PC Principal V: What The Fuck Am I Reading

[Ksandra]

Why are we putting that on homeowners' shoulders instead of shitty transportation (not just in city, but general country-wide design) and layout planning?

[Starby]

We got robots like this in the silicon fabrication plant and lemme tell you when they fuck up. They really fuck up. Its a lot easier to just pay a worker that won't completely fuck up and break everything.

I just finished working in a brand new wing of a hospital and they have these robots called TUGs that bring patient's meals and medications to their rooms. Basically the machine gets off its charger, goes to the loading area where a person will load it up with everything it needs, and then it does the rounds. It can call the elevator, get on and off itself, make the delivery and return to the charging station. When they work, it's great.

Problem is, I was there working for about a year, and 2-3 times a week these things were broken down and bottlenecked in the halls. Their biggest issue was definitely collision with each other. They wouldn't 'collide' but their collision detection would slam the breaks and then neither of them could move. Its pretty bad when you're trying to make people better but a Wall-e with the meds you need is god knows where.

[Zetanio]

Because the metro-adjacent square footage is only 1-2 stories when it could be ten.

Yep.

[Ksandra]

Yep.

Why are we putting that on homeowners' shoulders instead of shitty transportation (not just in city, but general country-wide design) and layout planning?

.

[Zetanio]

Because it's the fucking reason the prices are so high in places like San Francisco. You're complaining about the fucking price of owning a place.

Build places that can hold more people and costs go down.

[Niiro]

No one who owns property wants property to be cheaper as it would be a direct harm to their investment.

[Niiro]

They also benefit from greater availability of home loans as it effectively increases demand for their property.

[Niiro]

The only people who want cheaper housing are people who can't afford rent or home loans.

Coincidentally they also can't afford lobbyists.

[Gredival]

Also the fact that there's limitations to the amount of people a geographic location can reasonably support regardless of things like public transportation when you have a situation like LA where people have to live two hours away to find anything that's reasonably priced.

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[Ksandra]

Because it's the fucking reason the prices are so high in places like San Francisco. You're complaining about the fucking price of owning a place.

Build places that can hold more people and costs go down.

We have tons of space to build more houses. Wanting to own a home isn't the issue. Contesting all businesses into major cities without strong transportation so people don't need to actually live in that city is.

[Ksandra]

Rather than spending on stupid shit like a wall, the country could be working towards creating smaller business hub areas and better transportation.

Advocating for exactly that is not a problem.

[Ksandra]

Also the fact that there's limitations to the amount of people a geographic location can reasonably support regardless of things like public transportation when you have a situation like LA where people have to live two hours away to find anything that's reasonably priced.

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My problem is saying that's people's fault for wanting to own homes, which sounds hella stupid to me.


A lot of these cities should be working (with gov't help) towards getting businesses in their locations so not as many people need to commute to LA in the first place.

[Melena]

I just finished working in a brand new wing of a hospital and they have these robots called TUGs that bring patient's meals and medications to their rooms. Basically the machine gets off its charger, goes to the loading area where a person will load it up with everything it needs, and then it does the rounds. It can call the elevator, get on and off itself, make the delivery and return to the charging station. When they work, it's great.

Problem is, I was there working for about a year, and 2-3 times a week these things were broken down and bottlenecked in the halls. Their biggest issue was definitely collision with each other. They wouldn't 'collide' but their collision detection would slam the breaks and then neither of them could move. Its pretty bad when you're trying to make people better but a Wall-e with the meds you need is god knows where.

The jail I worked at had these since the late 90’s. Would bring the large carts with the inmates meals over. Those fucking things broke down and bottle necked so damn much, and they’d always pop out at the worst times when riding in a golf cart through the tunnels. The techs who repaired them though made bank.

[Zetanio]

Ksan, you aren't arguing anything except in circles.

Niiro, you're making a good point but the people who own the property stand to make more money if their land is developed vertically.

[Byrthnoth]

It's stupid-dumb levels of Econ 101 that if you want housing prices in a metro area to fall, you should increase the supply of housing. Expanding the metro area so it stretches even further into single family home suburbia is a losing strategy for a lot of different reasons. Increasing housing density where people want to live is obviously the right strategy.

What kind of apartments get build is another negotiation. The first apartments will certainly be 3k/mo one-bedroom type places, but again Econ 101 tells us that the solution is to create even greater supply to drive down prices (at least distally along metro lines). This won't work on the same time scale because it is very likely that HOAs will prevent meaningful development in places with strong HOAs, which means that all the 3k one-bedroom apartments will happen in poor neighborhoods. As such, people who could already afford to pay 3k/mo for a one-bedroom will live in a slightly more convenient location but poor people will be pushed way far out of the city (or join the massive homeless population.)

I'd be in favor of something like re-zoning all land within a mile of a BART station to be apartment-building-friendly combined with requirements for affordable housing (with the same density as the replaced Single Family Homes) inside any apartment building built. So if your apartment building takes up a block that used to be row houses, your first two floors have to be needs-based affordable housing. You would end up with the same density of affordable housing but way more supply of profitable housing.

[Jaybar]

Ksan this is my territory of expertise and that thinking is wrong and does not work. History has shown that outward growth of housing and industry simply doesn't work. I'm on a phone and I would help link some stuff, but you can look into Radiant Cities and Garden Cities as 20th century utopian urban theory that resulted in what we call "urban sprawl".

Investing in better transportation isn't something that is feasible due to eminent domain issues. A city can do more for it's people by allowing denser zoning to increase housing supply. They should also be pushing for smart zoning to prevent development of only luxury apartment buildings such as districts of mid rise, 6 flat and 3 flat buildings. Of course single family homes should be a part of the mix.

So in short the American Dream to own a home on an acre of land is unsustainable and choking existing resources. It's a large subject that can't be summed up in one post.

I will end by leaving you with the best video on the subject I've seen: a Ted talk by James Kunstler (author and critic of urban design)

[Mythe_Seraph]

Sounds like some more California wildfire will be happening soon

[Ksandra]

All I can say is that areas that have apartment housing creates some of the worst traffic possible. This is LA's problem.

When you are sticking a building that can house 200+ in it and expect them to all go to work, what do you think happens to the roads?

When we lived in Van Nuys, the roads were absolutely awful, and that area is just apartment after apartment after apartment.


Also, I am not advocating that people have an acre of land. Quote where I said that. I was specifically talking about house ownership, not specific size land ownership. Ex: I have no land ownership in my townhouse, but it is still a million times better than apartment living.


This is also a question of what people as a society want vs. what is efficient.

Quality of life is a huge factor. If a ton of people's quality of life goes up through home ownership, then that takes precedence over efficiency.

Not saying, btw, that you have to own a home. Some people enjoy the apartment lifestyle. But considering owning homes are a high priority for lots of people, then as a country we should look into giving more and more people access to it.

[Psion]

traffic isn't nesesarily associated with apartments. look at orange county - it's got a population of 1.8million yet (other than the 5/405 freeways lol) the traffic there is pretty boss. almost never any traffic issues anywhere, even near apartment areas. only places i can think of where there's issues is saddleback college whenever a bunch of classes get out (and that's mostly within the parking lot itself, or people trying to get into it) or pretty much any of the schools when classes get out or start. even the 5 and 405 don't really have traffic issues until you start getting close to santa ana area. before that it's usually extremely drivable from san juan capistrano til santa ana, where many of the jobs are.

and the roads in orange county are HEAVEN. like, literally, no potholes anywhere. the roads are wide, plenty of room to maneuver without worrying if your rear view mirror is gonna grind against the car in the lane next to yours. that doesn't seem so important until some driver falls asleep and swerves into your lane then proceeds to smash into a nearby apartment entrance divider, proceeding to do a 360 in air and somehow the driver gets out perfectly fine. (this actually happened - thankfully the extra space in the lane let me avoid him while not having to get into another lane and possibly smack into someone else.)

and orange county, at least in the RSM/mission viejo area, has quite a lot of apartments. in fact, for the most part, i can't even recall seeing single family homes <_<;

[Ksandra]

I actually can't find any good statistics comparing LA to OC's renters percentages. Most places lump the two together into the Great LA area, so don't compare them.

So this is the best I have.

This says in 2016 Renting in OC was at 41% (pg. 15):

https://www.scag.ca.gov/Documents/OrangeCountyLP.pdf

This one puts LA county at 54% in 2016:

https://la.curbed.com/2018/8/9/17665...ter-population


So I am not sure how you don't see single family homes in OC when over half of the pop are home owners. (Not to mention I have been to OC a bunch and there are houses all over the place. My BiL and SiL live in Mission Viejo.)