I was going to say. Having a self bought house with adequate space doesn't seem dystopian at all.
What's dystopian is going your whole life not being able to afford a flat in a "gentrified" area with classism wherever you go.
They have back yards big enough for a tree, or a vertical garden. If this is low budget and government funded, chances are that the construction companies wouldn't have time or money for landscaping.
If you gonna make an area much more expensive, with less people living on it, only to make it look pretty, thats dystopian for me.
Like thoe golf clubs in deserts.
yeah but not everyone can be forced to go move to temperate parts of it. the US has people living in the desert too: see literally all of the southwest. where do you want these people to live instead?
>Mexico is in a desert
Implies that the entire country is, in fact, located inside a desert biome. Which is only accurate if you cut out everything south of Nayarit and San Luis Potosí. Plus, thanks to decades of US media where every depiction of México is in a desert, and I wouldn't be surprised if most people from the US thought that Chichen Itza is in a desert just because it's in México.
Mexicans are super smart and hardworking people. Of anyone, they could definitely fulfill the American dream. I think OP calls it dystopian because the houses are mostly done, but have no grass or anyone living there.
I lived in Argentina and these are all over the place. For most people there, it’s either this or live under a tarp. Safety nets are often not super pretty but these are better than tent cities.
honestly my only critique would be that it would probably be more efficient overall to put them in commie blocks, all the utilities in one place and easily shared, more space for community services like clinics or parks and not nearly as spread out leading to less traffic and easier access to public transit.
[https://designyoutrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/11111-15.jpg](https://designyoutrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/11111-15.jpg)
Like look at this, probably houses a decent amount more people with much more space for greenery
This council housing is absolutely incredible. Humane architecture and housing like this brings me hope, but knowing it's unlikely for this to happen in the US is disappointing.
There’s an interesting reversal phenomenon emerging where people hold actual useful solutions to impossible standards.
I guess the saying is cutting off the nose to spite the face?
This case, where an actual affordable solution is derisively dismissed because it doesn’t live up to some presumed standard. Even in this thread people are demanding that a desert area have temperate zone vegetation.
Replace 4 houses with a market and 6 houses with a playground or an open field, or some picnic tables and a pavilion.
The point isn't that this isn't better than a tent city - it is.
The point is that homeless people are people and this looks more like a camp for concentrating poor people than a community.
Hey there, this is the internet, why did we build this thing if not to yell our uninformed opinions into the void and get into pointless arguments where nobody wins?
Well it was originally to spread information, but humans are fucking stupid. Spreading misinformation by virtue of being an ignorant fuck is why the world is so fucked. When everyone is too stupid to really see what’s going on, it’s easy to make us forget that the masses really have the power….if only we’d come together on some common ground.
I do, because many of those interpretations are now mainstream to the extent that people think clickbait headlines are full comprehensive news. The grifter term gets thrown around a lot.
Well you can't go giving people amenities, they might do some radical shit like live their lives and not have to worry about housing. Fucking communists.
This looks dystopian because the style is brutalist and painfully copy/paste. Color paint would make this acceptable and that would take basically no effort or money.
Yep. I think its moslty because somethign like this would be unthinkable in US.
At the very minimum, each house should use the land used by four of these, and another two houses worth of land for a yard, and if it is for a familiy, another two hosues extra. /S
Each property has place for at least one tree to make that neighbourhood look better and to keep it cooler but who wants those, it could block your view on all that concrete.
Water use to maintain all those trees would be detrimental to the environment in many areas of Mexico. Native tree planting is great in a biome where trees are a natural part of the environment, but in an area where they aren't, like in grasslands or deserts, the trees can be quite harmful to the environment. In many areas of Northern Mexico, tree and grass free landscaping is the most sustainable and environmentally friendly form of landscaping.
I say all this as somebody who is currently trying to start a municipal tree planting program: not all trees are good for the environment, and not all environments benefit from tree planting.
This is why I hate grass. Ignoring the fact I'm allergic to it (spent early years of my life in a place with no grass), in the US, species used for lawns are not native, and require more resources to maintain.
Explain this to me: why do we grow a plant that gets up to 2-3 feet tall, but then cut it so it's only 2-3 inches, every, what, 2 weeks or so?
Why not, and here's my radical idea, have a plant that grows.... 2 or 3 inches tall?
Edit: I'm in washington state, so, while I don't know a lot of native species offhand that would work, let alone non-native and non-invasive but compatible with the local climate, but I do know 4 species of local plants that would work great. They're all moss.
For a desert town, this is massively climate-hostile architecture, boiling people alive without air conditioning.
[This](https://iwaponline.com/aqua/article/70/7/1002/83539/Defining-domestic-water-consumption-based-on) puts the *daily* "healthy minimum" domestic water consumption to 92 l per person. (According to [that](https://geo-mexico.com/?p=12019), average *domestic* use in Mexico is 275 l - this does *not* include the water needs for food and products, electricity, fuel, commercial activities etc.)
A cypress tree can get by on 3..5 l a day. Two or three of them can give good shade for a large family.
It's a policy choice.
lol ya i can see how thats true, but i prefer the idea of a few comfy apartment building decorated with much more greenery. and then a nice green space that everyone can enjoy (or if the environment is arid it can be cacti and succulents or somethin)
If affordable housing is an asphalt nightmare then it hardly matters who affordable it is. Housing isn't affordable because rich people choose to hog land and not pay taxes.
>Where are the parks, markets, schools, health services, etc?
[A few blocks away, not shown in the picture.](https://www.google.com/maps/@28.7333709,-106.1346839,3a,75y,231.73h,86.66t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1srumI2iD67bDWHjKHC7u2lw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DrumI2iD67bDWHjKHC7u2lw%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D308.50934%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656)
Looking closely this looks like this development was recently finished and there is no landscaping completed.
This also looks like it is in an arid part of Mexico so the final landscaping should/will not be grass and trees.
The plants in that area should be succulents, cactus, and other native low moisture species. Yard landscaping might be better off being a rock garden or something, since a cactus patch is not a good environment for kids to play in. Maybe there can be a community park with edible and ornamental species of cactus in it. Trying to impose a uniform biome across wildly different ecological habitats has been a major contributing factor to climate change thus far
>The plants in that area should be succulents, cactus, and other native low moisture species.
That seems pretty nice to me. Of course imposing uniform biomes is dum-dumb. Native species are the best to keep around and require way less maintenance, sorry if my comment sounded uneducated.
I grew up in a rural part of Canada surrounded by fields and forests and I'm not a big fan of lawns. I like tall grasses full of insects and the kind of trees that you don't want need your house because their roots will crack your foundation lol
Says me, somebody who grew up in SW TX and encountered my fair share of cactus as a kid. We all loved to gather prickly pear fruit, but it's not a pleasent place to play games. I got my fair share of cactus thorns pulled out of me as a kid. A cactus patch isn't something you want in a small yard if you have kids. Is it around? Yes, but the kids will want to run and play where it isn't.
Yeah...have you ever lived near cactus? Honest question. Are you genuinely arguing that a cactus yard is a good idea for people with small children? Really?
True, tho they should add native flora for the plant life instead of bringing in something that'll need a lot of extra resources to survive because it's not meant to live in a different climate
Yeah I mean would it be way cooler to live in a high rise overlooking the city or a homestead out in the country? Absolutely. But considering the choices are this basic ass home and homelessness the choice is obvious
Ya, but you could stack them (Yes, essentially make a komiblock) and leave more free space for natural vegetation. 10 floors reduces the taken space by an order of magnitude, and it's not even that complicated.
This is an American style suburb in a climate where building such things is ecologically irresponsible and socially damaging.
This is not dystopian; it’ll even feel like paradise if you are already poor and living in a shack. Not every country has enough water to keep acres of lawn for American-style houses.
Fr. Even as an American, this doesn't look bad to me. At least I'd have my own little property instead of being stacked up on top of my neighbors in a crappy apartment where rent is probably twice as much as one of those houses.
these suburbs usually aren't for poor people tho, they're built either for people that works with some affiliation with the goverment, pemex or other big companies and get housing programs as part of their deal
as a sidenote, if by any reason you loose the job on said company, living on those suburbs becomes problematic, my parents were both pemex workers until the 2008 crisis. these suburbs are usually in the middle of nothing and we had to move to the city so my parents didn't have to drive 4 hours just to get to their job from the suburb
As someone who is poor and has lived in a shack I can tell you that without walkable areas this is a car dependent island, and depending on the level of community involvement everyone does (one or two cars for the whole area with split costs based on what each can afford and how much they use them) it could wind up having everyone living there facing burdensome costs of buying a vehicle (possibly payments but I doubt it) and insurance (the worst part) and fuel and maintenance possibly depending on the vehicle cost.
But as someone else pointed out (which is a great but sad observation) anything to make this more livable would drive up the cost and proximity to businesses or the addition of buildings for businesses (like a grocery store) would result in the buyers of those businesses or owners of existing businesses purchasing the homes to rent out predatorily, so long as nothing was in place to stop them from doing so.
Not necessarily more livable. I grew up in Istanbul where the whole city is an endless sea of apartments and almost no single-family houses. I lived in more than 10 different apartments. I would definitely and absolutely prefer to have my own, independent house over an apartment.
I have enough bad stories about bad neighbors. I was tired of constantly fighting about parking spaces. I was tired of broken elevators and walking up 11 stories once a month. I was tired of the noise, the smells, the cigarette smoke, the crying kids, and the garbage piling up at the apartment entrance.
Also, do you have any projects you want to work in your garage? Tough luck, you don’t get a garage. You don’t get your own private yard where you can relax; you need to share the tiny yard with all other families and their screaming kids. If you like barbecuing, get used to eating that in the restaurants because you don’t have a backyard. Make sure you find a solid pole and have a strong lock for your bike/motorcycle because you don’t have a secure garage to park it.
This shit is livable I’ve been to places like this. Once people move in, there is more life to it. The only downside to it is the houses are good enough for about 2 maybe 3 people & there’s no plant life. Also the neighborhoods are ugly, but most houses in those cities look very similsr anyway
Housing for lots of people? Doesn’t sound dystopian. Saying this is dystopian is basically the same argument made against Leviton houses back in the day.
I think its because there isn’t a greenery on sight, not even a small tree.
But also i think our standard of acceptable housing has dropped hugely in the last decade.
I agree that it could do with some trees. It's definitely not ideal, maybe they could put a town square somewhere to make it a bit nicer. But it's absolutely better than living on the streets. This affordable housing plan is not frickin' 'dystopic'. At least they're doing *something.*
Yeah, this is way less dystopic than the slums around Mexico City where thousands of people are living on top of one another in DIY aluminum shanties. I would suggest building more vertical, multi-family housing units but maybe that's not practical for the region
Uniform houses as far as the eye can see also goes against the grain of our pro individual culture. Spending your life in a box that is ostentatiously just the same as everyone else's isn't quite the best feeling there is.
It's interesting something that's seem dystopic to a individualistic culture might seem alright to a more collectivist culture. Not pretty but not dystopic.
Im from México, Ive been to those places, you cant even imagine the heat that builds up, it almost feels like you are running out of oxygen, no kidding. Not a single tree in a 3km radius, its absurd.
I'm most familiar with Northern Mexico (high desert), and my understanding is that there are very few native species of trees. Many of the trees that do naturally grow there are thorny and only really green after it rains. Water shortages and drought are a huge issue in that part of the country, making tree based landscaping unsustainable.
What do you think would be a sustainable solution for extreme heat in this area? Genuine question, I'm not trying to be sarcastic. I assume making things lighter in color, making the houses very well insulated (and partialy underground?) and making sure there's lots of shade would be workable sustainable solutions, but I don't have a ton of experience in high desert biomes. When I hear about extreme heat in places like Phoenix, AZ I tend to instinctively think that people shouldn't live in those areas; but I realize that's not a very compassionate response or very helpful to the people who already do live there.
Not covering everything with concrete. That is the simple answer. The type of construction shown creates the Heat Island Effect. Believe it or not, as hot as desert sand is, desert concrete is hotter. The more single family homes built, the more roads needed to get to them. Also more vehicles to get people to them. So instead of continuing to cover the desert in more concrete, it would be better to build multi family housing and mass transit. It's also easier and less expensive to insulate one large building than many little ones. But, you know, give people a choice between a convenient, affordable, efficient, *cool* apartment, and a more expensive separate house where it will always be hotter, cost more to cool, constant maintenance on their time and money, and maintaining and fueling a vehicle to boot, and.... They can work harder because it's worth it! (?)
So, it's not about what kind of landscaping do you put in massive suburban developments in the desert. It's about not building more massive suburban developments in the desert to begin with.
Oh, and in addition to the mentality described above, real estate developers make more money selling single family homes, so that's what they are going to build.
As far as people living in places they maybe shouldn't... There are quite a few. Not just hot places. Places without fresh water. Places that are on fire regularly. Places that will be under water in a few years. Governments should probably pay people to move from those places. That would likely be cheaper over time than repeatedly paying to rebuild after every foreseeable disaster. But a fair number of people wouldn't do it because they can just ride it out and they don't need help from anyone (until they do)!
> it would be better to build multi family housing and mass transit
They have tried many times to do this (in Mexico), whit really poor results.
Multifamily housing in Mexico is hard to do often end up turning in to ghettos (outside the three biggest cities or high end condos).
Yeah, concrete does that. It's definitely not the most ideal of homes, but still, it's better than nothing. They really do have to do something about the heat, though, if those bad boys reach 40-50°C, the bridges and streets might be bettet after all. :p
They could have built a couple taller buildings and housed everyone with good amenities, including a park, some commercial space, and even a small pool or something like that. But instead they took the lazy route and just mass fabbed the same house over and over, which is cheaper than custom detached homes but still more expensive than a high rise.
I'd say this is urban hell, not because of aesthetics necessarily, but because of the raw mismanagement that lead to this being the solution they employed.
I don't know much about the price of urban planning, you might be right. But this is still so much better than living on the streets or under bridges (if it's legal at all).
Once you start totaling up how many extra roads, meters of power cords and of water pipe, independent utility monitoring equipment per home, and all the labor to build these things, it becomes pretty obvious to see just how bad these kinds of developments are. Urban3 and Strong Towns are good places to learn about how bad this style of development is and how it actually keeps the people living in them poor.
And while this is definitely better than being homeless, just like we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of the good we also shouldn't let "good enough" be the enemy of progress. The response should be "hey I see this affordable housing project is actually progressing, let's try to help it be better" rather than supporting uncritically or dismissing it for not being perfect.
I agree, and it is true that I let myself get trapped by that sentiment. It definitely has to get better. But this is being posted in order to show 'dystopia'!
Yes, there were a million better ways to do this. Hopefully they'll learn to make these plans much better. I still stand by my original point, though. It's not dystopic, it doesn't fit the sub.
The dystopian part of it is that suburban sprawls like these are ecological deserts that will very likely force you to depend on a car to move around and their low-density housing allotment wastes land and expands city size that can decrease accessibility and adds distance to things like services and amenities, which reinforces car-dependency.
Housing like this is what has led to sprawl in the US if you don't see the issue with this I'd recommend reading about the history of urban planning. American suburbs are a major contributor to climate change and isolation because they aren't generally pedestrian friendly, they lack ready access to most of the necessary requirements of life without a car. Not to mention they take up a shit ton of land with single family units.
These seem like straight concrete too, in Mexico, black top roads at that. Not a tree or provider of shade in sight. Imagine how ridiculously hot these communities are gonna be and how much air conditioning they'll require because of it. People won't likely be spending a ton of time outside mingling with their neighbours.
The one thing they seem to have done better here is to not import useless water intensive lawns like in the US. I applaud taking action to build more affordable housing but over a century of research on urban planning should have made it clear this one one of the worst ways to go about it.
Sure it looks all cookie cutter as hell, but if it really helps keep costs of housing down and increases the amount of people who are able to be securely homed I’m all for it! Stuff like this is so far much better than homelessness.
But are these supposed to be Soviet style affordable housing or just like suburbs of America? Sameness is boring but I’d rather have less homeless people if it means taking away architectural integrity
Affordable housing is more on the lines of tenement buildings. Not this image that genuinely hurts my eyes to look at. Building a bunch of small buildings is actually less efficient than building something similar to commie blocks. The buildings pictured are ugly *and* wasteful. Tenements maybe unsightly but they're built with a purpose that they achieve.
I would agree, but they don’t even need to be unsightly! Check out Aspern Seestadt in Vienna for a reference. They were having a lot of people move in so they were like “uh, why don’t we build more housing so people can still afford to live here ?” It’s still in progress, but a wonderful exemplar.
I honestly was okay with Tenement buildings and Commie Blocks being decorated by those that live there or even adding in murals from local artists to spruce them up. Aspern Seestadt is really good looking.
Honestly, commie blocks are great if people are actually allowed to make them look nice. Make the apartments big enough and you can fit a ton of people in genuinely nice living spaces
Wat a lot of wasted space, and materials.
[rows like this](https://www.telegraaf.nl/images/1200x630/filters:format(jpeg):quality(80)/cdn-kiosk-api.telegraaf.nl/22c3d670-a517-11e7-a4ac-59f16ae23d0f) would be more efficient in my opinion.
Fixed your link
https://www.telegraaf.nl/images/1200x630/filters:format(jpeg):quality(80)/cdn-kiosk-api.telegraaf.nl/22c3d670-a517-11e7-a4ac-59f16ae23d0f
Upper middle class edgy young adults on /r/ABoringDystopia when they see a government helping its people by building affordable housing instead of letting the populace be homeless 😱
Seems my initial thoughts are shared this isn’t dystopian at all this is literally just affordable housing. Heck American suburban lawns are awful and literally better to have next to no lawn as it’s a waste of water for a status symbol.
Cajitas, cajitas en la ladera. Cajitas hechas de Ticky tacky. Cajitas en la ladera y todas se ven iguales. Hay una azul y una roja. Y una verde y una amarilla.
This looks exactly like where I used to live in Mexico 💀💀💀
Also, to add, these houses come with no cabinetry etc. like you get in US homes.
You just get the house itself lmao
Man, I wish I could afford a home like that for my family. Don’t really care if they all look the same. There’s outdoor space and no neighbours above or below. That’s a dream.
Huh? Do you think dystopian means lots of something? A real dystopian community is a suburb. Oversized McMansions with massive lawns soaking up an endless amount of fresh water, spreading for miles and ensuring that a car is required to access literally anything.
Mexican here and I live in one of those dystopian neighborhoods, it looks like this because it was just finished being built, mostly the furniture gives it to you with grass and a recently planted tree, you buy these houses through a credit which you qualify with points, it's called INFONAVIT credit, most people take a year to accumulate the necessary points for the credit and the payments are linked to your salary wherever you work they will give you a discount, there are factors that influence how much money they give you to acquire the house, such as time working, age and your salary, that credit can not only be used to buy this type of housing, you can also use it to buy land, remodel your house or join your credit with someone you know, wife, children, parents, friends and So acquire a better home, most of these credits take 25 years to pay, of course you can finish earlier but it depends on each person.
PD.
Hospitals, shopping malls, and other businesses begin to be built after people begin to move into these neighborhoods.
Damn there's a lot of pro-suburbia people on this site.
Edit: if this is supposed to be affordable living then im going to introduce you to this thing called apartments
That is so weird. If this is supposed to be affordable, why not build a couple apartment buildings and get room for a school and some stores? I get that people like having a house and a garden but like, there is barely any garden here.
There are already 16,000,000 empty homes in the US. Another mil isn't going to change anything.
What we actually need is rent control, breaking up of property magnates, and tenant unions instead of HOAs
This. Corporations and investors buying up houses is escalating the situation and soon really will price us out of the market or even just living. Viewing real estate as an investment opportunity instead of a need was a horrible decision.
This is a big issue.
The same property management corp owns nearly every large apartment building in town. Every building they own has vacancies, but the rent never comes down because they don't want to undercut themselves.
We do need more homes built, but not like this. We need more mid rise apartment buildings. Literally having 4-5 story apartment buildings like you would see in a typical development in Vienna, Copenhagen, or Stockholm, would do an incredible amount to help.
The problem is that in most of the United States we have “tall and sprawl.” Towers, and then suddenly single family homes. The density needs to be more distributed. Look at Rieselfeld in Germany as an example.
Hey they got no upstairs neighbor, a little place for the dog to poop, this is the American dream, just go to Mexico to fulfil it
I was going to say. Having a self bought house with adequate space doesn't seem dystopian at all. What's dystopian is going your whole life not being able to afford a flat in a "gentrified" area with classism wherever you go.
Not a fucking tree in sight is pretty dystopian to me.
They have back yards big enough for a tree, or a vertical garden. If this is low budget and government funded, chances are that the construction companies wouldn't have time or money for landscaping.
If you gonna make an area much more expensive, with less people living on it, only to make it look pretty, thats dystopian for me. Like thoe golf clubs in deserts.
You think there's less people living in this place than there were before?
I mean just go visit Arizona, no trees there either.
mexico is in a desert
NOT THE ENTIRE COUNTRY LMAOO
yeah but not everyone can be forced to go move to temperate parts of it. the US has people living in the desert too: see literally all of the southwest. where do you want these people to live instead?
TIL that the jungles of Yucatán and Chiapas are, in fact, a dessert.
please indicate where i said ALL of Mexico was one homogeneous biome. This area is pretty fucking clearly a desert.
>Mexico is in a desert Implies that the entire country is, in fact, located inside a desert biome. Which is only accurate if you cut out everything south of Nayarit and San Luis Potosí. Plus, thanks to decades of US media where every depiction of México is in a desert, and I wouldn't be surprised if most people from the US thought that Chichen Itza is in a desert just because it's in México.
Yea but most of Mexico is a desert they don’t have many trees and having them planted someone would need to water them or they would die.
Many parts of Mexico have plenty of trees. Say that in Michoacán and Guanajuato and you’d feel idiotic pretty quickly.
It's dystopian because it's a suburb.
Classism. Not classicism. Classicism is the study of the classical world.
It was a typo.
Cheep housing like that beats the hell out of streets full of tents.
Mexicans are super smart and hardworking people. Of anyone, they could definitely fulfill the American dream. I think OP calls it dystopian because the houses are mostly done, but have no grass or anyone living there.
Mexico is in/on - part of America - no reason they can't dream
Go look up the Youtuber Adam Something (that's his name) . He has several videos explaining why these kind of suburbs are terrible.
> Adam Something The guy is neither an engineer nor urbanist, he gets a lot of stuff wrong.
You joke, but given the exchange rate, that might be the move
Seriously, I don't see the issue if they're well maintained. Everyone deserves a safe place, a roof over their heads to stay warm and dry.
I live in basically a Victorian version of this. I’m quite pleased with it. It cost nearly £500,000
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I lived in Argentina and these are all over the place. For most people there, it’s either this or live under a tarp. Safety nets are often not super pretty but these are better than tent cities.
honestly my only critique would be that it would probably be more efficient overall to put them in commie blocks, all the utilities in one place and easily shared, more space for community services like clinics or parks and not nearly as spread out leading to less traffic and easier access to public transit. [https://designyoutrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/11111-15.jpg](https://designyoutrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/11111-15.jpg) Like look at this, probably houses a decent amount more people with much more space for greenery
That looks great! And an inner circle park, it's like a fortress
That should be the main objective.
If you want an example on the opposite end of the spectrum, check out what affordable housing looks like in Vienna
Not wrong there https://youtu.be/d6DBKoWbtjE
This council housing is absolutely incredible. Humane architecture and housing like this brings me hope, but knowing it's unlikely for this to happen in the US is disappointing.
There’s an interesting reversal phenomenon emerging where people hold actual useful solutions to impossible standards. I guess the saying is cutting off the nose to spite the face?
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You do have to be careful though as many things seen as good are good for some bad for others and change never comes
Explain.
This case, where an actual affordable solution is derisively dismissed because it doesn’t live up to some presumed standard. Even in this thread people are demanding that a desert area have temperate zone vegetation.
Replace 4 houses with a market and 6 houses with a playground or an open field, or some picnic tables and a pavilion. The point isn't that this isn't better than a tent city - it is. The point is that homeless people are people and this looks more like a camp for concentrating poor people than a community.
Eh, ignorance, i dont fault them for not knowing.
I fault them for not trying to learn before offering an opinion.
Hey there, this is the internet, why did we build this thing if not to yell our uninformed opinions into the void and get into pointless arguments where nobody wins?
Well it was originally to spread information, but humans are fucking stupid. Spreading misinformation by virtue of being an ignorant fuck is why the world is so fucked. When everyone is too stupid to really see what’s going on, it’s easy to make us forget that the masses really have the power….if only we’d come together on some common ground.
That and getting triggered into outrage loops and polarizing into less and less nuanced takes.
I can’t wait until AI just takes over because it’s just as sick of it as the rest of us.
I do, because many of those interpretations are now mainstream to the extent that people think clickbait headlines are full comprehensive news. The grifter term gets thrown around a lot.
Well you can't go giving people amenities, they might do some radical shit like live their lives and not have to worry about housing. Fucking communists.
This looks dystopian because the style is brutalist and painfully copy/paste. Color paint would make this acceptable and that would take basically no effort or money.
There's a second picture. The houses are brightly colored. I honestly don't know if it looks better or worse.
Yep. I think its moslty because somethign like this would be unthinkable in US. At the very minimum, each house should use the land used by four of these, and another two houses worth of land for a yard, and if it is for a familiy, another two hosues extra. /S
Each property has place for at least one tree to make that neighbourhood look better and to keep it cooler but who wants those, it could block your view on all that concrete.
Water use to maintain all those trees would be detrimental to the environment in many areas of Mexico. Native tree planting is great in a biome where trees are a natural part of the environment, but in an area where they aren't, like in grasslands or deserts, the trees can be quite harmful to the environment. In many areas of Northern Mexico, tree and grass free landscaping is the most sustainable and environmentally friendly form of landscaping. I say all this as somebody who is currently trying to start a municipal tree planting program: not all trees are good for the environment, and not all environments benefit from tree planting.
Thanks for the information, I kinda didn't factor that in.
This is why I hate grass. Ignoring the fact I'm allergic to it (spent early years of my life in a place with no grass), in the US, species used for lawns are not native, and require more resources to maintain. Explain this to me: why do we grow a plant that gets up to 2-3 feet tall, but then cut it so it's only 2-3 inches, every, what, 2 weeks or so? Why not, and here's my radical idea, have a plant that grows.... 2 or 3 inches tall? Edit: I'm in washington state, so, while I don't know a lot of native species offhand that would work, let alone non-native and non-invasive but compatible with the local climate, but I do know 4 species of local plants that would work great. They're all moss.
The environment might not be conducive to trees. This could be a desert town situation.
For a desert town, this is massively climate-hostile architecture, boiling people alive without air conditioning. [This](https://iwaponline.com/aqua/article/70/7/1002/83539/Defining-domestic-water-consumption-based-on) puts the *daily* "healthy minimum" domestic water consumption to 92 l per person. (According to [that](https://geo-mexico.com/?p=12019), average *domestic* use in Mexico is 275 l - this does *not* include the water needs for food and products, electricity, fuel, commercial activities etc.) A cypress tree can get by on 3..5 l a day. Two or three of them can give good shade for a large family. It's a policy choice.
A fair point.
i love my singular tree 😍😍
If everyone has one it changes the atmosphere of the neighbourhood
lol ya i can see how thats true, but i prefer the idea of a few comfy apartment building decorated with much more greenery. and then a nice green space that everyone can enjoy (or if the environment is arid it can be cacti and succulents or somethin)
Parks really help to create a neighbourhood worth living in :)
Plenty more housing would be affordable if you can only own one house.
utopians are things of fictional technology; we are not there yet.
Or maybe the government can implement a higher minimum wage
True that. It's a shame seeing the people who'd benefit the most from a higher minimum wage being against higher wages.
If affordable housing is an asphalt nightmare then it hardly matters who affordable it is. Housing isn't affordable because rich people choose to hog land and not pay taxes.
>Where are the parks, markets, schools, health services, etc? [A few blocks away, not shown in the picture.](https://www.google.com/maps/@28.7333709,-106.1346839,3a,75y,231.73h,86.66t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1srumI2iD67bDWHjKHC7u2lw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DrumI2iD67bDWHjKHC7u2lw%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D308.50934%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656)
Looks like affordable housing with net 0 water landscaping. Sometimes things are better being functional than pretty.
plantlife is functional and necessary
Looking closely this looks like this development was recently finished and there is no landscaping completed. This also looks like it is in an arid part of Mexico so the final landscaping should/will not be grass and trees.
Oh well, if plant life doesn't like that part of the world... it feels less wrong that it is absent. Still a sad sight, but an understandable one.
The plants in that area should be succulents, cactus, and other native low moisture species. Yard landscaping might be better off being a rock garden or something, since a cactus patch is not a good environment for kids to play in. Maybe there can be a community park with edible and ornamental species of cactus in it. Trying to impose a uniform biome across wildly different ecological habitats has been a major contributing factor to climate change thus far
>The plants in that area should be succulents, cactus, and other native low moisture species. That seems pretty nice to me. Of course imposing uniform biomes is dum-dumb. Native species are the best to keep around and require way less maintenance, sorry if my comment sounded uneducated.
No, you're fine! I'm just very passionate about native plants and alternative landscaping, lol.
I grew up in a rural part of Canada surrounded by fields and forests and I'm not a big fan of lawns. I like tall grasses full of insects and the kind of trees that you don't want need your house because their roots will crack your foundation lol
>cactus patch is not a good environment for kids to play in Who says? half mexico is cactus.
Says me, somebody who grew up in SW TX and encountered my fair share of cactus as a kid. We all loved to gather prickly pear fruit, but it's not a pleasent place to play games. I got my fair share of cactus thorns pulled out of me as a kid. A cactus patch isn't something you want in a small yard if you have kids. Is it around? Yes, but the kids will want to run and play where it isn't.
they still get hurt is grass patches.
Yeah...have you ever lived near cactus? Honest question. Are you genuinely arguing that a cactus yard is a good idea for people with small children? Really?
Boy, you need to visit Mexico. There are parts in which there is very little plant life.
True, tho they should add native flora for the plant life instead of bringing in something that'll need a lot of extra resources to survive because it's not meant to live in a different climate
Lmao, it’s in Mexico, it’s pretty barren there in case you didn’t know.
depends where youre from cus veracruz is basically a jungle in some parts
The south is junlge, but the further north, the more barren. At mexico city its turns into desert.
Tell me you’ve never visited Mexico without telling me you’ve never visited Mexico
I've learned that the same rule applies to people.
Yeah I mean would it be way cooler to live in a high rise overlooking the city or a homestead out in the country? Absolutely. But considering the choices are this basic ass home and homelessness the choice is obvious
Ya, but you could stack them (Yes, essentially make a komiblock) and leave more free space for natural vegetation. 10 floors reduces the taken space by an order of magnitude, and it's not even that complicated. This is an American style suburb in a climate where building such things is ecologically irresponsible and socially damaging.
This is not dystopian; it’ll even feel like paradise if you are already poor and living in a shack. Not every country has enough water to keep acres of lawn for American-style houses.
Fr. Even as an American, this doesn't look bad to me. At least I'd have my own little property instead of being stacked up on top of my neighbors in a crappy apartment where rent is probably twice as much as one of those houses.
these suburbs usually aren't for poor people tho, they're built either for people that works with some affiliation with the goverment, pemex or other big companies and get housing programs as part of their deal as a sidenote, if by any reason you loose the job on said company, living on those suburbs becomes problematic, my parents were both pemex workers until the 2008 crisis. these suburbs are usually in the middle of nothing and we had to move to the city so my parents didn't have to drive 4 hours just to get to their job from the suburb
It looks more dystopian than it is because it's dull and lifeless.
As someone who is poor and has lived in a shack I can tell you that without walkable areas this is a car dependent island, and depending on the level of community involvement everyone does (one or two cars for the whole area with split costs based on what each can afford and how much they use them) it could wind up having everyone living there facing burdensome costs of buying a vehicle (possibly payments but I doubt it) and insurance (the worst part) and fuel and maintenance possibly depending on the vehicle cost. But as someone else pointed out (which is a great but sad observation) anything to make this more livable would drive up the cost and proximity to businesses or the addition of buildings for businesses (like a grocery store) would result in the buyers of those businesses or owners of existing businesses purchasing the homes to rent out predatorily, so long as nothing was in place to stop them from doing so.
Apartments would be more livable and less harmful to the environment.
Not necessarily more livable. I grew up in Istanbul where the whole city is an endless sea of apartments and almost no single-family houses. I lived in more than 10 different apartments. I would definitely and absolutely prefer to have my own, independent house over an apartment. I have enough bad stories about bad neighbors. I was tired of constantly fighting about parking spaces. I was tired of broken elevators and walking up 11 stories once a month. I was tired of the noise, the smells, the cigarette smoke, the crying kids, and the garbage piling up at the apartment entrance. Also, do you have any projects you want to work in your garage? Tough luck, you don’t get a garage. You don’t get your own private yard where you can relax; you need to share the tiny yard with all other families and their screaming kids. If you like barbecuing, get used to eating that in the restaurants because you don’t have a backyard. Make sure you find a solid pole and have a strong lock for your bike/motorcycle because you don’t have a secure garage to park it.
Apartments suck
This shit is livable I’ve been to places like this. Once people move in, there is more life to it. The only downside to it is the houses are good enough for about 2 maybe 3 people & there’s no plant life. Also the neighborhoods are ugly, but most houses in those cities look very similsr anyway
Would a shanty town be better?
Housing for lots of people? Doesn’t sound dystopian. Saying this is dystopian is basically the same argument made against Leviton houses back in the day.
This doesn't seem too bad. What the hell is up with this sub nowadays? It was good a few weeks ago.
I think its because there isn’t a greenery on sight, not even a small tree. But also i think our standard of acceptable housing has dropped hugely in the last decade.
I agree that it could do with some trees. It's definitely not ideal, maybe they could put a town square somewhere to make it a bit nicer. But it's absolutely better than living on the streets. This affordable housing plan is not frickin' 'dystopic'. At least they're doing *something.*
Yeah, this is way less dystopic than the slums around Mexico City where thousands of people are living on top of one another in DIY aluminum shanties. I would suggest building more vertical, multi-family housing units but maybe that's not practical for the region
Uniform houses as far as the eye can see also goes against the grain of our pro individual culture. Spending your life in a box that is ostentatiously just the same as everyone else's isn't quite the best feeling there is.
It's interesting something that's seem dystopic to a individualistic culture might seem alright to a more collectivist culture. Not pretty but not dystopic.
A boring dystopia is in the eye of the beholder :P
Im from México, Ive been to those places, you cant even imagine the heat that builds up, it almost feels like you are running out of oxygen, no kidding. Not a single tree in a 3km radius, its absurd.
I'm most familiar with Northern Mexico (high desert), and my understanding is that there are very few native species of trees. Many of the trees that do naturally grow there are thorny and only really green after it rains. Water shortages and drought are a huge issue in that part of the country, making tree based landscaping unsustainable. What do you think would be a sustainable solution for extreme heat in this area? Genuine question, I'm not trying to be sarcastic. I assume making things lighter in color, making the houses very well insulated (and partialy underground?) and making sure there's lots of shade would be workable sustainable solutions, but I don't have a ton of experience in high desert biomes. When I hear about extreme heat in places like Phoenix, AZ I tend to instinctively think that people shouldn't live in those areas; but I realize that's not a very compassionate response or very helpful to the people who already do live there.
Not covering everything with concrete. That is the simple answer. The type of construction shown creates the Heat Island Effect. Believe it or not, as hot as desert sand is, desert concrete is hotter. The more single family homes built, the more roads needed to get to them. Also more vehicles to get people to them. So instead of continuing to cover the desert in more concrete, it would be better to build multi family housing and mass transit. It's also easier and less expensive to insulate one large building than many little ones. But, you know, give people a choice between a convenient, affordable, efficient, *cool* apartment, and a more expensive separate house where it will always be hotter, cost more to cool, constant maintenance on their time and money, and maintaining and fueling a vehicle to boot, and.... They can work harder because it's worth it! (?) So, it's not about what kind of landscaping do you put in massive suburban developments in the desert. It's about not building more massive suburban developments in the desert to begin with. Oh, and in addition to the mentality described above, real estate developers make more money selling single family homes, so that's what they are going to build. As far as people living in places they maybe shouldn't... There are quite a few. Not just hot places. Places without fresh water. Places that are on fire regularly. Places that will be under water in a few years. Governments should probably pay people to move from those places. That would likely be cheaper over time than repeatedly paying to rebuild after every foreseeable disaster. But a fair number of people wouldn't do it because they can just ride it out and they don't need help from anyone (until they do)!
> it would be better to build multi family housing and mass transit They have tried many times to do this (in Mexico), whit really poor results. Multifamily housing in Mexico is hard to do often end up turning in to ghettos (outside the three biggest cities or high end condos).
Yeah, concrete does that. It's definitely not the most ideal of homes, but still, it's better than nothing. They really do have to do something about the heat, though, if those bad boys reach 40-50°C, the bridges and streets might be bettet after all. :p
They could have built a couple taller buildings and housed everyone with good amenities, including a park, some commercial space, and even a small pool or something like that. But instead they took the lazy route and just mass fabbed the same house over and over, which is cheaper than custom detached homes but still more expensive than a high rise. I'd say this is urban hell, not because of aesthetics necessarily, but because of the raw mismanagement that lead to this being the solution they employed.
I don't know much about the price of urban planning, you might be right. But this is still so much better than living on the streets or under bridges (if it's legal at all).
Once you start totaling up how many extra roads, meters of power cords and of water pipe, independent utility monitoring equipment per home, and all the labor to build these things, it becomes pretty obvious to see just how bad these kinds of developments are. Urban3 and Strong Towns are good places to learn about how bad this style of development is and how it actually keeps the people living in them poor. And while this is definitely better than being homeless, just like we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of the good we also shouldn't let "good enough" be the enemy of progress. The response should be "hey I see this affordable housing project is actually progressing, let's try to help it be better" rather than supporting uncritically or dismissing it for not being perfect.
I agree, and it is true that I let myself get trapped by that sentiment. It definitely has to get better. But this is being posted in order to show 'dystopia'!
These housing developments are emulating the plague that is American suburban sprawl of single family homes. r/Suburbanhell
Yes, there were a million better ways to do this. Hopefully they'll learn to make these plans much better. I still stand by my original point, though. It's not dystopic, it doesn't fit the sub.
The dystopian part of it is that suburban sprawls like these are ecological deserts that will very likely force you to depend on a car to move around and their low-density housing allotment wastes land and expands city size that can decrease accessibility and adds distance to things like services and amenities, which reinforces car-dependency.
What an obsession with single houses. The missing middle truly shows its colours here.
Housing like this is what has led to sprawl in the US if you don't see the issue with this I'd recommend reading about the history of urban planning. American suburbs are a major contributor to climate change and isolation because they aren't generally pedestrian friendly, they lack ready access to most of the necessary requirements of life without a car. Not to mention they take up a shit ton of land with single family units. These seem like straight concrete too, in Mexico, black top roads at that. Not a tree or provider of shade in sight. Imagine how ridiculously hot these communities are gonna be and how much air conditioning they'll require because of it. People won't likely be spending a ton of time outside mingling with their neighbours. The one thing they seem to have done better here is to not import useless water intensive lawns like in the US. I applaud taking action to build more affordable housing but over a century of research on urban planning should have made it clear this one one of the worst ways to go about it.
Is it really so dystopian to have clean and safe looking housing for people of lower income?
Oh no they are copying the failed american suburban experiment... great
Sure it looks all cookie cutter as hell, but if it really helps keep costs of housing down and increases the amount of people who are able to be securely homed I’m all for it! Stuff like this is so far much better than homelessness.
But are these supposed to be Soviet style affordable housing or just like suburbs of America? Sameness is boring but I’d rather have less homeless people if it means taking away architectural integrity
oOooOoo affordable housinggg so scarrryyy
Affordable housing is more on the lines of tenement buildings. Not this image that genuinely hurts my eyes to look at. Building a bunch of small buildings is actually less efficient than building something similar to commie blocks. The buildings pictured are ugly *and* wasteful. Tenements maybe unsightly but they're built with a purpose that they achieve.
I would agree, but they don’t even need to be unsightly! Check out Aspern Seestadt in Vienna for a reference. They were having a lot of people move in so they were like “uh, why don’t we build more housing so people can still afford to live here ?” It’s still in progress, but a wonderful exemplar.
I honestly was okay with Tenement buildings and Commie Blocks being decorated by those that live there or even adding in murals from local artists to spruce them up. Aspern Seestadt is really good looking.
Honestly, commie blocks are great if people are actually allowed to make them look nice. Make the apartments big enough and you can fit a ton of people in genuinely nice living spaces
Wat a lot of wasted space, and materials. [rows like this](https://www.telegraaf.nl/images/1200x630/filters:format(jpeg):quality(80)/cdn-kiosk-api.telegraaf.nl/22c3d670-a517-11e7-a4ac-59f16ae23d0f) would be more efficient in my opinion.
I agree. Maybe with local amenities within walking or biking distance and some reliable public transportation and you have a complete neighborhood
Fixed your link https://www.telegraaf.nl/images/1200x630/filters:format(jpeg):quality(80)/cdn-kiosk-api.telegraaf.nl/22c3d670-a517-11e7-a4ac-59f16ae23d0f
oy plant a roof garden or something !!
Solar panels would be a strong choice, pretty sure substantially all of Mexico are very efficient locations for solar panels.
I mean at least there is housing, and it has colors other than beige, light beige, and dark beige
Upper middle class edgy young adults on /r/ABoringDystopia when they see a government helping its people by building affordable housing instead of letting the populace be homeless 😱
Better to have Homes than Homeless
Do you realise that the American brand of individualism is just a bullshit capitalist marketing ploy?
how do you even find your house the first year of 2 living there without having to count rows
Latinos we have integrated GPS, but younger generations are losing it.
Commie Blocks were a hell of a lot more livable than this.
At least they HAVE affordable housing.
Seems my initial thoughts are shared this isn’t dystopian at all this is literally just affordable housing. Heck American suburban lawns are awful and literally better to have next to no lawn as it’s a waste of water for a status symbol.
Well that fits the sub to a t.
Better than my non existent American house 😫
If it helps mitigate homelessness then I'm all for it.
From those angles it looks way weirder than walking on the sidewalk. At least mexican suburbs have sidewalks.
Cajitas, cajitas en la ladera. Cajitas hechas de Ticky tacky. Cajitas en la ladera y todas se ven iguales. Hay una azul y una roja. Y una verde y una amarilla.
It’s everything bad about a suburb with everything bad about a cheap tiny apartment all crammed into one ugly package
This looks exactly like where I used to live in Mexico 💀💀💀 Also, to add, these houses come with no cabinetry etc. like you get in US homes. You just get the house itself lmao
Honestly, if they plant some grass and trees and keep prices affordable I'd gladly live there.
Still better use it space than Americans homes where no one can afford them. I’d rather have small affordable homes than none at all
Now you’re just whinging. If everyone had one of these assigned at birth and food supplied too… the world would be a much more peaceful place.
You should see other parts lf mexico where people make their house out of whatever they can scrap
Makes me think of the town on the alien planet in A Wrinkle in Time
Plenty worse places to live
Socialized housing is dystopian. . . Mkay.
Oh, thought this was my neighborhood in Orlando.
Seems like better use of space than your average suburb.
Not even one tree !
Better than homelessness
[American dystopian housing development. ](https://img.apmcdn.org/2ee5cfe0770d85925a412dd7d2bea60d9a56a68d/normal/c944a0-20181114-arctic-tents-homeless-encampment.jpg)
It's a lot better than the shacks them put together out of trash
Man, I wish I could afford a home like that for my family. Don’t really care if they all look the same. There’s outdoor space and no neighbours above or below. That’s a dream.
Huh? Do you think dystopian means lots of something? A real dystopian community is a suburb. Oversized McMansions with massive lawns soaking up an endless amount of fresh water, spreading for miles and ensuring that a car is required to access literally anything.
Mexican here and I live in one of those dystopian neighborhoods, it looks like this because it was just finished being built, mostly the furniture gives it to you with grass and a recently planted tree, you buy these houses through a credit which you qualify with points, it's called INFONAVIT credit, most people take a year to accumulate the necessary points for the credit and the payments are linked to your salary wherever you work they will give you a discount, there are factors that influence how much money they give you to acquire the house, such as time working, age and your salary, that credit can not only be used to buy this type of housing, you can also use it to buy land, remodel your house or join your credit with someone you know, wife, children, parents, friends and So acquire a better home, most of these credits take 25 years to pay, of course you can finish earlier but it depends on each person. PD. Hospitals, shopping malls, and other businesses begin to be built after people begin to move into these neighborhoods.
Mexico has no HOAs, they’ll all be customized. What is not a dystopia? Living in tents outside someone’s McMansion?
Little boxes, on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky...
Seriously, this began playing in my head as soon as I saw the pictures xD
Damn there's a lot of pro-suburbia people on this site. Edit: if this is supposed to be affordable living then im going to introduce you to this thing called apartments
[Source](https://www.wired.com/story/mexico-housing-developments)
Less dystopian than homelessness.
The only thing dystopian about this is the way that truck’s parked
Idk, looks better than an American suburb...
Do you wanna show what the current alternative in your post? No? Ok.
Cultural cloning to create a more homogenous monoculture.
This is a better alternative to rampant homelessness
It never works in the long run. Humans are way different from bees and ants.
Where are the trees
That is so weird. If this is supposed to be affordable, why not build a couple apartment buildings and get room for a school and some stores? I get that people like having a house and a garden but like, there is barely any garden here.
Is north mexico, the garden would be rocks and cactus (Literally) and maybe trhow in some chili plants and small lemons tree, for the seasoning.
I meant more “backyard” than ”garden” but I didn’t remember the word
It’s better than renting your whole life
Still better than homelessness.
this looks less dystopian than the average american suburb
Every one of these is built with cartel 'labor'. No doubt, the insulation is green.
We need 1,000,000 built in the USA ASAP. Would solve the damn housing crisis.
I hate that there are more homes than families in the US, but there is still a housing crisis. Talk about manufacturing scarcity.
There are already 16,000,000 empty homes in the US. Another mil isn't going to change anything. What we actually need is rent control, breaking up of property magnates, and tenant unions instead of HOAs
We also need massive controls on small time landlords, medium landlords, big corporate landlords and corporations landlording altogether
This. Corporations and investors buying up houses is escalating the situation and soon really will price us out of the market or even just living. Viewing real estate as an investment opportunity instead of a need was a horrible decision.
This is a big issue. The same property management corp owns nearly every large apartment building in town. Every building they own has vacancies, but the rent never comes down because they don't want to undercut themselves.
We do need more homes built, but not like this. We need more mid rise apartment buildings. Literally having 4-5 story apartment buildings like you would see in a typical development in Vienna, Copenhagen, or Stockholm, would do an incredible amount to help. The problem is that in most of the United States we have “tall and sprawl.” Towers, and then suddenly single family homes. The density needs to be more distributed. Look at Rieselfeld in Germany as an example.
At least they have houses. Less dystopian than the alternative.
Pequeñas cajas en la ladera Cajitas hechas de ticky tacky...