[p2p-research] Walkability: check it before choosing your next home!

[Paul D. Fernhout]

M. Fioretti wrote:
> (answer to Michel's post in this same thread: the way you describe the
> traffic, Hanoi and Bangkok feel just like Naples :-) )
> 
> On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 12:13:48 PM -0400, Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
> 
>> I read somewhere that much of the US suburban land use was shaped by 
>> crazy post-WWII mortgage issues; it was thought an assessor could not 
>> properly value a house unless it was next to identical houses
> 
> any reference for this? Sounds just as rationale as genetically
> modifying people to look the same so one doesn't get too stressed when
> evaluating a potential mate...

Yes, people have linked those policies with segregation; example:
   http://www.umich.edu/~lawrace/causes1.htm

Here is one reference from googling (I read it twenty years ago in a book 
probably):
   http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/publications/bulletins/suburbs/part2.htm
"""
   To promote predictability in the land market and protect the value of 
their real estate investments, community builders became strong advocates of 
zoning and subdivision regulations. Nichols and other leading members of the 
National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) sought alliances with the 
National Conference on City Planning (NCCP), American Civic Association 
(ACA), and American City Planning Institute (ACPI) to bring the issues of 
suburban development within the realm of city planning. (33)
   Community builders often sought expertise from several design 
professions, including engineering, landscape architecture, and 
architecture. As a result, their subdivisions tended to reflect the most 
up-to-date principles of design; many achieved high artistic quality and 
conveyed a strong unity of design. By relying on carefully written deed 
restrictions, as a private form of zoning, they exerted control over the 
character of their subdivisions, attracted certain kinds of home buyers, and 
protected real estate values. Many became highly emulated models of suburban 
life and showcases for period residential design by established local or 
regional masters. (34) ...
   Federal incentives for the private construction of housing, for employees 
in defense production facilities during World War II and for returning 
veterans immediately following the War, fostered dramatic changes in home 
building practices. Builders began to apply the principles of mass 
production, standardization, and pre-fabrication to house construction on a 
large scale. Builders like Fritz B. Burns and Fred W. Marlow of California 
began to build communities of an unprecedented size, such as Westchester in 
southeast Los Angeles, where more than 2,300 homes were built to FHA 
standards between 1941 and 1944 (35)
   By greatly increasing the credit available to private builders and 
liberalizing the terms of FHA-approved home mortgages, the 1948 Amendments 
to the National Housing Act provided ideal conditions for the emergence of 
large-scale corporate builders, called "merchant builders." Because of 
readily available financing, streamlined methods of construction, and an 
unprecedented demand for housing, these builders acquired large tracts of 
land, laid out neighborhoods according to FHA principles, and rapidly 
constructed large numbers of homes. Since completed homes sold quickly, 
developers could finance new phases of construction and, as neighborhoods 
neared completion, move on to new locations.
"""

If you poke at it further, you may find the FHA was the organization in the 
USA set those kind of guidelines somewhere for housing monocultures, and as 
you say, they do have implications as relates to segregation (I'm not sure 
if that was intentional or not). But I'm not sure at this point who set 
them, or if, as above, the communities may have been part of them?

>> if you economic situation changes or life situation (you get a 
>> raise, you lose your job, you get married, or have kids, or lose your 
>> spouse, your mother-in-law wants to live with you, and so on, then you 
>> can't just get a different place to live in the same diverse community
> 
> This problem also exists in a smaller way in condominiums
> neighborhood.  Italian apartment buildings built in the last 20 years
> assume that you either have only one child or have too much money to
> count it. There are either very small apartments or very, very big and
> luxury ones. I've seen buildings where a family >= 5 people should
> have bought 2 adjacent apartment and tear down (compiling a mountain
> of paperwork and paying several fees) the wall between them to have a
> decent place to live.
> 
>> Still, even for people in Europe, access to nice places to live may
>> be unaffordable for many these days, especially the young?
> 
> Absolutely yes. In Italy this problem is often solved by staying in
> your parent's place till you're 35 yrs old.

For reference, I posted before on this young vs. old issue:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004153.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004163.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004174.html

The last one may be of the most interest; from there (quoting an article):
"Pitton's sentiments are increasingly shared by the children of Europe's
baby boomers, a generation sometimes called the baby losers. Not only will
they be forced to pick up the tab for a welfare system that offers far more
to the elderly than to the young, but they will be forced to do so with
less: Europe's economy remains skewed in favor of the old and its
politicians have been shy about pushing painful reforms that might correct
the balance. No wonder one recent poll in France showed that only 5 percent
believed young people had a better chance of succeeding than their parents.
Europe, it seems, is increasingly split—not along class or racial lines, but
between its young and its old."

>> > Still, even for people in Europe, access to nice places to live may
>> > be unaffordable for many these days, especially the young?
> 
> Absolutely yes. In Italy this problem is often solved by staying in
> your parent's place till you're 35 yrs old.
> 
>> I can still wonder if maybe still "seasteading" etc. may have some
>> appeal, even in countries with falling populations?
> 
> Speaking only about Italy: seasteading is expensive and, as many "big
> next thing" projects, doing it here frankly seems just a mental
> exercise or toy for rich people, not a scalable solution. Why should
> people (or governments) who have no money for a normal house have
> money for a seasteading one?
> 
> Above all: WHY on Earth waste time and money on seasteading when
> making EXISTING cities work (remember I said there are many empty
> apartments here, and will increase with falling population) would cost
> much less, have a much lower eco-footprint and probably be available?
> The first rule of sustainability is "reuse", isn't it?
> 
> So I won't speak for other countries, but here in Italy I'd be
> probably against any project of that kind for the same reason I don't
> like the Messina bridge: very cool, impressive and expensive solution
> looking for a problem.
> 
>> For many young people, perhaps Europe is not an affordable place to
>> stay or raise a family in some ways? Sometimes the only way to get
>> out from a financial pyramid scheme like endlessly rising real
>> estate prices is to just build something new elsewhere?
> 
> As far as I know, almost all the young people who leave Italy for the
> reasons you mention want to remain in what you call the pyramid
> scheme, just with more money or less artificial obstacles in the
> profession they like :-)
> 
> But you're absolutely right that "It's a socio-political issue more 
> than a physical issue in that sense"

Building on your last point on young people wanting to stay in the pyramid 
scheme and hope to climb to the top, sadly, I can see how that is likely and 
how that explains current politics:
   "The Wrath of the Millionaire Wannabe's"
   http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/47

Well, let's run the numbers on "seasteading" and see how they look. :-)

Apartments in cities cost a lot for a few reasons:
* the price of land has been bid up in a pyramid scheme
* the cost of a pyramid scheme of taxes to supply services to other long 
term residents
* an aging physical plant of old buildings and old roads that costs more to 
maintain and defend from fire and flood and mold and so on
* zoning and other rules that prevents very cheap accommodations from being 
built (single room occupancy buildings or even "capsule" hotel rooms).

Looking at the first Google hit on buying apartments in Rome, it looks like 
they cost a million euros on up:
http://www.accomodationsrome.com/html/Rome_Real_Estate_Investments.htm

Sure, no doubt there may be cheaper ones, I'm just lazy. :-) OK, so I look a 
little harder on that site and find one for 550K euros:
   http://www.accomodationsrome.com/apartment_detail.asp?ID=3134
"Trastevere via giacomo venezian, close to Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere 
- Modern flat of 55 sq.mt ( 592 sq.ft ) located in ancient building at 4th 
floor without lift. Charming view on the roman roofs. studio with living 
area, bedroom area, kitchinette and bathroom. A nice condominum terrace on 
the roof at 5th floor. Asking price euro 550.000."

Now, this is not exactly seasteading, but consider:
"Smart Buyer's Guide to Residential Cruise Ships " 
http://ezinearticles.com/?Smart-Buyers-Guide-to-Residential-Cruise-Ships&id=721770
"Residential Cruise Line, LTD. Is offering 1 bedroom, 1 bath, 624 sq.ft. 
apartments on "The Magellan" for a mere $2,160,000."

So, just starting out, we can see that the prices are higher, as you 
suggest. Plus upkeep costs a lot.

But consider this further, also from the above:
"""
New cruise ships can be built for around $200 million. The most expensive 
new mega cruise ships cost about $500 million to build.
   All the current prices of residences onboard cruise ships are exorbitant.
   Rich people apparently enjoy squandering their money. It must be a status 
thing to waste more money than the Joneses. For those who prefer to not 
waste money trying to outspend the Joneses, there is a better way.
Occasionally a cruise line may have a new ship under construction and run 
into financial difficulties. They may be forced to abandon the construction 
project, and an unfinished ship may sit idle in a shipyard. There are such 
ships available now. One in particular is as follows:
   725' 725ft./221m UNFINISHED 12 DECK PASSENGER VESSEL
   Year: 1990
   Current Price: US$ 15,000,000
   The asking price for this ship is less than the price for one large 
apartment on "The Magellan." The asking price and selling price are two 
different prices. This ship could probably be bought for about 11 million 
dollars. It would be foolish to finish this ship in a Greek union shipyard. 
It can be economically towed over to the nearby shipyards in Tuzla, Turkey. 
The ship can be finished there quicker, and for about half the price and 
with better craftsmanship. This ship could be bought and finished to a high 
standard equal to "The Orphalese" for a total cost of much less than 100 
million dollars (maybe even as low as 60 million). It can be finished to 
order, with each residential unit customized to suit its owner(s). The 
finished product would be a brand new completely modern ship with luxury 
homes onboard which would be at least as good or better than any on the market.
   That still seems like a big chunk of change. But this is a big ship and 
it would easily accommodate 200 luxury residential units and an additional 
200 or so conventional cruise cabins like "The Orphalese." The average cost 
of the residential units would be less than $500,000. That would mean that 
the smaller residential units would cost much less than the average price. 
Also, with an additional two hundred (plus) conventional cruise cabins, the 
cabin owners could recoup much of the operating costs, and thus virtually 
eliminate the "maintenance fees" for themselves. The expense to owners can 
be less than 10% of the going rates if the buyers did not need to pay some 
slick promoters and salesmen, but just bought the ship directly themselves 
sharing the actual costs by dividing the ship ownership among the buyers. 
Why would anyone want to pay ten times as much money to buy, and much higher 
maintenance fees for a similar shipboard residential unit? The only reason I 
can think of is to impress others with how much money they can afford to 
throw away.
   Used cruise ships are an even bigger bargain. Look at the specs for the 
following unfinished conversion ship for sale: ...
"""

Now, that is *less* than the apartment in Rome. But, that's for "luxury" and 
for a ship with engines that moves. And so on. There is a huge "ghost fleet" 
of empty ships right now:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1212013/Revealed-The-ghost-fleet-recession-anchored-just-east-Singapore.html

So, there are lots of deals that could be made. There are many container 
ships being finished that could perhaps be converted in the shipyards.

So, in theory, the prices for "seasteading" on the cheap may not be as 
expensive as they seem at first. It is possible that custom built seasteads 
might be even cheaper. For example, one may be able to use electric current 
to deposit a sort of sea cement or natural coral reef.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biorock
"Biorock, also known as Seacrete, Seament and Sea Cement, is a substance 
formed by electro-accumulation of minerals dissolved in seawater. This 
process grows cement-like engineering structures and marine ecosystems, 
often for mariculture of corals, oysters, clams, lobsters and fish in salt 
water. It works by passing a small electrical current through electrodes in 
the water. Biorock grows more or less without limit as long as current 
flows. ... Correcting for this, biorock becomes rather expensive: At $0.05 
per kilowatt hour it would cost $1.10/kg, plus the cost of the electrodes 
(one of which will be embedded within the resulting object). The production 
methods used in the original experiment were not optimal, and it is hoped 
that significantly lower costs will be possible. In some situations biorock 
may be cost-effective, requiring only metal bars or equivalent and a small 
amount of electricity."

Expensive, they say, what if we had some better way to go directly from 
sunlight to biorock in the ocean? Or, some way to not need much material?

Also, if one refit ships for smaller accommodation, one might be able to 
offer much smaller places to sleep for 50K euros instead (more like capsule 
hotels or university dorm rooms) and bigger public areas. Maybe one could 
just call it a floating university instead of a "seastead"? And then 
permanently dock it near the coast of Italy near Rome? :-)

Eric Hunting might have better numbers or alternatives as far as construction:
  http://tmp2.wikia.com/wiki/On_the_Architecture_of_Aquarius

However, those are just purchase costs. While seasteads or cruiseships have 
significant upkeep costs, consider all the lifetime of costs a young person 
has to pay for old people when their is no chance they will get much out of 
a system that has become a pyramid scheme. It might make financial sense for 
the young to just walk away from that if the laws and social divisions 
coming out of a pyramid scheme are unfair, and the only other alternative is 
to die childless in their parent's apartment.

Also, consider copyright, a set of laws that very few young people will ever 
benefit from at this point. Again, it might make more sense to live 
somewhere that such laws did not apply.

Similarly, the war on drugs like marijuana is problematical. In general much 
drug addiction may be just a product of environmental stress:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

Now, take this walkability issue. Small seasteads might be terrible for it 
(not much to walk to, even if everything is walkable). So, maybe there would 
need to be a network of these ships? Or a way to row from one to another?

Now, this may sound silly at first, sure. But consider, how long is Venice 
going to last if sea levels rise? It might be better to just move to ships. 
:-) Related article:
  "Venice Offers Lessons on Coping with Rising Seas"
   http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17910734

And other places face similar problems, like New Orleans in the USA. What 
about a floating New Orleans?

But instead of building ships for everyone, as that article describes the 
solution in Venice is some big engineering project. So, here is an example 
of ideology built into infrastructure. Rather than building new cheap places 
to live that would accommodate the young better, the entire populace (the 
burden on the young in the long term, taking from their future) is paying 
for engineering to keep the city as it is, with all sorts of expensive 
upkeep in general. So, in the long term, the young are underwriting the 
status quo that has decided it does not need them. Is this their future?
   "Manna"
   http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Or worse, the metaphorical version of "Soylent Green" as is happening in the 
UK right now:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_green
"Generation F*cked: How Britain is Eating Its Young" 
http://web.archive.org/web/20080119001830/http://www.adbusters.org/the_magazine/71/Generation_Fcked_How_Britain_is_Eating_Its_Young.html

I don't know any of this for sure. You raise good points. It does make more 
sense to make the current land based systems work out. I'm just playing with 
the ideas.

But, one reason to think about these ideas is to have some sort of credible 
alternative (or maybe incredible alternative. :-)

If, say, Italy knows that its youth might just leave, following some Pied 
Piper like Eric Hunting into the oceans: :-)
   http://lifeboat.com/ex/bios.eric.hunting
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pied_Piper_of_Hamelin
then maybe the country might be nicer to the young people or give them a 
better cut of the social investment pie?

At least until Italy can afford to import Japanese robots to take care of 
old people? :-)
   http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=japanese+robots+elderly

Anyway, so for today's youth in industrialized countries, they face a world 
in the next ten years with police 'bots and impossible rents, where they 
can't even share music or have any prospect for jobs, and if they get a job, 
the taxes may be ruinous paying for a collapsing social benefit pyramid 
scheme. So, maybe young people should be thinking about alternatives, unless 
the societies start rethinking their basic assumptions, like a basic income, 
copyright reform, other economic changes, and so on? :-)
"Getting Greece and Iceland to be 99% self-sufficient by mass; international 
consortium "
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/browse_thread/thread/6336f30458de0648/e009aac004f3ad9d

By the way, Waterworld was a terrible movie and not what I'm envisioning:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterworld
But, yes, I could see alternatives disintegrating in their own ways. :-(

The best societies have a mix of all ages, a future (babies, children), a 
present (parents, other young and middle-aged adults) and a past (the 
elderly). I'm not advocating splitting them up. The splitting up is being 
done in the current system by the economic paradigm we have created around 
us and embedded in the infrastructure (including, as you say, the cars of 
the more affluent making walking harder). I'm just talking about responding 
to the current schism among the generations in unusual ways.

You're right it would be better to make the current land-based system work 
better for everyone. Probably cheaper too in some ways. But socially, the 
question is, will it happen? It's often easier to walk to something better 
than to fight entrenched interests that see no reason to cooperate while you 
have no choice but to play their game.

Still, the promise of the seasteads is that they might have cheaper power, 
from OTEC or solar power of some sort, as well as ready access to food from 
the sea.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading

So, it is not clear that after they were developed that they would be as 
expensive. They might someday be cheaper. Same with life in cities in space. 
Someday, life in alternative places with better technology and different 
laws and economic assumptions may just be cheaper or more pleasant. Still, 
family will always hold most people back from trying them, until extended 
families can move together.

Here's one thing. If we've reached the point where all the young of Europe 
can do is live in their parent's overcrowded apartments until they turn 
forty, there is no future generation to worry about. :-( We need to dream 
again, even if some of the dreams will, admittedly, be nightmares like 
"Waterworld".

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
http://www.beyondajoblessrecovery.org/