"Experts argue that 21st-century Canada needs more diverse housing.
'We’d want to have four, six, eight, 12-story apartments that are able to be built close to public transit. I think the place where you’d start with would be apartment buildings,' Whitzman said."
I hate apartments. I've lived in them my whole life and I hate them. I hate the noise, I hate the smell, I hate running into people in the hallway. I hate knowing that everything I own is someone else's drunken pot of ramen boiled dry away from a fire that destroys it. I hate the lack of permanency, the dependence on a property manager or condo board, someone else forgetting to turn off the water and destroying your unit. hate them. always have, always will.
@senanthic big same, the people who think we should all live in egg cartons are terrible. Theres nothing wrong with not wanting to smell and hear strangers and be at risk from their bad behavior. Urbanists making everyone feel guilty for that reasonable desire is why their ideas don’t gain more traction.
@ouinne yep. there's a reason single-family homes are still popular. privacy and the buffer zone between you and other human beings, especially these days when it seems we're all permanently on edge, is priceless.
@senanthic hei, wie wäre ein tiny
haus oder so etwas?
wenn ich so fühle, bin ich meistens ganz schlecht drauf...auch mit mir nicht zu frieden...
einen ruhigen Abend bei dir. lgm
@Erdhexe I like tiny houses. I see no reason why we shouldn't focus on them, including the 'strawberry box' homes from the article (I own one myself - from the 1950s). most millennials would be overjoyed to have a tiny home on a small parcel of land, enough for a garden and a dog to run in; for one thing, there's less to clean.
@senanthic we recently stayed with a friend in a mid-rise apartment in downtown Portland, and I realized that I hate cheap apartments, but now we're very much open to selling what we thought was our forever home and moving some place urban.
But, living in fire country, I guess we're also viscerally aware that all of those risks apply to our detached single family residence here...
@danlyke yeah, we can never really escape that risk, and these days, with wildfires raging everywhere, I would not say anyone was safe - but I also remember countless 3 AM fire alarms in my first solo apartment because I lived with many other university students who would come home drunk and try to cook a snack.
I've moved from apartment to townhouse to detached home, and would not go back unless I was homeless. YMMV, of course.
@senanthic yeah, I suspect that a large portion of our collective aversion to multi-family dwelling stems from late teens and early twenties in cheap buildings.
My concern is that it's hard to build environments that have reasonable ecological impact with detached single family. Even as I live in one. Sigh.
@danlyke tiny houses would help with that, as would an increased focus on using renewable/recycled materials and energy efficiency, ideally making little houses which cost very little to heat and run (side benefit to their owners!).
@senanthic I certainly understand the desire to have space around your residence and the lack of any kind of garden is for me, the only downside to apartment living. Still, I don't see single-family homes as being #sustainable in the long run. So many toxins being used to maintain weed-free lawns. Existing, energy-efficient houses should be retained, where feasible. But multi-family homes are probably the future.
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