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Except there is no law mandating people to live in these cities nor to limit housing to being within city boundaries. Cities don't have a monopoly on housing nor where people can live.
Apparently you don't understand how UGBs work. The very basics of UGBs.
UGBs save land in the present for future development. By doing so they reduce housing costs long term.
Low density zoning on the other hand artificially limits the supply of housing and thus increases housing costs especially if a place has run out of undeveloped land for new development.
UGBs do also protect natural land. That's a good thing.
Randall O'Toole just like you hates cities and high density. He is no neutral source for scientific information and his blog posts aren't even remotely scientific, but baseless opinion pieces.
You hate planners, because they KNOW the consequences of individual selfish behavior causing problems in interplay with other selfish individual behavior. They KNOW what happens if they let you do whatever you want to do and that is making harmful decisions, for society in general and the environment.
When you find out that the roof is leaking, you call around and everyone is too busy, it takes weeks for a crew to come to even look at it, months to fix, ends up massive water damage costing you $20,000 to fix...
How on earth would a simple leak taken care of in a reasonable amount of time lead to $20,000 of damage? I have never heard of it taking week's to find a person(not a crew) to look at the roof and give a quote. What you do is find someone able to come on a reasonable schedule. Book someone if need be and keep looking for a cheaper, faster person while waiting for that person to come. A leak can often be patched for a heck of a lot less and patching some leaks is something that can be done in a less than a day. Replacing a roof is expensive but can be done on credit. Oh, and even if you do need to replace the roof, it is a good idea to patch the leak while you are waiting so that no further damage takes place.
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When you find out that you have a termite infestation that is in your whole neighborhood, your home has to be treated, basement cleared and walls cleared to be treated for $6,000.... then realizing that the problem keeps on flaring up because the area is full of termites... another $$$...
If you have termites in an area then it is good idea to get the house inspected yearly and to do preventative treatments for termites. Part of termite treatment is getting rid of the conditions that lead to getting termites
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You get a burst pipe in your 2nd floor bathroom.. inside the walls.. it leaks slowly for weeks until you find out that it has damaged a substantial amount of your infrastructure... it will cost $12,000 to fix....
I have never heard of a leak in an occupied house going unobserved for weeks esp. not a pipe burst. Leaks cause drips and if behind a will will show somewhere in the house.
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It is a harsh winter and it snows every week... you need to shovel constantly... clear your sidewalk, walkway, driveway... get salt for the roads.... pain in the ....
Or just get hiring someone to do it for you. Sure much cheaper to do it yourself but that is an option beside renting.
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Your neighbour lovessssssss to play his rap music everyday... nice subwoofer... it's his house, why can't he? Nice loud beats everyday to the wee hours...
You can call the cops on this guy. Also being further away helps with noise vs. having the guy right above or bellow you or a mere interior wall away.
When you find out that the roof is leaking, you call around and everyone is too busy, it takes weeks for a crew to come to even look at it, months to fix, ends up massive water damage costing you $20,000 to fix...
A roof doesn't leak if it's replaced on schedule unless there's a hail storm. Which hasn't been an issue for us in 30 years of home ownership
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Originally Posted by HodgePodge
When you find out that you have a termite infestation that is in your whole neighborhood, your home has to be treated, basement cleared and walls cleared to be treated for $6,000.... then realizing that the problem keeps on flaring up because the area is full of termites... another $$$...
Termites here are specific to a single house. We have ours checked every other month.
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Originally Posted by HodgePodge
You get a burst pipe in your 2nd floor bathroom.. inside the walls.. it leaks slowly for weeks until you find out that it has damaged a substantial amount of your infrastructure... it will cost $12,000 to fix....
We have a one story house and the areas where water pipes are located are known. We also repiped the house some time ago, so don't have any worries on that potential issue.
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Originally Posted by HodgePodge
It is a harsh winter and it snows every week... you need to shovel constantly... clear your sidewalk, walkway, driveway... get salt for the roads.... pain in the ....
A harsh winter here is when we have more than 2 days in the 20's
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Originally Posted by HodgePodge
Your neighbour lovessssssss to play his rap music everyday... nice subwoofer... it's his house, why can't he? Nice loud beats everyday to the wee hours...
Police here are hard core on noise
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Originally Posted by HodgePodge
Your other neighbour has 3 great dogs ... the type who loves to bark at everything that passes within a few 100 feet... heck they are in their own backyard... it's their right to be there and make a ton of noise...
In our neighborhood, it's our dogs that people will hear.
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Originally Posted by HodgePodge
And on and on and on.
Basically your example was the extreme example of bad apt / condo living ... so I give you a small sample of the same except for house living.
Living in an apartment is not a real possibility for us. We have too much stuff that needs space. Fishing, hunting, camping and golf gear, tools because I like to do as much car repair on my own as possible. Then there's the pool table and ping pong table, the basketball goal, the two grills and other fun time equipment.
What's even better about our house is that we bought it for $95,000 and it's now worth $550,000. And, it's on a 1/4 acre in central Houston.
Apparently you don't understand how UGBs work. The very basics of UGBs.
UGBs save land in the present for future development. By doing so they reduce housing costs long term.
You've made this claim on various threads and it simply isn't true.
UGBs artificially inflate land costs making housing and other development more expensive at every point in time. Yet you inanely tout this as an affordable housing solution.
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Originally Posted by Stadtmensch
Low density zoning on the other hand artificially limits the supply of housing and thus increases housing costs especially if a place has run out of undeveloped land for new development.
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Originally Posted by Stadtmensch
UGBs do also protect natural land. That's a good thing.
Except they don't!
The UGBs are expanded to provide for an estimated number of years of development moving forward. So they aren't saving land. They only make the land within the UGB more costly.
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Originally Posted by Stadtmensch
Randall O'Toole just like you hates cities and high density. He is no neutral source for scientific information and his blog posts aren't even remotely scientific, but baseless opinion pieces.
You have a problem with using "city" and "urban area" interchangeably - they aren't interchangeable. With respect to the Antiplanner website from what I can see his source of information is generally statistics from governmental entities that collect the information. You just don't like what the results indicate.
As far as living in a high density area - it's my personal preference not to for many reasons. If you want to that's fine. The difference is you want to force people to live in high density housing using government mandates and artificially inflating the cost of housing. None of what you tout is consistent with your pretextual rationale of affordable housing. You are simply promoting density for density's sake as you have through at least 5 aliases, many threads, and several hundred posts.
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Originally Posted by Stadtmensch
You hate planners, because they KNOW the consequences of individual selfish behavior causing problems in interplay with other selfish individual behavior. They KNOW what happens if they let you do whatever you want to do and that is making harmful decisions, for society in general and the environment.
Ah here you go with the attempts to shame people with faux environmental, faux efficiency, and faux economic sentiments. Planners don't have a monopoly on determining what's "best for society" - you can't even define what "society" is. Doing "whatever you want to do" is a bit of an exaggeration. Detached housing with a yard is hardly a harmful decision. We are individuals with the ability to make our own decisions, not lemmings blindly following idiots who deem themselves "planners".
One difference between the "society" you want and that everywhere else is we generally respect individual thinking and freedom. You are free to live in your apartment and be relegated to a renter for life and to promote your lifestyle for everyone else. But we're capable of our own choices and able to reject your housing preferences for our own. Others prefer more personal space, their own yard, etc. and that's what they will pursue.
The affordable housing issue is being addressed by people moving away from the high density areas to other areas and states. Indeed the national news tonight is the large exodus of people from New York - NYC lost over 5% of its population in 2 years due to people migrating away from density.
High density comes with high costs and high taxes along with congestion and a number of other undesirable things for many. You might have a preference for high density, but trying to pass off UGBs and high density as an affordable housing "solution" or as a lifestyle everyone else should be forced into is absurd.
Last edited by IC_deLight; 12-21-2023 at 10:58 PM..
A roof doesn't leak if it's replaced on schedule unless there's a hail storm. Which hasn't been an issue for us in 30 years of home ownership
Termites here are specific to a single house. We have ours checked every other month.
We have a one story house and the areas where water pipes are located are known. We also repiped the house some time ago, so don't have any worries on that potential issue.
A harsh winter here is when we have more than 2 days in the 20's
Police here are hard core on noise
In our neighborhood, it's our dogs that people will hear.
Living in an apartment is not a real possibility for us. We have too much stuff that needs space. Fishing, hunting, camping and golf gear, tools because I like to do as much car repair on my own as possible. Then there's the pool table and ping pong table, the basketball goal, the two grills and other fun time equipment.
What's even better about our house is that we bought it for $95,000 and it's now worth $550,000. And, it's on a 1/4 acre in central Houston.
You make your neighbors listen to your dogs? I'm glad I'm in a condo where we crack down on that crap.
As for the rest, sounds like a huge amount of work.
Ah here you go with the attempts to shame people with faux environmental, faux efficiency, and faux economic sentiments. Planners don't have a monopoly on determining what's "best for society" - you can't even define what "society" is. Doing "whatever you want to do" is a bit of an exaggeration. Detached housing with a yard is hardly a harmful decision. We are individuals with the ability to make our own decisions, not lemmings blindly following idiots who deem themselves "planners".
One difference between the "society" you want and that everywhere else is we generally respect individual thinking and freedom. You are free to live in your apartment and be relegated to a renter for life and to promote your lifestyle for everyone else. But we're capable of our own choices and able to reject your housing preferences for our own. Others prefer more personal space, their own yard, etc. and that's what they will pursue.
The affordable housing issue is being addressed by people moving away from the high density areas to other areas and states. Indeed the national news tonight is the large exodus of people from New York - NYC lost over 5% of its population in 2 years.
High density comes with high costs and high taxes along with congestion and a number of other undesirable things for many. You might have a preference for high density, but trying to pass off UGBs and high density as an affordable housing "solution" or as a lifestyle everyone else should be forced into is absurd.
It's not just the planners in my state behind the UGBs. It's the voters. Repeatedly starting in the 90s. And a variety of supporting legislation at the local and state level that makes infill easier. We're preserving the farms and forests, mostly forever despite some expansion of the boundaries over time.
Here are two examples of legislation: As of 2019 you can build two accessory units and a full-size house on the typical house lot in Seattle. And no commie parking requirement comes with it. Next year due to new legislation the same lot will typically allow six units in Seattle and other core cities. THAT is freedom vs. mandates restricting most land to single-family houses only.
Apartments are not allowed in most urban areas of the US. Most areas only allow houses.
This isn't debatable.
It also isn't true. I live in a historic Southern town famous for several Civil War battles and some extremely high-end apartments are being built right in the historic district. One building faces the Confederate Cemetary and is at the entrance to a beautiful Victorian neighborhood of homes on the historic register. The apartments rent for several times what the mortgage is on my 3/2 house (which is also in the city). They have all the "bells and whistles" that most people love, so I'm sure they'll be snapped up quickly.
It's not just the planners in my state behind the UGBs. It's the voters. Repeatedly starting in the 90s. And a variety of supporting legislation at the local and state level that makes infill easier. We're preserving the farms and forests, mostly forever despite some expansion of the boundaries over time.
Here are two examples of legislation: As of 2019 you can build two accessory units and a full-size house on the typical house lot in Seattle. And no commie parking requirement comes with it. Next year due to new legislation the same lot will typically allow six units in Seattle and other core cities. THAT is freedom vs. mandates restricting most land to single-family houses only.
How cool for Seattle. A few blocks away from our house, a multitude of 1,000 sq ft houses on 12,000 sq ft lots have been replaced with townhomes and there are now between 6 and 8 of them on those lots. On a major thoroughfare nearby, vacant lots and old used car lots have been replaced with 350 unit apartment buildings. That's what having no zoning does for you. No muss, no fuss, no UGBs.
You make your neighbors listen to your dogs? I'm glad I'm in a condo where we crack down on that crap.
As for the rest, sounds like a huge amount of work.
Actually, if you have a fairly well built house, there's not much work at all outside of normal maintenance. My last house was built in 1927 and I never did any major renovations on it at all except on the crawlspace. That was due to the close proximity to a river and the high water table though, not the structure itself. Any building structure with land will take clearing and cleaning up. Some of us actually enjoy using the space.
Actually, if you have a fairly well built house, there's not much work at all outside of normal maintenance. My last house was built in 1927 and I never did any major renovations on it at all except on the crawlspace. That was due to the close proximity to a river and the high water table though, not the structure itself. Any building structure with land will take clearing and cleaning up. Some of us actually enjoy using the space.
See, that's the point of condo VS house ownership.
Some ppl don't mind maintenance and in fact love it.
While some ppl are as handy as a bag of rocks and not only hate doing it, but can't and will need to hire ppl to clean out the gutters, fix the broken screens on the door / windows, etc.
I have done both for quite a long time and BOTH have their pluses and minuses.
I lived in a brand new condo and it was so EASY. Zero maintenance. Neighbors were good. Strict guidelines on loud noise / music. No roaches or other pests. I can go out every weekend and enjoy myself or actually go on vacations without considering what upkeep is needed at home.
I also lived in a small house. Old, but good bones. Lots of maintenance because the past owner did ZERO. But I'm half handy and actually know a contractor. So for me it's okay, I can handle things that pop up.
The point is it depends on the person and their lifestyle.
A good example is that in the 80s I knew a young couple, doing very well career wise and could've easily bought a nice house (back then it was still cheap ~$150,000 - $200,000 for a starter house). But they bought new condo's. They were DINKS (Dual Income No Kids). They loved to travel. Loved going out to eat at the latest restaurants. And yeah they were has handy as a bag of rocks
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