Why North America Can't Build Nice Apartments
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Thanks to Urbanarium for partnering with me to produce this video! Check out their Decoding Density competition at https://urbanarium.org/decoding-densityAbo...
  • FireRetardant@lemmy.world
    112·
    11 months ago

    I like a lot of About Here videos. He does a good job of boiling down city policy and design issues without sounding condescending.

  • CompostMaterial@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    11 months ago

    TLDR: money. There isn’t a profit in making a pretty building when you can build a utilitarian one and still milk the poor bastards that have no other option but to leave there.

    • naeap@sopuli.xyz
      4·
      11 months ago

      It seems to be more that houses in the USA were being built cheap and burn down easier. While Europe obviously had the same issue with fires (looking at you Brugge - how often do you wooden town need to burn down, until you place a fucking stone?), but they approached it with better, fire proof materials - like bricks instead of wood.

      The regulations in the USA seem to include those zig-zag stairs (probably I mixed up the name), where 2 stairways are on the same place, cross crossing each other.
      In case of smoke/fire or demolition of this block, I don’t see how those 2 stairs make a better exit, when they are in the same place.

  • mtchristo@lemm.ee
    1·
    11 months ago

    Even Europe has stopped producing those buildings. Each era comes with its own stylistics expressions. Amsterdam’s newer district is full of modern cubical buildings. Even if they look a bit better than the one’s shown in this meme, they belong to the same post modern movement.

    Another thing to consider is that every other extra luxury that is purely a stylistic addition will be an extra expanse on the end buyer