The Houses that Can't be Built in America - The Missing Middle on HackerTube: recommended by 4 Hacker News commenters across 4 separate months, 2021–2023.
explainer · evergreen
Not Just Bikes explains missing middle housing, such as duplexes, townhouses and small apartment buildings. The video argues that zoning in the US and Canada has made these options almost illegal.
Recommended as the standard short overview of missing middle housing and its link to zoning reform.
“you need to watch the NotJustBikes overview of the Missing Middle problem”
13 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
The Not Just Bikes [1,2,3] YouTube channel also has an excellent series of videos based on work from Strong Towns. I link to these videos whenever a friend asks why I chose to leave the United States. :) [1] [link] [2] [link] [3] ▶ this video
in “The Growth Ponzi Scheme” · View on HN
Seems to me you need to watch the NotJustBikes overview of the Missing Middle problem ▶ this video Super dense cities are efficient in some ways, but they have tons of other problems and they externalize tons of costs. What we're missing in the U.S. is human-scale density, especially in the form of cohousing arrangements. Tall high-rises are not actually efficient. You know how much energy it takes to have elevators going up and down 40 floors along with all the other stuff? Land is not the single factor to calculate when we want efficiency.
in “Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods” · View on HN
This unfortunately true in California. NIMBY moment is strong. Another perspective.. ▶ this video (Love this channel!)
in “California plans to turn the screws on NIMBY cities” · View on HN
Yes, and it's often referred to as 'gentle density'. The idea is to build relatively dense housing, but at a human scale - mostly 3-5 storeys. Combined with narrow streets that support walking and cycling, this creates enough density to support a 'real' city centre with shops, restaurants, offices and so on. I think these videos convey the idea well: * [link] * ▶ this video Of course, this is not to say that you _can't_ build other kinds of housing. But many cities are badly balanced.
in “A billion for every chip-maker who 'makes in India,' sources say” · View on HN
AirBnB sux but zoning has arguably been a net negative on most societies in many ways [link] ▶ this video for me what I noticed lately is that in California it's impossible to have a quiet modern apartment because nearly 100% of modern apartment buildings are only allowed to be built on busy noisy high traffic streets. If you want a quiet street you're forced to buy/rent a house
in “Airbnb removed my negative review” · View on HN
Many of those codes have been designed to protect incombents from competition and various other forms of encouraging one form of living (car dependent) over others. Plenty of people in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, etc live happy lives in much much smaller living areas. This makes them more affordable. But building codes in many places in the USA disallow making places that small. Other examples of questionable codes are codes that require parking spaces, codes that require front yards, codes that require backyards, etc.... ▶ this video [link]
in “San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash” · View on HN
I will grant that Seattle is currently investing in public transit. And that in the next 10-15 years, they have the opportunity to improve that situation greatly (providing people good/consistent transit to downtown). There's a lot of the missing middle in Seattle for housing: ▶ this video Which has been demonstrated to pay for itself (and support other businesses). Zoning for this would go a long way towards helping to alleviate the increasing cost of housing. (Also actively/readily) makes more money than it costs to maintain. I think there's also something to be said for getting rid of cars in Downtown Seattle (still need to provide good accessible options). I originally clicked on this article in hopes that was what people were doing. Tangent: Shuffling homeless people around with cement "eco" blocks (legitimately interested in the etymology of that name) turned out to be the sad waste of resources we were going for here... Mental Health feels a lot more difficult than this. Probably needs more of a national fix cause healthcare is too expensive and inaccessible in the US.
in “Illegally placed concrete blocks have taken over public parking in Seattle” · View on HN
I can’t claim to have visited all major cities in the US, but they do seem to match the “urban core and suburbs” pattern, compared with my experiences visiting European cities. Not Just Bikes has a video about that: ▶ this video
in “Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people” · View on HN
This is a false choice. Limiting limitless consumption is not automatically reduction in the standard of living for most people. There is a huge effect when cutting emissions of the top 10%, even a tiny bit. [1] The graph is likely hiding that if the top 10% was segmented more, it would be very hop heavy - even limiting it to the median of the top 10% should do a lot. The US is also uniquely positioned here to cut their emissions in half and still have more emissions per capacita than Europe[1]. And no, the problem is not that the US is large and cars are required; cars are fine for rural people, but they are not fine for the spawling car-dependent suburban areas US cities keep creating. [2] [1]: [link] [2]: (video) ▶ this video
in “IPCC’s starkest message yet: extreme steps needed to avert climate disaster” · View on HN
They are gonna need cars and furniture, yet those are not an investment. Is USA running out of land, or Timber, or unemployed people that could be employed to build a house? We need to get institutional 'investment' out if house flipping and fix zoning. ▶ this video
in “Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt” · View on HN
"But there's also the side of people wanting single family homes instead of apartment' Most people who can't afford a home would not reject a decent apartment, they just want somewhere to live. Also those are not the only two choices, there are duplex and triplex homes, illegal in most of us, and other variations ▶ this video "Nothing wrong with people in a community wanting to set standards for their area." So in this "democracy" people who don't own a house have no voice and no right? Why does this remind me of some other mechanism for opressing undesirables?
in “Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt” · View on HN
> Personally I think that Americans just don't realize that it's not cities that suck, it's American cities that suck. Plenty of pleasant cities to live in in the world. The YouTube channel "Not just bikes" talks about this. In the USA, it is commonly seen that there are only two possible configurations for human settlements: sprawling suburbs, or Manhattan-style high-density towers. The medium-density style of city common across a lot of Europe and Asia is not very well known in the USA and Canada outside of a select few older cities which developed to a large enough size before the automobile took over. ▶ this video
in “Greening of the Earth Mitigates Surface Warming (2020)” · View on HN
It's not just density, though that's part of it. A big part is walkability (and otherwise making the city not just car accessible). That can be done without increasing density, by for example, adding wide sidewalks and bike lanes, eliminating maze-like cul-de-sac-heavy street layouts, and decreasing speeds in commercial areas (i.e. enforcing a stronger divide between low speed streets meant for people and high speed roads meant for cars). Another part is mixed-use zoning, where small businesses are intermixed with homes instead of people relying on driving to megastores in shopping centers far from where they live. By decreasing the necessity of the car you decrease the cost of road maintenance and by making places more walkable you make businesses more accessible and therefore more successful. I would suspect that many neighborhoods could be kept at the same density and be significantly rethought in line with the Strong Towns ethos to be more comfortable places to live. Density increases might be necessary in high COL areas because those places are in high demand, but there's plenty of bad city design in places outside uber-expensive metropolitan areas. And there might be strong demand for missing middle[1] housing if only it were legal and frictionless to build it. [1] ▶ this video
in “The Growth Ponzi Scheme” · View on HN