Quote:
Originally Posted by fusili
This is why I am a "market urbanist". Sprawl is horribly expensive from an infrastructure point of view, especially transportation. Which is why I find it funny when people critique urbanism as some sort of socialism. If it was a true market, we would have a lot less suburbs and much more high density housing.
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No! You're just some hipster dufus that is trying to impose their own life values and lifestyle on everyone else!! /end sarcasm
I've posted this here as it is more congruent with the topic of this specific thread and also because it reflects the objective rationale behind the "urbanism" movement. On the one side, who gives a shit about what lifestyle is attached with what. It simply makes plain old economic sense, and I am ever more becoming irritated with when one automatically gets associated with the other.
It befuddles me when a city that ostensibly would like to be associated with economic prudence in the private realm is somehow beyond being able to understand some of the pretty basic principles behind how efficient utilization of space extends beyond an office building or factory floor.
Geometry and basic economic principles don't lie, even if you want to argue them to the death. The myriad of other additional factors inherent in this general discussion are of course not discountable, but the underlying basics hold regardless: More people paying for the same piece of infrastructure and its operation and maintanence, be it for an apartment (rent/1 or rent/4.. etc.), a new school, a road, a public transport system or a city, is inherently more economically efficient. There is invariably, associated discomfort in any of said cases as utilization increases. The conversation has repeatedly wrongly been framed. Accept the fact that this is the truth. The willingness to pay to assuage this dictum is really what the underlying issue is about. Obviously not well reflected in how we currently do things: Nobody really wants to pay the true cost of what they have if they don't actually have to. Past policies have only reinforced this.