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.
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.
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.)
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.
![[meme] How would you rather see this land developed?](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f6ec67a5-2636-4875-8dd4-fa5241a3083c.jpeg){kind=link}
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.
“Apartment” is just what they’re called in the US.
Brits are hilarious when they learn other countries do things differently
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.
30 ISPs? You’re outside of the United States, I guess?
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.)
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.