This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I don't think this is true. Certainly all the East Asian countries show a large amount of TFR difference between the big cities (0.6) and elsewhere (1.2). Brutal numbers overall obviously.
I think it might be good to follow @morebirths on Twitter who digs into these details frequently and is a big advocate of lower density environments.
To a point, more building will equal lower prices. This is evident in Texas for example, which builds lots of (low density) stuff and has low prices. But if Dallas became Manhattan, prices in this new city would be much higher. Ultra dense building is space efficient, but not cost efficient. New York is structurally expensive and it's not just regulation that makes it that way. The cheapest major cities are ones like Dallas and Houston that are very spread out. There are no dense, cheap cities in the First World.
This fails to understand half the fertility crisis. True, we need more people to have kids. But we also need the ones that do have kids to have more. I'll have 4 so that you can have 0 and average at 2.
I think so. Greenfield architecture is easier and cheaper. Cities with medium density (like 2-5k per square mile) can provide good government services with low tax burden. My parents live in one of those cities and their property taxes are like $1,500/year.
Rural areas are probably net drains, but lowish-medium density is a sweet spot.
Agree. But how much is a 4 bedroom apartment going to cost in a major urban area? It would likely require an income far beyond what the average family could pay. Nevertheless almost all most new development inside dense cities is studios and 1 bedrooms. More large apartments would be an improvement.
By the way, none of this is a strong claim that we need to develop empty government land, only that it might help some things, and too much density is bad, actually.
Ah, come on! First and most famous example is Berlin - it's still relatively cheap today, when compared internationally, but it was fantastically cheap for 25 years.
Germany is actually full of examples like that. Dresden is following the Berlin playbook, and Leipzig is the new cheap/dense/hip city for now. There's also Dortmund, Dusseldorf and Essen, but those are cheap for a reason (they're ugly dumps, but they are dense - and there are jobs there, so they aren't cheap just because the region is totally economically destitute).
There's also Vienna, which is an interesting case, because Vienna has cheap housing mostly because the city owns tens of thousands of apartment units and is actively using its market position to push down prices. Austria also has a couple of other cities that are cheap and dense, and so does Italy, but going in detail isn't that useful if nobody has ever heard of them.
My conclusion is that you can have cheap and dense Tier 1 cities if you expend some effort, and there's great value in boosting your Tier 2 cities.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link