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Comment by CalRobert | Hacker News Reader

""" developers were coming in with proposals to demolish the Victorian villas in the area so that they could build apartments. We decided to designate it as a conservation area so that nothing could be knocked down without our permission. """

I note the author does not say what actions they took to ensure their decisions did not negatively affect the supply of housing.

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There weren't housing shortages in most Northern cities in the 1980s. Significant deindustrialisation had hollowed them out and they were in economic decline. The population in Manchester dropped continuously from 766,311 in 1931 to 392,819 in 2001 before starting to recover[0].

This was also before the sell-off of council housing, so it was still possible for the authority to guarantee housing. So conservation of unloved but historically important buildings was probably a more pressing problem than finding some vacant land to build flats.

https://www.manchester.gov.uk/download/downloads/id/25393/a2...

They're not obliged to. Conservation is a good on its own terms. They also didn't address carbon burdens, asbestos or diversity.

Look I get it, there's a housing crisis. If you want to argue we should make suburban Seoul with towers for 10km can I remind you le Corbusiers ideas were implemented widely in Birmingham and Manchester and were a disaster.

Maybe, the answer is to raid the green belt? Oh look, another "special interest" bun fight. More Barrett homes now! More ticky tacky. More all the same.

I believe you had this song in mind when you wrote your comment, didn't you ? : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_2lGkEU4Xs

The video is unavailable, but it's the intro song for the tv show Weeds, isn't it?

I think it is yes !

Malvina Reynolds - Little Boxes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUoXtddNPAM

Assuming GP is referring to 'ticky tacky' and the song is Little Boxes, yes it is, but wasn't written for it (in 1963) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boxes.

Most people aren't calling for towers all around, but mixed development instead of single family housing.

That’s only because they weren’t well connected (by design?) to the community vs how say the Soviets implemented theirs (one of the things they actually got right, despite the brutal aesthetics). Similar story for the US “projects” - completely isolated from ADLs (activities of daily living).

From all the places I’ve visited, I think the Dutch and Danish have figured out a nice middle ground for building mixed use human scale places.

Which part was a disaster? High rise towers in Seoul and elsewhere seem to work after all, so if you're rejecting high rise towers on the basis that high rise towers didn't work in those situations, I'm not sure I follow your logic.

My experience owning a protected structure soon taught me that heritage officers have zero interest in practicality and would rather see structures fall in to the ground as their owners nearly bankrupt themselves instead of actually allowing the building to be a useful structure in the modern world.

No, well 1980s Manchester isn't modern day $prosperous city.

Further, I suspect a run down '10 servant' Victorian Villa could house more people in bedsits, than the replacement apartments, so in effect youre complaining that the have nots had housing at the expense of the better off, which probably isn't the complaint you were intending to make.

In China they went and built a ton of housing, but then people don't want to live in those cities and their population has peaked up. So forcing housing solutions doesn't necessarily end well either.

Suburbs are most of the time a forced housing solution. Allow people more freedom how to use the land they own. Have simple and sensible regulations on nuisance levels and light coverage. Japan is a good example where it works.

What’s the down side for them? People are paying less than $500 a month in rent for a 2 bedroom. Gives their whole economy a competitive edge.

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