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Comment by cyberax | Hacker News Reader

The whole discussion about "fixing" cities is stupid. Dense cities can't be fixed, and using ad-hoc regulations like this is just like plugging the holes in a dike with fingers.

Next you'll find that you also need to do the same for schools. But schoolteachers won't be able to afford living near the areas that they serve. So you need subsidized housing for them.

Oh, and the same for kindergarten. But what about at-home childcare? And so on.

And no, "land value capture" won't fix it. You'll just move the complexity from giving out subsidies into assessing the value of kindergartens and schools.

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The problem with US cities is that they're not dense enough. Most of the US has spent the past half-centry actively making new high-density construction illegal or incredibly expensive, so everything is operating within the bounds of 1970s-80s construction being reused over and over again because it was grandfathered in.

BS. European cities are just as bad.

And the US cities resisted the urbanism blight for longer than Europe thanks to a much better design.

And Europe is now paying price for its density obsession. You see it as a rising tide of far-right movements in Europe.

> You see it as a rising tide of far-right movements in Europe.

Famously popular in the dense cities.

Wait, it's the literal opposite, the less dense the more popular they are.

Interesting jump there. Not sure what you mean by blight though?

People being forced by economic forces to move into uncomfortable and unaffordable dense cities. This in turn creates disadvantaged underclass with no hopes for a better future. And even European social safety nets can only do so much.

While just hours away from dense cities, the apartments are often literally free. With copious space and easy access to basic services.

This results in rising crime. The downward trend that started in 90-s had been reversed. And the crimes of despair, mainly drug-related crimes, are rising faster than violent crimes.

Sounds like that would be entirely solved by LVT.

If you get rid of a lot of inefficiencies (unnecessary parking, land use segregation increase travel distances, and restrictions on multi family apartments), there will be so much more space available that it would lower housing prices by a lot for everyone. The tax revenues can also offset other taxes like income or sales taxes which also reduce inefficiency.

> it would lower housing prices

Moscow did just that in 90-s. They allowed densification without any regard for parking spaces.

Guess what happened? I give you three guesses.

Are you saying that cities can’t be fixed because they’re already fine, or because they’re irredeemably awful, or just that the notion of “fixing” them is inherently ridiculous?

Large dense cities are inherently awful. And attempting to fix them results in a slow-moving societal collapse.

Smaller cities, sparse cities like Houston, and special-purpose dense cities (like college or military towns) are fine.

That flies in the face of the huge breadth of large dense cities in this world, as well as that of neighborhoods inside of them.

And all the large developed countries that keep concentrating people into dense cities are now suffering from it.

There's an almost perfect correlation in the Western world between density increases and the rise of inequality (Gini index).

This is a willful blind spot for urbanists. They just pretend to blame everything on "end-stage capitalism" or some such.

Countries don’t “concentrate people into cities”… the people create cities by choosing to live close to each other.

I would dispute that, people move to cities primarily to work and earn more money. Often with the goal of being able to later buy a house in a less dense area that they would struggle to buy otherwise.

That’s the proximal reason, sure, but the density is a big part of what causes cities to have high-paying jobs.

No. People are _forced_ to move into large cities. And people who refuse that are being subjected to ever-increasing economic pressure.

_Choice_ means that there is a viable option to _not_ do it.

And more and more people do not _have_ this option. They have to move into dense cities because it's the only location that has half-decent job options.

I don't have data for Europe, but in the US the gap is growing between people who _want_ to live outside the dense cities and people who do.

> Dense cities can't be fixed

Singapore is frequently held up as a model by many on this very website.

A lot gets done when you know your ass is getting calloused for littering

Hah, more when the government owns so much of the land.

Singapore's culture is completely incompatible with western values

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