Yeah these 5 over 1s really ruin the neighborhood character of my suburban strip mall state highway hell.
Leave them as derelict auto body warehouses tyvm.
I thought the idea of the post was the pictured buildings are far too small and we need much larger apartment buildings.
A desire for single-family homes (protecting suburb character) or no change (leave the warehouses) would be something else entirely.
Did I miss something?
Climate-wise, 5-10 story buildings are the most efficient, and they are plenty dense enough to support a good level of public transport service etc. It’s probably not desirable to go much bigger except in the most constrained areas.
5-over-1 is frankly larger than is needed, many downtowns in europe are mostly 2 or 3-over-1.
the real secret is just to not stop building them
I’ve seen these around my area. In theory, it’s great: replace strip malls with medium/high density housing and walkable retail.
In practice, the units are always high-end condos or expensive apartments, with nothing but nation-wide franchise shops in the retail space. And they come with a colossal parking deck in the rear since you’re likely car commuting at these prices. It’s neither for local business, or to create a walkable community, or to help with affordable housing. If anything, it’s purpose built to be attractive for people looking to downsize from a detached home.
Well, they’re building three in one go in my urban area. And they’re fucking up my neighborhood. The whole neighborhood is lower rise buildings and prewar apartment buildings, so they have character. And then they knocked down a grocery store to put up these three ungodly ass warts.
Good neighborhoods should have a mix of older and newer buildings.
From Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Thank you for sharing that excerpt! Definitely a concept I had not thought about, makes perfect sense, and is seen demonstrated in the gentrification process.
They did a bunch of them near where I used to live. The problem with these (and really all unplanned high density housing) is that while their intent is to create walkable communities (a great idea in itself), they ignore the reality that most people are going to commute to a job, and they create the nastiest traffic bottlenecks ever. They’re not bad when they’re located next to a major highway with preplanned egress/ingress, but many of these halfwit developers will plop them with an entrance exit on an already busy 4 lane road and wonder why everything is all wacko.
My neighborhood has been pretty long standing in its current state. This is part of a hugely explosive new wave of gentrification. I’m seeing it happen before my eyes. It’s pretty sad.
so they have character
The problem is that so much of the “character” that people want to preserve in cities is low density housing. If you want sustainability, that’s not it.
“Low density” housing is not all too common in nyc. Go out to queens, sure. But I’m talking mid rise buildings, hundreds of units.
People who think you can solve the housing crisis without removing or greatly diminishing landlords, house flipping, investors, and people profiting off of a necessary and inherently limited necessity, do not understand economics.
I got a coworker who started flipping houses. Went all in and just finished posting her third house for sale. They got a second(third?) job to can pay the mortgages/loans until they sell. It’s been 4 months and they’ve dropped the price to be competitive. I think they’re gonna lose money after all this is said and done. Which couldn’t happen to a more deserving person. They’re the reason bosses are cracking down on us for every single thing. They aren’t sleeping and keep fucking up. Fuck these leaches
Yeah if you’re going to flip houses you shouldn’t be buying liveable units to upscale, you should be buying nearly derelict buildings nobody would want and fixing them up to be comfortably inhabitable. Your highest cost shouldn’t be the mortgage
Quite frankly, you shouldn’t be doing that either.
If someone wants a building a certain way, they can pay to make it that way. If you pay to make it that way and then sell it to them at a profit, you are not really providing them with anything, you’re just taking a profit and giving them a not-quite-right renovation they now have to deal with.
In the grand scheme of the system, it would be far better if your profit ended up going to other people who could instead use it to pay for a better renovation that they actually want.
[stares directly into the camera]
Yes.
Replace all single family homes with mixed use commie blocks. Send your strongest cops, they won’t be enough.
These aren’t commie blocks, and they usually aren’t replacing single family homes. They’re most problematic when replacing older multi unit buildings, because they’re taking low income housing and replacing it with housing only upper income people can afford (plus a couple low income units to say that they’re trying). And they get tax breaks to do this gentrification, after years of neglecting the upkeep on the older buildings it’s replacing.
You’re not wrong. And to add to that the stupid building codes that lead to the type of small 500 sq ft condo unit with only one wall with windows and no air circulation. This article covers that well.
But all these condos, not only are they not human-sized and lack air cicrulation, most of them are fitted with luxury features to up the price beyond what regular folks can pay and don’t leave any room for social housing.
There should be a law for mandatory social housing in these constructions.
They knocked down my neighborhood’s lower income grocery store to put up three on the one lot. Fuck these monstrosities.
tbh, their funtion isn’t all that objectionable. Mixed use buildings are cool and good, actually. But the fact that they’re made of cardboard and duct tape, look like ass, and are signifiers of gentrification are what suck about them.
What’s wrong with five over ones?
But the short answer is that they’re hugely reliant on fossil fuels, both in construction and in the way they dedicate an enormous amount of space to car parking. They’re also not particularly well-built, which means you end up knocking them down and rebuilding every twenty years or so. A more traditional design of steel and concrete could last 50-100 years, but would cost more upfront to build (and builder hate that). Finally, there’s the financialization of 5-over-1s, which ties their existence/maintenance to the fickle lending markets and can create exploding rents during periods of high lending costs.
They’re definitely better-ish than traditional ticky-tacky ranch style homes or detached houses. But they don’t make good permanent housing, because they’re shoddily constructed. And they don’t bring down the cost of living, because they’re so heavily pegged to the current lending rates. And they really don’t help with climate change, despite giving the superficial appearance of dense urban development we’d assume would reduce reliance on cars and encourage biking/walking/mass transit.
