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Lead out in cuffs posted:My impression of housing in North America is also that wood frame was kind of a good idea back when there were still old-growth hardwood forests to cut down (leaving aside the environmental externalities), while modern wood houses basically follow the same construction plans, but with lovely lumber grown in short cycles on plantations. The consequence is that while 100-year-old+ middle-class housing is still good today, the houses built post-WW2 are largely being torn down. Masonry construction is a complete non-starter in geologically active regions like, well, the western third of North America. Also, the SF Bay Area is full of houses built in the 1940s and 50s. The reason they get torn down is not their lack of structural integrity, it's that people want more than 1000 sq. ft. for a 3 bedroom house.
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Dec 13, 2016 19:33
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Doctor Butts posted:boner touched upon something that I think dovetails into the zoning arguments: I personally believe that metropolitan areas should be made more monocentric. This is a big reason why cars are relied upon so much and why mass transit kind of sucks. As someone that commutes by bike almost exclusively I'm of the opposite opinion: metro areas should be even more multi-centric. I don't want to have to drive or find some other means of commuting downtown. Everyone should be able to live close enough to their employer to walk or bike.
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Dec 15, 2016 20:01
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:I'm not actually aware of any cities that have multiple discrete downtown areas with heavily developed infrastructure and high-rises and all; when I hear about polycentric cities I tend to think more along the lines of Portland or San Francisco or Austin where there's still one clearly definable 'heart' to the city, they just also contain a more evenly distributed network of semi-independent suburban villages with their own commercial corridors. Versus, say, DC or Baltimore, where outside a grocery store or an Outback Steakhouse here and there the suburban sprawl is a bunch of bedroom towns supporting people who all go to shop and work in the city center. San Francisco is a tiny corner of the Bay Area – geographically and in population San Jose is larger, and there's also Oakland.
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Dec 15, 2016 22:24
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