The future is dense, walkable cities.

[MajorRewrite]

If they want the walkability of dense cities they would be seeking that life now.

There are no people living in cities now? The demand for those places hasn’t driven up prices?

You continue to be the stable genius of this forum.

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

Where does 'Watts' fit into your dense, walkable city? Gotta put the poor people somewhere. Or just walk around them?

It’s on the Blue Line.

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

Pushing people to give up cars while driving is still somewhat affordable is a proposition that won't sell. It needs something offered in trade: guns, blowjobs, etc. If they want the walkability of dense cities they would be seeking that life now.

They are. That’s why housing is so expensive in walkable cities.

 

[Chernosoth]

The granolashotgun site expired. I dug this last entry up at the Wayback Machine:

Back in the 1990s I used to live across the street from an old gas station. It was still functioning at the time, but some years after I moved it went dark and became little more than a parking lot. That lasted for over a decade. That’s how long it takes to get approval for new construction in San Francisco. Then one day a fence went up, the gas station building was scraped, and a remediation crew went to work decontaminating sixty odd years of petroleum funk from the soil. Benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes, lead, heavy metals, MTBE, ethylene dichloride, naphthalene… Fun stuff.
I like to stop by and chat with the folks who do this kind of work. Evidently they inject various sugars and fertilizers into the earth to stimulate bacteria that eat the toxic hydrocarbons and break them down into simpler less troublesome elements. That took a few more years. And then, like a mushroom sprouting, an apartment building went up in a matter of months. The permit process and site preparation cost millions of dollars. Construction during the Covid supply chain period made the building significantly more expensive than it might have been. Radically lower interest rates on the construction loan help soften the blow, but none of this work is cheap. In the end, demand for new housing is powerful and the market gobbled up the units the instant they were completed.

Resistance to new buildings like this one come from all sides. Existing renters saw it as a sure sign of gentrification that would drive up rents in a priviously affordable neighborhood and push them out of the city. Existing property owners saw these buildings as too big, too out of place, and too full of people who will induce more traffic congestion and more problems. I always asked how they felt about the old gas station. Was that a cherished community institution?

Fast forward to this week when I helped a Ukrainian couple move into their new accommodations in the building. They arrived from Europe six months ago and were sponsored by my good friends. They were initially provided with a free space to crash so they had time to secure legal documents, find work, and establish themselves in a new country. I’ve also been busy sponsoring Ukrainians displaced by the war so I was already on board with the whole integration process. I reached out to the usual suspects and brokered some free furniture for them.

The sofa was donated by a friend who was ready to upgrade. He graciously helped deliver it to the building. And that’s where the sub rosa thing comes in. This particular friend has spent his life carefully selecting properties, sometimes rented, sometimes owned, that were considered undesirable by most people. But they suit his needs perfectly. These properties always come at a deep discount that frees him to work as little as possible at a traditional job for income. This gives him the time he values more than money or a prestigious address to pursue his true passions.

He currently lives in a long defunct shopfront that he’s scrubbed clean, painted, organized and strategically upgraded. He fitted the back office with a kitchen (minus a stove) with second hand fixtures and appliances he scavenged for cheap. For something that only cost a few hundred dollars I think it looks quit respectable. I especially love the way he fitted mirrors to the fridge to transform it from a scratch and dent unit to something with a bit of sparkle.

His neighbors love him. He causes no problems. And he pays all his bills by working two days a week. This is the other way new living space is carved out of a wildly overpriced city. It works because it doesn’t exist on paper and the authorities haven’t yet discovered all the ways it violates a thousand cherished regulations.
I stopped caring about “solutions” a long time ago. There are no official remedies for much of anything these days. Our institutions are sclerotic and dysfunctional. The culture is divided. Shrug. Meanwhile, individuals do what they can. I’ve made peace with that.

 

[Chernosoth]

Small sturdy trucks can be useful anywhere: farms, urban delivery, etc. We don't have them in the US anymore because the EPA pushes the carmakers towards bigger vehicles by setting CAFE standards impossibly high for smaller footprints.

I had a couple Ford Rangers from the 1990s, but never with a 4 cylinder engine. Now I want one, but those are far too rare to find one at an affordable price.