https://www.reddit.com/r/UrbanHell/comments/pyavv4/evergrandes_handiwork/

Some cool people in the comments, and some unironic murican suburbs apologists :stalin-gun-1: :dna:

  • star_wraith [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    How many tens of thousands of people can live in this picture? Yet if you give Americans the same piece of land, they would insist on building just 400-500 "luxury" tract homes on a half acre each with some name like "Eagle Ridge Estates", a golf course, and maybe a small commercial area that people want to pretend is like a little main street but requires a buttload of parking right in front.

    • RNAi [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I can't understand why "developers" don't just build dense main-street-like developments since that's way more lucrative than single family homes.

      "Oh but zoning laws", yeah those laws would dissapear in a second if a capitalist really wanted.

      I'm not saying "ha! every one of those billionares is very stupid at their own game", I just don't know what's the explanation.

        • Mardoniush [she/her]
          ·
          3 years ago

          It can be done though, I might mock the Green Square developments in Sydney as being shiny sub-par million-dollar apartments used as speculative capital sinks and emergency boltholes for Chinese millionaires, but to the extent normal people live in them the city council really have built a walkable, bikeable (all the way into the city!) area with good transport and excellent amenities from basically scratch.

      • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        i know what you mean. maybe i'm not clever enough to see the logic, but i've started to believe the developers are just stuck, mentally, and cannot conceptualize anything except minor tweaks to the post-war suburban explosion. or maybe, as Big Rich Dolts living in single family homes on big lots with drivers and cars, they have to believe that's how everyone wants to live, so they create smaller versions of it for us to aspire to.

        there might also be something (maybe this isn't true), but the investment cost of builders for small, single family homes, is less than like 3-5 story, mixed use higher density, in terms of material and build quality. obviously, that is changing with the relaxation of building standards to let 5 over 1s exist, and i'll be damned if i am not seeing tons of those pop up in a short period of time. but, again, those are like cheap/shitty apartments. i think builders can't even conceptualize or (maybe) are risk avoidant about building high quality dense housing, because why do that when you can balloon frame a bunch of shitty mcmansions on the relatively cheap.

        • RNAi [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          The second paragraph sounds like the cause.