your lease terminated.
Edit: Duh and the super obvious thing I forgot, improved sound insulation in modern apartments I imagine as well.
Because I lived in apartments for my entire adult life until maybe 2 or 3 years ago, and I can say most apartments suck because of the neighbors. Ya my neighbors across the street from me are awful and trashy but they are not directly above me or one wall away from me.
Your neighbours don't suck, your insulation sucks. Any time I had annoying neighbours, 9/10 times it was poor insulation. Sonic insulation is hugely important.
Renting sucks and relying on a landlord is awful. I bought a small house and keep my yard wild.
Having renting be the default for apartments is part of the problem. It is very normal where I live that a developer build an apartment building and the sells the apartments to individuals who own the living space and co-own and maintain the shared spaces. The developer takes the winnings and never interferes with the building again.
So um, why are the houses and nature mutually exclusive? I live in a suburban detached single family home, and my whole neighborhood is filled with trees, wildlife and even a tree lined creek that separates the back yards on my street from the back yards on the opposite side. You can't even see my actual yard from google maps because it's nearly entirely covered by tree canopy (at 6pm in summer my yard is 100% shaded). We have all sorts of wildlife including deer, foxes, owls, frogs, mallards, rabbits, squirrels, etc.
While I agree that we do need more housing options of all sorts, I don't for a second agree that nature and suburban housing are mutually exclusive. We just need to stop tearing down all the trees when we build, and plan better.
in both scenarios developers eventually buy up the entire island and fill it with either
What about something like that ?
8 houses in a row, built using a wood structure and straw bale wall for insulation (thermal AND phonic insulation) and clay plaster. So the construction material is storing CO2 rather than emitting tons of CO2 like concrete does.
It collects rainwater for the garden and has enough solar panels for the community and to contribute to the electrical consumption of the village around it.
It leaves a lot of space for land to develop a food forest, permaculture projects and leave space for biodiversity.
It depends also on the type of houses. It's not the same a cabin in the woods and a house with a garden.
Now imagine apartment buildings taking up 100% of the island and that's what you get under the current system.
Apartments are never built right. Always cheap out on sound proofing and appliances. Also fuck you if you have a dog
Plenty of high quality apartments where I live, in Europe.
Plenty of low quality apartments in Europe as well.
I'll go with 99 apartments and one house on the other side so I can be as far from them as possible.
In the original position, one is asked to consider which principles they would select for the basic structure of society, but they must select as if they had no knowledge ahead of time what position they would end up having in that society. This choice is made from behind a "veil of ignorance", which prevents them from knowing their ethnicity, social status, gender and, crucially in Rawls's formulation, their or anyone else's idea of how to lead a good life. Ideally, this would force participants to select principles impartially and rationally.
What not many people are touching on:
In 2, the owner of the building likely owns the rest of the land as well as the apartment. You are a slave to the owner as he owns the island and your "beautiful view" will either be absolutely not developed at all so it is difficult to use as a park or a source of food without explicit consent from your ruler. No community gardens without tons of power tripping and infighting of course either.
In 2, the owner of the apartment and land can and will bulldoze the entire forest and completely pave it over if there is the slightest hint that he can make more money that way, then jack up your rent for the privelage of living in a hellhole. Conservation of nature my ass. The building owner has a 99% chance about not giving a shit about conserving the rest. They will turn it into monoculture or cattle farming or a parking lot and stores. This post is literally landlord propaganda.
Edit: owns the apartment building, not apartment.
You're assuming that in 1 you own the property and in 2nd you're renting. A strawman argument if I ever saw one.
I've lived in an apartment and I just can't do it. I hated every day in it.
Logic here is broken because we don't make these decisions anyway. A developer will instead put 30 apartment buildings while chopping down anything that gets in the way, then charge more for rent than you'd be charged for the mortgage on the house. There's also the fact that this picture assumes every family on the left pic doesn't give a fuck about free scaping, preserving trees, or planting new ones? Idk, whole thing is jacked.
I just moved from an apartment to a house.
If the apartment had the same floor space and the city actually accommodated my hobbies (I need a large garage to work on cars and finish fixing a boat) then I would’ve gladly stayed.
However. Apartments above 60m² are rare and expensive, and all garages/industrial sites are unfavorable because you can put another bloc or supermarket in there. The cities became living hubs for corporate workers whose entire lives can be crammed into a 40 meter apartment and their only entertainment is a depression rectangle or a gaming console.
We could also all live in cells. Maybe even hook us up to VR so we dont even need to get out into nature. You could maybe even harvest energy, by keeping us in nutrient filled tubs while simulating a perfect world into our neural perception.
You see one apartment building. A property developer sees room for 100 apartment buildings.
You think the corporate apartment developer is going to let all that stay green? That many people in apartments, you need a few parking lots, shopping malls, corporate centers, and then some more apartments once the rent goes up.
Perhaps in some parts of suburban north america. However, well-designed walkable, bikeable cities with proper transit don't require mega big box stores all in one zoned area that you drive to from a sprawling suburb.
If the apartments are no shoe boxes and have lavishly big (garden) balconies I'm all in. The space should be around 100-120 qm each with flexible drywall placement for individual footprints.
I love living in a walkable city but I envy a friend of mine a little bit, who exits his apartment into a market center with cafes, shops, supermarkets, barber, doctors etc.
Because FUCK living that close to other people. Humans fucking suck to be close to and I'd go fucking postal having to deal with that shit.
I hate my neighbors as it is and barely see them. If I could hear their shithead kids screaming and throwing themselves into the walls I'd burn down a city block.
The real crime is that fucking font. I'd rather just burn down the whole island.
First one. I've lived in condos and I will do anything to always live in a house now. It's the literal reason we sold a condo to buy a house.
Life has been much better ever since.
The nicest thing about the second picture is how much free untamed land it leaves for me to find a spot to bury the body of my asshole upstairs neighbor.
Edit: I'm not a murderer... But only because I moved out.
What makes you think it would be just one apartment building instead of filling the island with apartment buildings?
No no, one apartment building and the rest of the island is a surface level parking lot because an underground lot was too expensive.
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