this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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[–] Rodeo@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yeah no, we need density.

You know what those small towns you're thinking of are? Urban sprawl. The entire town is urban sprawl. No towers. Single family detached homes everywhere. No good public transit because there's not enough density to support it. Rentals are 80% basements.

Moving more people into those towns without pushing for densification is going to lead too ... You guessed it, even more urban sprawl!

Is that really the path you think we should be going down?

[–] idspispopd@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 year ago

To add to this, that sprawl relies on heavily subsidiaries to exist. Tax wise they collect a fraction of the taxes needed to maintain their infrastructure (depending on where suburban areas collect ½ to ⅒ of the cost needed to sustain themselves). So they are rely on subsidies from high density areas and deficit spending to exist.

As a society, spending so much to subsidize low density developments is why we have a housing crisis. It is an economically unsustainable way to build housing, and that is coming back to bite us now. We cannot afford to keep building like this.

The idea of further subsidizing people to live in already subsidized areas is terrible economic policy. It is paying someone to waste your money.

If people want to choose to live in low density areas, that is fine by me, but they need to actually pay for it themselves. We need to end the subsidies that exist now, not add new ones.

[–] banana 6 points 1 year ago

I agree. Except regarding the form of the density. I agree towers have their ppace but I prefer to see more single-stair 6-story housing across the city.