Blocks of flats are awful places. No garden to put up a workshed, or greenhouse or anything at all, or play with your dog or kids (and no dog - it would be cruel to keep a dog in a flat and not have it able to roam a garden all day), they’re noisy, loud neighbours can be above, below, to the left, to the right, and in front …
You can’t modify your home how you’d like, can’t choose what utility companies run into your home, can’t let your kid cycle up and down the street and still be able to see and hear them from the windows etc.
I see your point about density absolutely, but I HATE flats. Awful places.
I also hate how people have started trying to make them sound fancy and posh by calling them “apartments” to try to sound fancy and European/French, as if that will make them more appealing.
Not everyone wants a yard and/or a dog! Very, very, few people modify their houses in ways that wouldn’t be applicable to apartments/flats too - interior changes are common, but exterior is usually far too much money for far too little in return. And if you’re complaining about people calling them “apartments”, which is what they’ve always been called in the US, I assume you’re in the UK where terraced houses are the most common form of housing, and neighbours are on both sides anyway. (Is it possible you’re hearing people calling flats apartments because of the influence of American TV? Where are you getting “fancy” from, or assuming it’s just because the same word is used in French? Do you avoid American TV shows? They were extremely common on British TV when I was growing up. If you’re not in Britain, apologies! But it seems likely, given most other English speaking countries I can think of use the term too.)
I personally disagree with anyone who promotes a one-size-fit-all approach to housing etc, but I don’t actually think most advocates of density really are doing that. They’re usually Americans fighting the completely insane zoning laws and building practices in the US that force people to own cars, make public transport uneconomic except with massive subsidies, and require Americans own houses that are far bigger and more expensive to maintain than they need. Nobody’s actually better off because of these laws, not even the people who want to live outside of real cities and drive to work - it ends up taking just as long to get to the supermarket to get a gallon of milk in a suburb where you have to leave your home, get into your car, drive it, drive out of your residential neighbourhood where businesses like supermarkets are banned, drive it past large numbers of buildings built for individual businesses each with enough parking to support the maximum number of customers it might conceivably need, 5-10 minutes later getting to the supermarket’s parking lot, which is again, absurdly oversized because it has to have one parking spot per potential customer, finding a spot, walking across this vast expanse to the supermarket, and then doing the same thing in reverse. Time savings? Nil. Tesco was five minutes walk away when I lived in the UK, and while that was unusual, most places I’ve lived in the UK had some kind of supermarket within walking distance. Money savings? Worse: my grocery bill tripled when I came to the US and I had to pay gas prices and for car maintenance on top of that. Not surprising when every store needs 4X as much land as it needs in the UK, just so it has enough parking.
So that’s what the pictures are likely about. The option of high density housing ought to be available to everyone, in the UK it is for the most part, hence it looks odd to you and you’re assuming the intent is to take your detached or semi-detached house from you. But in the US, no it isn’t, the few places that have good high density development are either impractical to live in, because you still need cars to work, or uneconomic for most people because those places are in such high demand to live the property prices are astronomical (think SF or NYC.)
can’t choose what utility companies run into your home,
This is the most farcical complaint. I guess sometimes you can pay a lot to get a new utility option to your owned home, but that's usually not an option.
In a lot of apartments you have no choice of ISP regardless of whether the building has a choice, which might be what they're on about. But I've never owned a home where I could choose which utilities were available. (Except for electric choice which works in apartments, too.)
even then it’s a problem we choose to have, in my apartment area we have a platform that allows us to choose between like, i think around 30? different ISPs, and switch between them freely at any time.
I agree with you fully, except the last part. Which is just a regional gripe, as to say "apartments" in the States is just as degrading/non-special. So it's interesting that you find specialty in that term when my region is anything but.
God I hate living in high density housing. Dogs yapping, bass and loud music booming, smelly, loud, animal poop and pee on every green/natural area, higher crime, more traffic, etc.
Ownership. You will not own your apartment, it will be owned by your landlord and you will pay him whatever he demands. You will not own the forest, either. The state will, or some private entity will. No trespassing.
Yeah that’s my main concern. Also less space to store things like my bike.
Then there’s the upstairs neighbors. Like I get that the kids are loud. But also could the kids stop throwing stuff at my bird feeder. And their upstairs neighbors flooded the dang place
There is no such thing as universal right to roam in the US. Likewise, apartment ownership (we call them “condos” when you can own one rather than rent) exists here, but by far is the minority option in multi-family housing. You can claim you want to buy a condo or apartment as much as you want, but that doesn’t do you any good when no one is selling. Units are built to be rented which is a recurring revenue stream, which big capital likes a lot more.
The significant problem is not that nobody is whacking out slabs of apartment housing fast enough. The issue is that our underlying capitalist system is fucked, and a simple anti-car attitude is not going to fix that.
You can still own and buy appartements in most places in the world. Then there are many forms of social housing.
Rent to own is also a possibility but not seen in most countries.
Seems your problem is not ownership but landlords.
Some countries in Europe have the right to roam on any land. State owned and private owned. (Maybe more countries somewhere else have it to but I don’t know)
It does not need to be so terrible. In some places it just is because of profits
Oh, you planted zoysia grass and maintain it well? That’s “inharmonious” , you need to tear that out and plant fescue.
You don’t have a maple tree of at least 8 feet in height in a particular spot in your yard? Inharmonious again, you need to buy a tree, can’t wait for a sapling to grow.
Your driveway has dirt on it? You must get it pressure washed.
You want to park your vehicle in your driveway? It better not have any branding from a company on it, or it better not be an older car or any pickup truck, those are too ugly for our precious neighborhood.
Regulations tend to be “don’t make fire hazards”, or “don’t block streets”, generally you can’t get a regulation on the books without an actual rationale behind it.
Rural neighbors. Even worse. Cowshit, ag runoff ruining our waterways, heavy machinery blocking streets, Trump flags inside every house and old boys racism everywhere the moment you're 'in' with them.
Instead of loud neighbors you have to deal with white trash family fights and drunk driving everywhere. Meanwhile everyone has a chip on their shoulder about city and suburban people ruining their world somehow yet they never participate in any of it lmfao.
I never hear my neighbors in a rural area. This community is so blatantly full of shit it’s laughable. As if you don’t deal with white trash or drunk drivers anywhere else. Instead in an apartment the white trash are banging each other with the windows open and getting arrested at 3 am with 8 cop cars flashing their lights in the parking lot.
No one listens to ideas from fuckcars-type people because they’re gaslighting lies that no one except other niche weirdos sympathizes with. Please do keep trying to tell rural people how much worse their situation is than living in an apartment. You don’t sound like a condescending jerk at all.
You could have just admitted there are pros and cons to both but instead you go on this gaslighting crusade to try prove someone else’s lived experience wrong. Good luck with that approach, no one is listening to you except other weirdos.
Sure, I doubt there is anyone here against rural self-sustained living, it is probably one of the more eco-friendly and humane way of living.
But once frequent car trip and road maintainance cames into equation, it might not be the most eco-friendly way any more. I understand not everyone cares about their fellow human being, but this is the point this post is trying to make.
iirc, the further away you live from a city then the worse you impact the environment. Unless you're literally a fully self-sustaining homesteader with no roads or utilities anywhere near you, then living in a city is basically always better for the environment.
That’s starting to change with solar power and EVs. I could see a small number of mostly off the grid homesteaders in a sustainable future. But they’d have to pay for the privilege
I live in an apartment with actual good sound-proofing. It’s almost dead silent inside except for the quiet hum of my AC. It’s legitimately so much quieter than my gf’s family’s house, where you constantly hear the rush of cars driving by on the street. Not to mention leafblowers and lawnmowers.
You realize you are speaking from a very lucky position right? Everyone here agrees quiet apartments with clean facilities are pretty nice, but a large majority of apartment dwellers live in older, very noisy, very poorly managed facilities.
It’s very fair to want the conversation on improving apartments, it is super important. But you.have to acknowledge that people’s response about their apartment history is informed from lived experience.
I think the phrase “lived experience” should automatically disqualify someone from speaking about any topic. They’re just anecdotes, usually in contradiction to actual data.
So for example the “lived experience” of black folks in the southern US in the 60s isn’t valuable I’m the discussion of racism in America? Of course it is. Their first hand experience (indeed anecdotal as you say) is meaningful.
In the context of apartments, especially in America, millions of units are no where near the soundproofing or quality OP was describing. You could determine that by age of the buildings alone.
Do you have sound dampening data for apartments across the country?
Anecdotes are only problematic when they are purported as data. By definition someone relaying their lives experience suggests they are describing their individual life to you. It’s fine to want to move from anecdote to data, but when you talk about “disqualification” from discussion you’re just being a gatekeeper. There is no data rigor here, this is a message board about a meme.
Lastly the person I responded to described THEIR lived experience (the quiet apartment they have) so that further insulates myself and others from any objective requirements to comment.
So for example the “lived experience” of black folks in the southern US in the 60s isn’t valuable I’m the discussion of racism in America?
When their “lived experience” is “no, I’ve never seen any racism!” then no, it’s not really valuable, and it’s incredibly suspect to boot.
It’s fine to want to move from anecdote to data
Let’s just start with data. Anecdotes are supplementary. The way “lived experience” is usually used (and is used here) is to provide the primary support to an argument.
Again you’re expecting a rigor beyond the venue of discussion, especially given that the person I replied to started with an anecdote as well.
If you have data on the soundproofedness of apartments across the US to contextualize the common consensus to the level you expect I would be happy to browse it.
Until then I’m comfortable believing anyone (as in the many commenters here) who say their apartment was loud. The several I lived in were as well so I have no reason to question it
you’re expecting a rigor beyond the venue of discussion
Maybe, but I’m trying to change that. I think we can all be smarter than just trading anecdotes.
And your post emphasizes my point. We’re talking about a preferred hypothetical society, while the point he was trying to make with his anecdote is that apartments are and always will be poorly soundproofed, world without end. Obviously it sounds absurd when you extrapolate it out to the societal level, but when you couch it in anecdotal terms it makes the argument seem worth discussing on the face of it. It’s not.
We can talk about how currently apartments are shoddy in the US, that’s a worthwhile discussion. But to be against the idea of apartments in general because apartments right now are poorly regulated is silly.
It’s not luck. Things are built for a reason, the regulations and structures of society are designed, and it artificially dictate s what is built. Perhaps they live in a place where the regulations mean that sensible livable apartments are fairly abundant. Perhaps you don’t. That’s not luck, those places were designed that way.
I was born and raised in suburbia and only moved into where I am now. It is indeed partially luck that I had the capability and opportunity to move to a new city that has abundant apartments, missing middle housing, and a sane rental market. As a result of the abundance of apartments available, landlords have a credible threat of vacancy, and thus rents are lower, there are fewer restrictions (e.g., pet restrictions), and having decent sound insulation is common.
You're speaking from a privileged minority viewpoint, most people don't report living that way in apartments. I've lived extensively in both apartments and suburban homes, suburbs have always provided more peace and quiet. For every day that's been too loud due to lawn machines (a lot of suburbs it's only once a month for context) I've had a dozen more with people partying, stomping, fighting, shouting, grudge starting, complaint making, roach infestation having, shitty corporate landlord owning ruined days in city apartments. And they all costed a lot more. I'm paying half what I would in a city apartment for my suburban townhome with a lawn, and a park, and pool, and walikg trails, conveniently nearby all amenities in my area.
That's the part y'all need to adopt to get people on your side by the way; assure people who like suburbs that your plan isn't to tear down their existing environments for new ones. We're scared shitless you're all gonna try to force us into boxes, many of us will fight violently to oppose such action. Make it clear you're talking only about NEW developments and I think most people will support your cause. I do in principle, but the selfish American in me isn't about to give up my already existing paradise for your apartment block, especially when you provide no answers to the corporate landlord landscape we're operating in. Those of us who have been alive long enough know these plans usually end in lost livelihoods and destroyed dreams, the true benefits only going to the upper echelon of the highest earning capitalists.
If they built more apartments, apartments with good sound proofing would be more common. I used to live in Taiwan, and every cheap apartment I lived in had excellent sound proofing.
Once there is more competition in the apartment/condo market, quality will go up.
Exactly. When there is a housing shortage, landlords and developers have no meaningful competition, therefore they can offer sub-par housing for too-high prices.
Build more housing, make landlords sweat about vacancy, and you’ll see higher-quality units spring up like magic.
My city, Montreal, for instance, has perhaps the most affordable and YIMBY housing market in a major North American city, and the result is rents are cheap (by big city in North America standards), quality of life is very high, and landlords have much less negotiating power. For example, I was able to negotiate my rent down before moving in, and it’s also quite rare to see all manner of onerous restrictions like pet bans in apartments here.
When landlords have a credible fear of vacancy, they can’t afford to scare off prospective tenants with high rents, poor sound insulation, and pet bans.
Well that’s a plain ridiculous fear, you think government thugs are going to go door to door through the suburbs rounding up homeowners and forcing them into apartments?
The idea is to build enough, at a high enough quality, and at a price point, where it’s more appealing to new buyers.
I lived both in dense neighborhoods, rural neighborhoods, and suburbs. Trust me, the more things you give your neighbor to do, the more shenanigans they will make, especially in place where everyone is bored out of their mind.
What about going to your doorstep to tell you that you need to maintain a lawn? your door needs to be a certain color? Or you cannot park your car on your own property? Or you cannot park somewhere simply because "they have always parked there? Or deafening motor noise that can be heard a block away right across the road from you? leaf blower and lawn mower so loud that literally require the person to wear a head phone to operate safely, right next to your house?
These are just a few things I have seen in the suburbs. Are these count as “close enough to you”?
No, I have experience none of these in the cities, because a lot of time, there is no HOA, most places do not have lawns, and I dont need a car in the city.
Also there are in general lawn mowing and leaf blowing are much more moderate in city, because they know they are surrounded by people.
This isn’t a particularly convincing analogy. Islands have limited space. The suburbs where I live border tons of open space and parks. Meanwhile, our school district is already overwhelmed with children, so converting commercial spaces into apartments will merely add to congestion and sprawl. NIMBY’s make a convincing argument against denser residential construction.
A better focus would be the ability to simplify public transit and walkability. Town centers and public spaces could be more accessible with denser residential construction, and the additional green space can be closer to where you live without everyone needing their own half-acre yard to mow and water.
Yep, Toll Bros buys a horse farm and makes half acre mcmansions. There are some big properties that have covenants that prevent it, and the zoning in my township won’t allow new subdivisions less than 2 acres, and we have some great municipal parks which will never be developed. But that means everything is spread out to make public transit untenable. You need a car to get to the nearest train station, and then you need a car when you get off the train at any stop outside of the city.
There’s no one-size solution to combat sprawl. High density housing makes a lot of sense some places, and not so much in others.
That’s only true if the apartment is a shitty American 5 over 1 stick building. In a modern concrete apartment with concrete internal walls you wouldn’t hear the neighbors.
Take it from someone who is autistic, highly introverted and has only lived in apartments in my adult life: you do not ever need to see or interact with your neighbors. It’s as optional as with a house. The most I see of my neighbors is that once every few weeks I might stand in the elevator with one of them for 15 seconds.
Yup. My prior experience with apartments - even single height apartments - is that either you’re going to annoy someone with sounds (had a neighbor that worked nights and hated every thing I did when I was home) or you’ll be annoyed with someone not being quiet when you personally need it.
Hell I had a house with a neighbor who rented that liked to leave their dog tied up outside at 5pm barking incessantly. Not fun to come home from a day of work with a stressful commute to try to unwind.
Yep, it’s a crapshoot depending on your neighbors. Back in my dense living days, things were pretty good, except when the drug dealer moved in next door…
Same applies to some extend to suburban density, but even crappy neighbors are harder to notice… Except the house that does car tuning all the time with a priority on loud revving engines… Ugh…
Well, I live in a America and can’t wait to get out of apartments. I’ve moved a lot in my life and have a lower middle class income. I’ve never found an apartment or condo where I didn’t have to deal with hearing neighbors yelling, stomping, talking outside my front door in the hallway, opening sliding doors, listening to music, etc. Only twice, when I lived with a friend in their house, did I feel like I had any peace or privacy.
Sure, there would be lawns mowed and all that, but I’d take that over the things I’ve heard and worried about my neighbors having heard.
If I could have real privacy in an apartment I could afford I’d continue to rent, assuming I don’t get priced out of the market completely at this rate.
So what should I do in my current situation so that my choices about where to live help to improve the overall situation regarding housing and land use?
Note, my point isn’t Apartments Bad. My point is that my only choice is overpriced shitty apartments.
Can you elaborate? What about stating that I do not have the choice for noise isolated apartments demonstrates that I object to good, affordable apartments near me ?
No, hence my utter confusion at being associated with NIMBYism or being oblivious to the feedback loop or contributing to the problem out of ignorance. I’m stating that the only choice in a lot of places where I live in the US is a shitty, loud apartment/condo or a house with peace and quiet.
I don’t object to apartments but I do object to the general concept of apartments always being superior to the general concept of a house and that anyone who objects is part of the problem. Bad solutions, like shitty apartments, aren’t solutions. They can actually push people away from real, good solutions.
Ultimately it comes down to Capitalism Bad, even more Bad with (inevitable) regulatory capture. I don’t think “the powers that be” are interested in providing good solutions so we aren’t going to use “market forces” to make things any better.
If you agree that well-constructed apartments/condos should be part of the solution, then you’re not a NIMBY. Unless you’re saying they should be the solution somewhere away from you(r backyard) of course.
I understand the dilemma between a bad apartment and a good house, but that shouldn’t be the dilemma, and more housing helps prevent that. Better regulation too.
There’s nothing that differentiates “affordable” apartments those at that aren’t except the amount that are available. Maybe you aren’t a NIMBY but a lot do use similar arguments and then start on about heritage protection.
Exactly! We’ve gotten into this weird feedback loop where NIMBY policies like restrictive zoning and parking minimums and setback requirements have made there be a systemic shortage of housing in total, but particularly a shortage of dense, walkable housing near transit. This has warped the market such that large houses on large plots of land – which are objectively the luxury housing option – are cheaper than apartments or condos in a dense, walkable community near transit. This makes people think density = expensive, which makes people think we need to get rid of density for the sake of affordability, which just makes the shortage even more severe!
We lived in a concrete apartment, couldn’t hear the neighbors in their apartments but could in the hallways, and smell everything too, could hear the cars revving outside, and had to put up with the weekly (if not more often) fire alarm at 2am which meant evacuating the building. And no space for anything, no hobbies that might generate noise. Also have to deal with STRATA, hope you didnt want to put anything on your balcony cause they didn’t want that, hope you can wait 12 months for the leaking ceiling to be fixed thats dripping and growing mould.
Also it cost a fortune to heat or cool the place, we’re in a bigger place now that costs 1/2 as much to heat/cool
You don’t even need concrete. I’m in a modern building made from mass timber construction, and it’s dead quiet inside my apartment – except for the hum of my AC and the sounds of my cat meowing whenever he wants attention.
Nah. I’m sorry, but fuck apartments. I was spending $22k a year. Apartment complex did a crap job clearing snow in the winter. My neighbors were disgusting. I had to walk across the complex to get to my laundry room, where the machines rarely worked. The AC wall units were expensive to run, and did little to cool the apartment. The downstairs neighbor’s front door slammed every time they closed it. The people next door would vacuum for an hour every night starting at 10pm. I got a $45 fine for hanging a beach towel over a chair on my balcony.
I mean shit, they decided to renovate the apartment beneath me, and turned off my heat and left for the weekend in the middle of winter. They turned off my water multiple times with no notice making me late for work. And then the construction workers stole my package before heading home.
I bought a house. Every time I pay my mortgage I build equity in my home. I have my own laundry room. I may have to clear the snow myself, but I have plenty of space to store a snow blower and shovels - something I could never do before. I can buy bulk sized non perishables too and save money, because I have plenty of space to store it. I can sleep at night without being awoken by my neighbors fucking to the sounds of Bob Marley. I can hang up a towel to dry without being fined for it. And if I need to do work, I can determine when or if the water is being turned off.
Oh, and renewing my lease would have seen me paying almost as much in rent as my mortgage payment. For what?
Yeah, try living in an impoverished town, where it’s the housing on the right, spread out like the housing on the left. There are, like, no jobs (none that are actually sustainable long-term for living in this economy), but they just leveled a huge area of forest for more low-income housing (AKA Projects)
A lot of people are pro-apartmemt before living in one, so here are some fun facts:
Apartments usually have a maintenance cost, that covers as little as possible while still costing a lot. You never really own the flat, the building company does.
You often have a communal garden; it’s looked after by the lowest bidding contractor. Not all flats have balconies, so you are unlikely to have your own.
Fear of fire and flooding - if someone else messes up, your stuff is toast/soaked. Insurance companies love that extra risk, it gives them an excuse to charge more.
No flat has good sound proofing - the baby screaming downstairs at 5am and the thunder of the morbidly obese person upstairs going to the bathroom at 1am will denote your new sleep schedule (i.e. disturbed)
I hope you’re in for deliveries - apartments have no safe spots to leave things.
You will not be able to afford a flat with the same floor space as a house. I’m sorry, welcome to your new coffin.
Good luck drying your laundry (spoiler, your living room is going to have a laundry rack).
Good luck owning a bike (it’s either the bike or your laundry, take your pick).
Vocal intimacy becomes a community event.
Living in a flat is a pile of little miseries grouped together.
They might have fixed the cost issues to an extent during the Soviet Union, but that is about it.
Everything they list applies and more. They are generally small, 90m^2 is generally the biggest sizes, with some exceptions, they have nearly no parking space because when they were built, parking was not a huge consideration. There is very little yard space usually, not really anywhere decent for kids to play unless the building or community have forked up for it (spoiler, they favor parking spaces). The walls are in fact fairly thin, the floors are often creaky as hell.
Plumbing is old, metallic and corroded / clogged. Water pressures up top are abysmal. Don’t even get me started on electrical, the people who built them did not give a hoot unless the building was meant for more than common workers. You can literally hit a live wire in the middle of the wall while hanging a painting, because, again, the people building it didn’t give a hoot and often layed wires using the shortest path not rational right angles.
Many of these houses are in a subpar state. Like okay, they wont probably crumble, but heat insulation is near non-existant, leading to high heating costs. The elevators are tiny, many of them smell like piss, accessibility for disabled people was never considered, nor was access in general - moving in large furniture, or bringing down people on stretchers (EMS) is often a PITA.
And all of this leads to a huge issue they didn’t explicitly outline - getting shit done for your building, is often impossible. One such building I lived it had a resident who was pushing for a full renovation, he had surveyed other houses that have done this across the city, did the math and presented how doing this would lead us to pay less overall, even with the loan considered, than before, with higher property value and a nicer property to boot. Some 60% refused to even take it as far as getting an actualy consultant involved.
That is pretty pessimistic. I never lived in a big block of appartments but in 8 flat/building houses. We have thick walls, so flooding and noise isnt really a problem. We know our neighbours, they even take deliveries inside (into the stairway) so they dont get stolen from outsiders. We have a dedicated bike-room downstairs, with a dedicated bikeramp from the outside, every house in the area has this. We have a communal parkinggarage with electric charging-spaces.
The cost of living i cannot really compare, the inability of repairing something or our own (as we are renting) is a negative. The fire risk is something I have never thought about but is a fair point I guess.
You’ve never lived in a large apartment building but you think the issues people have with them are pessimistic?? I wouldn’t have a problem with a townhome but apartments definitely have some trade offs
Apartments works very different in your country. For me it’s like this:
Building companies build apartments, usually they are owned by whoever paided them. That can be a private company, it can also be state owned, a cooperative, or a collection of privates. It’s not uncommen to buy single apartments here. Depending on the constellation you have a say in what is what done in what way. However: cost like garbage collection, tax,… Are always there. No matter if you live in an apartment or single home.
Same as 1. Depends on the constellation. Many people living in apartments have a garden plot somewhere else. There are places (close to nature, away from streets) where you can rent a garden and have a place of piece. Quieter than your lawn next to the next house.
If apartments are that more dangerous then insurance companies will want more money, sure. As far as I looked for my neighborhood the cost seems to be related to the living area, I. E. Same size same price. So it does not has to be more expensive.
Of course can you have sound proofness. Usually here walls are massive and not made out of paper.
And houses do? Isn’t it a thing that people steel packages from your doorway/garden in the US? But nevertheless: usually I was friends with other people in the house who could get my parcels for me, like the elderly lady on the ground floor. It does not get safer than that.
Yes? Flats are obviously cheaper for the same size as a house. You will not find 500m^2+ appartements, but >200m^2 can be found. How big are your houses usually?
Dryer? Balcony? A lot of apartments have an extra room in the basement, or a sun roof.
Bike or laundry? What are you on about? A lot of places have an extra bike room. Most of the time you have also your own compartment in the cellar. Bigger apartment complexes here are also required to have room for cars, I.e.you can rent a garage if you really want more space.
Same as 4.
I am really not sure if you are trolling or houses work differently in your area.
I’ve lived in a flat, a student dorm, 2 terrace houses, and a detached house.
The flat is better than the student dorm and one of the terrace houses. It’s larger than only the student dorm.
The list is a comparison to the decent terrace and the detached.
I’ve not had theft issues, just polite refusal to leave the package due to too much foot traffic (solved by a kind elderly neighbour). A dryer is great, if your energy bills are reasonable - the rest of us use trying lines/racks.
Not all flats have built in facilities - indeed not all flats began life as flats. The best of flats is still worse than a detached in terms of noise, space, and privacy, however it can outstrip the worst terrace. However, that’s a matter of design, which could be solved by a government that wasn’t drunk at the wheel…
Yeah, these issues are all really weird. I live in a flat with one other person, it’s two stories so there’s one person in the top flat and one in the bottom, they’re in a terrace and we each have our own entrance. It’s nice we have plenty of space and a decently large living room and bedrooms (though annoyingly one room is much larger than the other, I suppose because it is for families.) We also have a small bit of fenced of space outside and most have a full garden space.
This is in a council estate in the UK, so equivalent of a “project” but the whole area is very nice, there’s lots of grassy spots to take our dog on and there a decent amount of trees around. We have both just been really happy here, much more than I was living in a house before which had no outside space, no trees or grass for a good 50 metres or so and there was more crime despite not being a council estate where as where I am now is. I mean a house is nice I can get why people would prefer living in one, but apartments/flats are nice too.
Oh yeah and we don’t really ever hear our neighbours either.
I live in an apartment. I want to live in a house.
Cunt upstairs neighbour smoking cancer sticks on the balcony, making my room smell like shit when he does it, dumbass neighbour to my right who phones some other dumbass at 6 in the morning, screaming into his phone, waking me up. No garden, can’t have a cat or a dog.
I don’t want to live in a suburb where I am forced to use a car, but you can live in a house and still be able to get anywhere you want without a car.
But that’s only because other people live in apartments. If everyone gets the privilege of living in their own house, than it won’t be economical to have everything you need in walking distance. And you can have shitty house neighbors as well.
Population growth is in fact slowing down and have been doing so for quite some time. But we’ll eventually run into the problem where there won’t be enough working age people to take care of the elders.
Many countries (nearly all of the developed countries) are having too few kids to maintain their population and it can only be increased/maintained through immigration. Most experts believe that we will top out at around 10.5 billion in 2100 and then there will be a decline.
People are having less kids, it’s just that older people also live longer these days, which means it takes longer for the population to decline, still, is happening in a lot of countries, for example, Japan lost 200,000 inhabitants last year due to low fertility rates
![[meme] How would you rather see this land developed?](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f6ec67a5-2636-4875-8dd4-fa5241a3083c.jpeg){kind=link}
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