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Comment by hankman86 | Hacker News Reader

These buildings are basically an anti-individualism ideology, cast in concrete. Which is why far left and far right regimes alike like to erect such structures.

And it’s not even a thing of the past. In its most recent incarnation, the German Greens have declared war on single family homes. The fashionable justification being their carbon footprint. Instead, they are for policies to house people in apartment blocks that are densely spaced within cities instead of suburbs. Often while mixing different demographics that would not normally like to live within the same neighbourhood. Suffice it to say that people continue to pursue the dream of owning houses on their own plot of land.

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If you live in (or near) a city center, you'll live in a large apartment building. If you want a single family house, you move outside the city center. You cannot have an urban city environment, with restaurants, bars, stores and walkable streets if you only have single family buildings with yards there.

There is a place for everything, houses and large buildings.

Otherwise, I agree with the comment above, that such buildings seem impractical, and can be replaced with separate buildings, even higher, with open space in between them (and greens and parks and benches,...), eg: https://goo.gl/maps/TneCupaRNq3SgQYL7 (imagine this, but with undeground parking instead of cars parked on the steet).

I agree insofar as it actually involves people being in constructed environments. Houses are an anti-individualism ideology in all their forms. The only individualistic people are the homeless, who heat themselves with their own body, and and cover themselves only with what they can bring with them on their person.

To rely on wood and concrete to protect you is the death of self reliance

> The only individualistic people are the homeless, who heat themselves with their own body

that doesn't sound true. How can you survive aa a homeless person in New York, Seattle or Boston? of course you need shelter provided for you, or you'll be dead in a single winter night.

He’s trolling, or alternatively pointing out that we live in societies where we rely on others doing their jobs to allow us to ok in the manner to which we have become accustomed.

It’s nothing to do with imposing ‘far left’ ideology. It’s physics. A dense urban neighbourhood of uninsulated housing that supports most trips by walking and public transport is more energy efficient than a passvihaus located somewhere that requires driving. Once built that suburban house has an ongoing and high transportation energy cost for maybe hundreds of years. Obviously if your political ideology is Green you are against wasting energy.

This sounds like a speech you rehearsed for a San Francisco HOA meeting to keep more housing out of your neighborhood to keep your property values up.

No, the Greens have not declared war on single family homes. That was just the right-wing pitch on the observation by a green politician, that inside dense city regions, there is not enough real estate for single-family houses and that multi-unit houses have a way better energy balance.

If you live in a more rural region, feel free to have single-family houses. With an energy-efficient building style and rooftop-solar, that should be very environmently friendly. That is, if you don't waste too much energy commuting.

In and directly around cities, there is a huge scarcity of space for buildings and a shortage of homes. Having more dense units is both socially and environmentally friendly.

Thanks for not ignoring that tyranny can come from both the left and right. The left has done a job on everyone by sugarcoating far left sins. They have used Hitler and Nazism to paint anyone who is not in their ingroup. This includes people who are just anti-authoritarian in general.

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