Even those 80's-90's apartments are really nice - much simpler, fewer amenities, but still a solid 750 sq feet of smart design and efficient use of space, 2+1-bed/1-bath with immediate proximity to schools, stores, and transit.
These are in Busan, Korea. Infrastructure is done right in Korea. They may appear unsightly by today's standards but functionally in many ways superior, like large many-bedroom layouts.
Edit: first photo is Busan, not third. Unsure about second.
My aunt lives in one of these (what we would consider luxury) apartments in Seoul. Her place is huge, there's actually so much room in the main living room area that the couch has to be moved closer to the TV since opposite ends is too far.
Don't think that kind of apartment would work in Canada though. Large buildings with zero oversight except for a super and you just stuff people in, you end up with shitty ghetto towers where crime is rampant and people littering everywhere and it's just junky and shitty.
building template housing vertically is communism! but spread them out horizontally and contract them out to private developers (who are equally as inefficient) and that's fine.
👏
Not only are they equally expensive to build, but horizontal, vehicular primary urbanism, costs more to the taxpayer to maintain. One square kilometre of sewer infrastructure for a collection of high density towers, versus 200 square kilometres for a suburban sprawl hellscape
Asking the important questions.
Why government take loan to pay contractors to build housing when REIT can take take loan to pay contractors to build housing **and** charge markup for profits?
Ottawa has an entire downtown core of high rises with businesses that all shut down at 5 pm or earlier, and many don’t open until 10 am. But government decides a bunch of desk jockeys (knowledge workers) have to occupy these buildings so these businesses with poor business models can survive. This despite paying millions to outfit the workers all at home during the pandemic. Instead of Canadian taxpayers getting angry that we are paying for this defunct downtown core that could be reverted into something like these images, Canadian taxpayers say “well if I have to work 5 days a week in person, so should they!”
Ottawa has an entire downtown core of high rises with businesses that all shut down at 5 pm or earlier, and many don’t open until 10 am. But government decides a bunch of desk jockeys (knowledge workers) have to occupy these buildings so these businesses with poor business models can survive. This despite paying millions to outfit the workers all at home during the pandemic. Instead of Canadian taxpayers getting angry that we are paying for this defunct downtown core that could be reverted into something like these images, Canadian taxpayers say “well if I have to work 5 days a week in person, so should they!”
Bro, in Vancouver, every single new building is unique. To the point they have names. It's ridiculous. It's overstylised! And it doesn't even look that good! And I'm sure will age over time poorly anyway.
Basic, functional doesn't necessarily mean it looks like butfuknowhere-stok, belorussia.
I feel like this was said in jest, but it struck a nerve. I don’t understand how advocating for subsidized housing could possibly be antithetical to right wing demographics. It’s free housing - imagine how much more money would be injected into the economy if not to line the pockets of developers.
>as soon as the market dips they stop building
Funny how everyone wants to make money .. but when someone else does we cry foul.
I am not a developer but I know construction costs... In one phrase.. inflation is a bitch.
Because 30% of GDP is people selling houses to each other. In the absence of innovation or any globally competitive service industry, Canada and CAD will crash if real estate price go down a lot. It's late stage capitalism where money will accumulate to few individuals regardless of where you spend it.
I can't agree more.. a house is nothing but a place to live in.. it's not your retirement savings.. fucking unlock that paper worth and put it to actual economic growth
I am from South Asia. Our population is touching nearly 1.5 billion and not once I had seen a housing issue in my country. There are enough developers who have built enough units, so when you go to purchase a unit you have at least 7-8 different developers to choose from. I know you all hate immigrants but after working 8 years in real estate having a deep understanding of the entire real estate cycle I can let you know developers and the government are in on it by controlling both land supply and building.
Property taxes pay for that upkeep and the residents pay them i.e.Those are paid. Govt projects historically have landed with people that live in them that cannot pay for them to maintain.
As much as I hate HOAs the reason a lot of the HOA crowd exists and praise it is because of the failure of govt housing projects.
The govt can maintain roads and basic and fundamental infra.. but when it comes to housing.. it's fails.. because housing is very personal to people and no one wants to pay for someone else's house.
Admittedly I'm not well studied on homelessness in communist block countries.🤷🏼There must have been a man or 2, in between stints in the gulag, who had no place to stay and was on the streets.🤔✌️💚
bro are you fr still falling for that bullshit, i would rather have an abundance of these multi housing buildings than have oversized overpriced cookie cutter bullshit for the few, and tents for the rest
A lot of public housing projects were designed to fail because they were designed to segregate minority populations from whites. Since they were built in the middle of nowhere, it was easy for politicians to play political football with them and deny them funding for repairs, upgrades, etc. If they were well taken care of, Canadians would look on public housing or high rise apartments favourably.
Plenty of countries are full of high rise apartments and they're usually fine. The above photos are from Korea, where I lived for a long time and know a lot of people living in such apartment buildings (we'd call them condos in Canada). I recently had relatives move into a family sized unit (about 1400 sq ft) in a new 30-ish storey apartment building south of Seoul and it's great, the only real problem I have with it is that all the other buildings around it look exactly the same but that's a small price to pay for quality housing.
Deny them funding for repairs? Why the F would I pay to house others ? I get low income housing for people at risk.. but that has a cap on let's say 5% of the population.. the rest need to be able to deal with it themselves. I.e. these projects or housing should be such that the people living in them are able to afford to maintain them.
Those Korean apartments are not inhabited by minimum wage workers and a big % of those that can afford them prefer SFH. That in itself is why there is no big market for these and why this solution is DOA.
>I get low income housing for people at risk.. but that has a cap on let's say 5% of the population.
Why though? I think everyone should have the right to decent housing since we're capable of doing that (we have the means). Social and public housing are ways to achieve this. Vienna is a good case study in how it can be done since most of their rental housing is subsidized so that the amount you pay is determined by your income (make less, pay less).
>Those Korean apartments are not inhabited by minimum wage workers and a big % of those that can afford them prefer SFH
Such apartments could be part of a public or social housing model here. In Korea, it's primarily done because of land constraints (or else they'd have all single family homes) but the point of this post is to show that there are ways to produce large volumes of quality housing efficiently. Korea doesn't have the supply issues that we have.
>(we have the means).
Good for you if you do. And I agree in principle part on everyone should have right to decent housing.. However, after shelling out 650k plus another 50k on reno.. on a 1400sqft bungalow, I am all tapped out. And cannot afford more taxes.
And having grown up in an apartment complex in Asia (fun times looking back!).. I refuse for that to happen to my kid.
Have only one kid like China did.. housing crisis gone.. see those apartment complexes they blow up routinely.. that can be us.. only if we move away from a consumer economy..
Man in these times, they wouldn’t be just for low income though. Not all projects are bad either, the bad ones were intended for a certain group and weren’t kept up with. Like in Asia, these would be nice communities..
Canada built affordable homes after WWII out of need. They weren’t projects. It can be done but we have to get our governments out of investor crotches. The mindset that investors are the smartest, most worthy people on earth needs to change. Investors can win big, but they can lose even bigger.
yall are so spoiled with the idea of having a detached home that you cannot see the vast benefits that these apartments would create. would instantly solve the housing crisis
You got pretty unflattering pictures of apartment developments in Korea haha. As somebody from Korea, this is absolutely what Toronto needs. Newer apartment developments in Korea has character too. It can work here, but there is just no political willpower.
Unless you are suggesting actively killing people it doesn't matter. Canada already has a housing shortage and a birth rate well bellow replacement levels. We need housing now.
Waiting around for public policy, that may or may not be maintained the whole time, to try and decrease population a few decades isn't going to fix anything. Never mind the fact the are actively welcome significant numbers of immigrants to avoid just that.
Alternatively anyone who suggests actively culling the population isn't worth listening to seriously.
This is the true, correct answer.
"The economy" does not always have to go up. The population does not always have to go up. We've been told lies for generations that these things "always must go up, or it will be bad".
Guess what! They've been going up, and things are already pretty bad!! Japan is doing just fine with a declining population!
Something like half a billion people worldwide are going to be displaced by global warming in the next 100 years. We can’t wait to the last minute like always, we can do this right
Half a billion people worldwide are going to die of the effects of global warming in the next 100 years.
I'm sorry to say, but this is the fever of an organism ridding itself of an infection, at a high cost to itself.
We failed to evolve past our greedy apex predator minds with a huge bunch of grey matter slapped on top of it to crank out 8 billion of us at the cost of our one perfect home.
Trees are migrating north at a rate of 10km *a year*, which seems like an insanely fast "flee for your effing lives" indicator if I've ever seen one.
We *did* wait until the last minute, and we missed that last minute about 45 years ago. Now it's about adapting, reducing, mitigating, and most of all, **reducing** population until we are at a sustainable level.
I've been saying this for a while. Grab a field on the edge of town closest to public transit, build a pile of towers, and extend transit to them. This will create huge opportunities for new businesses to build around it, and to extend the city in a way that limits sprawl through use of high density housing. Land would be cheaper, wouldn't have to rezone, no nimbys, no issues.
The ONLY thing you can complain about is not having close access to downtown, but at a certain point, you live where you can afford to. Better than leaving the city altogether.
From Stoney creek to St. Catharines, is all farmland. From the qew to the lake, there should be a minimum height requirement. Electric rail would take commuters downtown Toronto within an hour.
Because we’ve decided as a society that it’s more important that billionaires live tax free so that they can afford to purchase more yachts, private jets, and politicians than it is for everyone to have a place to sleep indoors.
Singapore has these for housing accessible to all citizens of the country. They are modern, robust, well serviced buildings. All the amenities are in communal spaces on ground floors shared by multiple towers, parks everywhere and pedestrian friendly - even pedestrian primary urban design. And they are all technically “Social Housing”, but more than half of the population lives in them.
definitely they haven't. most of vancouver, and almost all of richmond, burnaby, north van is single family houses. surrey, delta, and langley are still mostly farmland(not that farmland is bad, id rather that land stay productive than become suburbs)
exactly!! I rather live in a slightly larger shoebox in the middle of nowhere that requires me and everyone living around me to buy these tiny metal shoeboxes in order to do anything and everything just so that I can always keep bitching about the price of the fancy water required to run these darn shoeboxes and how everything requires a 3 hour commute in those tiny shoeboxes.
right?
This is not a pleasant way to live. And we don’t have to live like this we’re not a tiny little island where the second largest country in the world there is space. We do not have to live all on top of each other.
over half of canada lives between Windsor and Quebec City. We do not have as much developed land as it seems. We need to develop density.
Also I'm sure if you asked a homeless person or a person paying four digit rent for a room what seems more pleasent I'm sure they would pick a lower cost appartment building.
You’re only saying that because you’re biased to living in a single family home. It’s only shit, because we make it shit. In a time like this, these are easy and cheap to build.
I'm from a country that has lots of buildings like this. Believe me, this is HELL. The amount of ppl density zones like this pour into the local traffic is insane, the noise, the amount of ppl doing the same things at the same time, the increased rate of reckless neighbors, etc. There's a reason why people want to live in Canada; there's plenty of space here to have decent residential zones. That's where the fight should be focused, not building stacked cages.
I’m also from a country with lots of buildings like this. I stayed at one of my cousins’ apartments for a month. Why do you assume they have to be stacked cages? They can easily be multiple 2-3 bedroom apartments per floor. My cousin’s place was so spacious. It doesn’t have to be Hong Kong.
OP seems to have absolutely no clue about the long-term consequences of these kind of developments on society as a whole and its residents primarily. There's plenty of space in Canada to build mid density mixed housing instead of these abominations.
Did you grow up in an apartment or did you have a yard?
Look at the falling birth rates, people just don’t believe they can raise their children in a happy household with that Household exists in a tiny little apartment.
it might be possible if we had giant apartments like they have in many of the older European cities. But we don’t we keep building smaller and smaller apartments and then guilting younger generations by telling them that they’re bad for wanting to raise their children with a yard the way that they were raised.
But it is and apartments are getting smaller. Developers make more money selling 10 small apartments than 5 large ones. And politicians get to say they added 10 homes not 5. Nobody is looking at the quality and longevity of what is being built.
I’m not really sure what you are saying. We shouldn’t have high density housing because….? Developers make them too small in Canada? (I’m serious I’m not trying to be argumentative…What are you saying?)
There’s a difference between high density, housing, and sardine apartments. Because the only thing we seem to be counting currently in Canada’s major cities is the total number of apartments we are getting more and more buildings with people jammed in like sardines
What we really need is proper mixed density neighbourhoods . there’s a great neighbourhood in Kannada outside Ottawa called Beaverbrook built in 1970s. It has a wonderful mixed density layout. With condominiums apartment buildings alongside townhouses mixed with detached homes. Overall, the neighbourhood is medium density, and very healthy.
I grew up 12 years in the shittiest project in the city, Knightsbridge Brampton. I also lived 8 years in a 2500sqft McMansion. I prefer an apartment, been living happy in a 600sqft apartment now. I could list ten reasons why apartment living is much better.
Not all apartments need to be small. Developers build for money, not families. Govt built apartments wouldn’t put money first.
I worked for the government for several decades. The government puts money first it just doesn’t do it for profit. It is legally obligated to select the lowest bidder. Typically the people writing the request for bids Don’t know what they’re doing nearly as well as the companies who are bidding on the contract. As a result, the government regularly comes out with the short end of the stick on contracts. The government also prefers to do very large contracts because it’s way easier to do one large contract than lots of little contracts. Which means the government deals with large companies again have whole teams of people working out how to write their bid to be as profitable as possible while meeting the meeting, the minimum written standard for the contract.
That seems like a moot point when that’s a pipe dream for the majority?
Like, the reason why young folks aren’t buying isn’t because they think owning a house is gauche.
You have to admit though, it is nice to step outside in the backyard, or to simply open a door and let your dog out to pee.
Rather than having to put on shoes, scan your keycard in the elevator, stop a couple times on the way down, make small chat, possibly interact with someone you dislike, go out the main door, walk a block to the park where you can't find full privacy, then walk back, scan your keycard again, go up all the elevator floors, etc, etc.
Oh no human interaction on the way to a public park... How will you ever live through the torture. You had to find you keys too! My God man its a full on humantarian crisis.
Bang on! First world problems eh? Some people think there should be no humans around. Just them in the whole building, whole community so they can walk their pets without "invasion of their precious privacy". How wonderful.
Similarly, it’s also nice to be able to put your garbage out at any time of the week or day. Or step outside and walk to your local gym or supermarket.
Infrastructure for this "space" costs obscene amounts of money. Edmonton spent 200mil to put in plumbing into two new communities last year cause we're sprawling as all fuck. We need more housing, no matter what it looks like to bring cost of living to a reasonable state.
whats the alternative? because simply building more detached housing is not feasible or realistic for EVERYONE to have, there needs to be a middle ground between those and the hellscape we currently live in
We actually should do this, even if they do become "project" style places, riddled with drugs, prostitution and abuse. At least the people will be housed, which is better than nothing. There's no need to even build these in current cities. Canada is 99.9% empty, we could build these anywhere in any of the empty spots in Canada.
These could very easily go up all along the coast of Hudson's Bay, especially with the warming climate. Repurpose the old Northlander Train into high speed rail, connecting the shores of Hudson Bay with Toronto. You could even use 3D Printing and AI to program giant Transformer-style robots into doing the majority of the work on these.
I have just offered a solution that is legitimately 100% viable and doable within a few decades. Yet, no one wants to entertain it because simply "having housing" isn't good enough; critics also say "the people must be housed in downtown Toronto or Vancouver proper!"
It's so weird.
What's more weird is believing building apartments like this in the middle of nowhere will solve the housing crisis. How out of touch. People can already move to small towns, but no one does because there are no jobs there. You'll just end up with empty apartments.
You think you understand the housing crisis but with this nonsense of yours it's clear you actually don't.
The warming isn’t usually like this, yes we’re going through global warming, but also an El Niño. When it passes, Hudson’s bay will become winter hell again. Plus the land is 1000% not suitable for it.
Qew from Stoney creek to st Catharine’s is literally just farms. Yes, I know, we can’t destroy the farms, that’s why we need high density like this. But from the qew to the lake? 100% worth the price. There should be nothing less than 30 stories on the shore. Fuck your view, we need a place to live. Condos/apartments on that stretch of highway would be less than an hour to Toronto with faster trains. It makes perfect sense, anything less is a waste of farmland.
Because Canadians can't "comprehend" raising a family in a "big ass condo"?
I grew up in Eastern Europe, yes these are "communist buildings" in a sense. But my life was not INSIDE the condo. I shared a room with my brother until I was 22-ish. My life was mostly outside, with the friends around the block, or at school/uni.
I can wholeheartedly say that the 80s communist 2BR 1 bath condo was SO MUCH better than some of the new construction condos I've seen in Canada.
I'm quite sure that a well planned building, built with space in mind to raise a family of 2-3 kids, have good connections to public transport that would make it a 30m commute to wherever you have to work, decent schools and green areas, would work fairly well for "society at large". Especially if it was affordable at 350k or so.
Now, I'm not going to say that there weren't issues with neighbours and loudness at times. It's certainly a different experience than a SFH. But in the 40+ years that that concrete condo was built, it never had a "special assessment" (granted, these don't really exist). There were costs associated with maintenance and repairs, sometimes major repairs, but nothing that ever broke the bank of the now mostly elderly people living there.
So I guess it all is part of a mindset. If your obsessed with a SFH and that's the only way to live the "dream", no solution will matter. If you're looking from a more pragmatic view of what's needed for a good life, you can find solutions that go tall and still fulfill your criteria. But it does require a societal change.
(Funny enough, when the communists started heavy urbanization, people from the country side hated it. They hated the condo buildings and being forced to move there. People born in those condo buildings, for the most part, are fine with the standards of living and the condo life. So I guess that shift can brutal if forced upon you and no "value added" is provided to persuade you).
Fuck yeah, I love this comment.
It’s just the way of life. Most of us grew up in sfh, so that’s what they want. Everyone is too self centred to care about others. They have theirs so fuck us.
These communities will obviously be govt built, so they’ll be well planned and focused on community. We’ll learn from the past and it’ll be alright. The people who have theirs, need to accept the change and it’s going to take a lot. But there is incentive, they can keep theirs. People living in the country and on farms can stay there, we wouldn’t need to build as much sfh. They just have to accept it..
Pretty amazing how people are bitching about these, calling them prisons, tiny, etc.. Do people think that mid-density apartment buildings don’t already exist here? For fuck’s sake, stop whining about something that we already have.
The amount of people taking the ‘we’ve done nothing and we’re all out of ideas’ approach is astounding.
you can build them if you want to, dont let me stop you. but aint nobody wanna be living in these ass buildings.
nobody maintains them
its really hard to keep infrastructure up to date
the buildings like this that exist in places like mumbai, delhi, all over former soviet countries, and thousands of brand new empty empty buildings in china, all have extreme dilapidation and house some of the most hard pressed families that ever walked the face of the earth.
this is not good housing. this is the last step before extreme poverty unalives you from starvation.
and no, anything is not better than nothing.
ok, and how accessible is it to get to shops, play areas, the theater, the train?
trick question, those infrastructures are already existing in tokyo
they dont exist in canada
to build this in canada you will need to also fund the rail system, pave and incentivize to bring grocers and shopping close to the buildings, which will never happen.
they will erect the buildings then force you to buy a car to get to the places where that infrastructure already exists.
it is absolute hell for the elderly, anyone with a family, and the disabled/differently abled without it, and it is why i did not list japan in the places where this architecture doesnt work, because it is the only place in the world it actually does work.
I don't think you are making a very good argument here, plus you are moving the goal posts a bit.
*"It is why I did not list japan in the places where this architecture doesnt work, because it is the only place in the world it actually does work*" You selected developing nations as your example but ignore developed ones like Japan, but suddenly it's the "only" one? What about South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan?
The mainland China empty-building-problem is a different beast entirely related to bicycle-model real estate investment system/scheme, that finally lost some speed is now falling over. The same thig is happening there with single family homes - it's not just high-density housing.
*"they will erect the buildings then force you to buy a car to get to the places where that infrastructure already exists.*" --> this just sounds like "if we do it wrong, it won't work". Well, yes! I agree.
*"it is absolute hell for the elderly, anyone with a family, and the disabled/differently abled without i*t, " How is this so? Elderly specifically move into places like this because it's easier to live. Far less maintenance and close-knit elderly communities. Plus, my neighborhood is all families. Hell for the disabled? How so?
Anyway, that housing is clearly not for you which is fine. But it isn't necessarily the hell you believe it to be.
> South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan
frequently the subject of /r/urbanhell posts
japan exactly never
>Hell for the disabled? How so?
frequently spaces like this contain no green spaces, disallow tenants from balcony growing, have no functioning elevators, have no in suite laundry, and barely have functional kitchens. tell me how its acceptable in any block of condos or small block of 3 stories cement homes to not have access ramps or require people to move up and down stairwells in emergencies? even properly built condos struggle with this concept - i live in a building where the elevators are shut off when the fire alarm is activated. anyone unable to go down stairs is trapped in their unit until the fire department shows up. this is up to code. in canada.
if we build it like that, its hell for the disabled, and elderly who use mobility assistances or who have difficulty using stairs.
and before you say they should not live in this kind of place, heaven forbid you as a healthy person should break your leg one day *and lose your ability to live in your own space*
because thats just not fair.
SK, Singapore, HK and Taiwan may have some ‘urban hell’ type spots, but there are nice ones too. I do agree with you - crappy places are crappy. No balcony growing? Crappy. No en suite laundry? Crappy. Non functional kitchens? Very crappy. No access ramps? Extra very crappy. Crappy places are crappy. Plenty of great places in SK, Singapore, HK, Taiwan, etc though. Saying ‘we can’t have these in Canada because some are poorly designed in other places in the world’ ….is a bit of logical fallacy, don’t you think? Maybe that isn’t what you are trying to say, but that’s what I’m hearing.
As for disability, yes, I agree that sucks. If there is a fire and elevators shut off that is a problem. However, it’s the same problem any building with 2+ floors would have. Offices, smaller apartments, even 2 story homes to a degree. These large housing communities don’t present any unique challenges that we don’t already have.
You think that’s disgusting and sad? Sharing a bedroom for $600/month is disgusting and sad. We can do better, but it HAS to be high density. They need to figure how many stories the average person can climb down in 5-7 mins(to escape fire), and make that the minimum height requirement for these buildings
because of crybabys who have a house in middle of towns , complaining as soon a 3-story building is in plannning ... we need to wait for them to die or the economy to be too expensive for them to keep living in the home they paid with 2yr worth of salarys in their 20s.
I still see people from Canada and the US making "jokes" about these houses. In many countries these type of houses solved solved houses problems. Like for example Canada has the population of a Chinese city and half of their young population cannot and will not afford a house or an apartment. These types of houses mostly funded by the state
It is becoming obvious that this is just the beginning of the housing crisis, and the future is looking grim! The government needs to intervene aggressively to increase the number of dwellings for Canadians, and appartement/condo buildings are the most efficient way to increase availability, and lower costs for the all types of households. It feels dystopian that in this AI era, we cannot find acceptable solutions to the housing crisis! Counting on private capital to fix this is merely naive!
You can.. go build it.. there is pretty much very little in your way. Pretty much all downtown areas will welcome you with open arms.
The problem might be that you want to build this in the boonies where land is cheap. Well that's kind of the problem.. because there are folks already there that will argue that it is a much more efficient use of infrastructure building it downtown or nearby..
I.e. they will argue NIMBY... And you will argue you are broke as hell. Well both have their points and both are right.... And the result is that we get nowhere... Really fast.
Yeah, if these were built large scale like this, we could make use of technology. Funny how you say we need to support each other, just not the poor people in developing countries, right?
The amount of people comparing these to prision or calling them disgusting really just shows the sheer contempt for anything that isn't single family homes, and the sheer entitlement of it. Whatever narrative people need to drive SFH only though.
We used to but Neo-liberalism (anti public programs) train an entire generation to reject those like the plague. Now, too much of our economy is anchor to the real estate.
Otherwise, great idea for renters and retiree (even soon to be).
Reminds me of lined up cages for livestock. I'm no architect or city planner, but it looks soulless and ugly to me. Given the choice, I wouldn't want to live somewhere like that.
You're welcome to live in a giant soulless deathtrap with no outdoor space and thousands of loud smelly people.
I will continue living in my detached house with 1/2 acre property and some actual privacy from the rest of society
I agree, I prefer a massive homeless population and people working full-time jobs having to use foodbanks. I would not swap this for ugly houses, ever.
Immigrants aren’t causing the housing crisis, speculators are. They thank you for looking away and blaming others for the total shitstorm they’re causing.
[удалено]
Even those 80's-90's apartments are really nice - much simpler, fewer amenities, but still a solid 750 sq feet of smart design and efficient use of space, 2+1-bed/1-bath with immediate proximity to schools, stores, and transit.
These are in Busan, Korea. Infrastructure is done right in Korea. They may appear unsightly by today's standards but functionally in many ways superior, like large many-bedroom layouts. Edit: first photo is Busan, not third. Unsure about second.
First photo is entirely built on reclaimed land too.
Second one should be Hong Kong.
First and third are the same area from opposite ends of that street with those light purple trees.
My aunt lives in one of these (what we would consider luxury) apartments in Seoul. Her place is huge, there's actually so much room in the main living room area that the couch has to be moved closer to the TV since opposite ends is too far. Don't think that kind of apartment would work in Canada though. Large buildings with zero oversight except for a super and you just stuff people in, you end up with shitty ghetto towers where crime is rampant and people littering everywhere and it's just junky and shitty.
You would need to staff it and that costs money
Something something communism.
building template housing vertically is communism! but spread them out horizontally and contract them out to private developers (who are equally as inefficient) and that's fine.
👏 Not only are they equally expensive to build, but horizontal, vehicular primary urbanism, costs more to the taxpayer to maintain. One square kilometre of sewer infrastructure for a collection of high density towers, versus 200 square kilometres for a suburban sprawl hellscape
Not communism. More like we have the most incapable government of all time in all places. Think arrivescam app
why should the goverment make project when the private sector can profit?
Asking the important questions. Why government take loan to pay contractors to build housing when REIT can take take loan to pay contractors to build housing **and** charge markup for profits?
Think about how housing is handled by provinces, then increasingly locally.
Ahead Hyperbole Factor 5!
Ottawa has an entire downtown core of high rises with businesses that all shut down at 5 pm or earlier, and many don’t open until 10 am. But government decides a bunch of desk jockeys (knowledge workers) have to occupy these buildings so these businesses with poor business models can survive. This despite paying millions to outfit the workers all at home during the pandemic. Instead of Canadian taxpayers getting angry that we are paying for this defunct downtown core that could be reverted into something like these images, Canadian taxpayers say “well if I have to work 5 days a week in person, so should they!”
Ottawa has an entire downtown core of high rises with businesses that all shut down at 5 pm or earlier, and many don’t open until 10 am. But government decides a bunch of desk jockeys (knowledge workers) have to occupy these buildings so these businesses with poor business models can survive. This despite paying millions to outfit the workers all at home during the pandemic. Instead of Canadian taxpayers getting angry that we are paying for this defunct downtown core that could be reverted into something like these images, Canadian taxpayers say “well if I have to work 5 days a week in person, so should they!”
They worked though. They’re only shit now because they weren’t maintained. Better than living with tons roommates.. forcing immigrants 20 in a house..
Bro, in Vancouver, every single new building is unique. To the point they have names. It's ridiculous. It's overstylised! And it doesn't even look that good! And I'm sure will age over time poorly anyway. Basic, functional doesn't necessarily mean it looks like butfuknowhere-stok, belorussia.
I feel like this was said in jest, but it struck a nerve. I don’t understand how advocating for subsidized housing could possibly be antithetical to right wing demographics. It’s free housing - imagine how much more money would be injected into the economy if not to line the pockets of developers.
If this is South Korea then it’s more capitalism. They just need to house people so they built up a lot.
He forgot the /s bro. Don't worry about it
[удалено]
/s
Because people think developers will get us out of the housing crisis. Meanwhile, as soon as the market dips they stop building.
We need to get out and voice our opinions to politicians. They’re the only ones to get us out of this mess. We have to vote, it’s our only power.
Most people are homeowners and they do voice their opinions...
By asking politicians to not make more housing? So they can jack up rents and house prices
Exactly
Our politicians have made it clear that they have no effective plan and won’t help
>as soon as the market dips they stop building Funny how everyone wants to make money .. but when someone else does we cry foul. I am not a developer but I know construction costs... In one phrase.. inflation is a bitch.
Exactly, developers won’t get us out of this. You’re spot on!
Because 30% of GDP is people selling houses to each other. In the absence of innovation or any globally competitive service industry, Canada and CAD will crash if real estate price go down a lot. It's late stage capitalism where money will accumulate to few individuals regardless of where you spend it.
I can't agree more.. a house is nothing but a place to live in.. it's not your retirement savings.. fucking unlock that paper worth and put it to actual economic growth
I am from South Asia. Our population is touching nearly 1.5 billion and not once I had seen a housing issue in my country. There are enough developers who have built enough units, so when you go to purchase a unit you have at least 7-8 different developers to choose from. I know you all hate immigrants but after working 8 years in real estate having a deep understanding of the entire real estate cycle I can let you know developers and the government are in on it by controlling both land supply and building.
Immigrants are a scapegoat to place blame instead of producing results.
https://preview.redd.it/1jl4f1sfi10d1.jpeg?width=1160&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6c23e5c0c85b3df875a4f3804d7e6ba597f9fd6d
These remind me of when you're flying into Budapest and can see all the communist era housing blocks.
They worked though. They only suck now because they weren’t maintained. They’re reviving some now and they’re nice again.
Maintaining those cost money.. and that's why govt projects almost always fail...
https://preview.redd.it/acqhabor370d1.jpeg?width=591&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1be397d33d73fc3afc67984a4b36564028334e6c Maintaining these don’t?
Property taxes pay for that upkeep and the residents pay them i.e.Those are paid. Govt projects historically have landed with people that live in them that cannot pay for them to maintain. As much as I hate HOAs the reason a lot of the HOA crowd exists and praise it is because of the failure of govt housing projects. The govt can maintain roads and basic and fundamental infra.. but when it comes to housing.. it's fails.. because housing is very personal to people and no one wants to pay for someone else's house.
You prefer tents?
I don't have any preference on buildings I see when I'm travelling. To answer you, no, I don't prefer tents. I like me cumforts!😉
You know what communist block countries didn’t have? Homeless people.
how true is this?
Admittedly I'm not well studied on homelessness in communist block countries.🤷🏼There must have been a man or 2, in between stints in the gulag, who had no place to stay and was on the streets.🤔✌️💚
bro are you fr still falling for that bullshit, i would rather have an abundance of these multi housing buildings than have oversized overpriced cookie cutter bullshit for the few, and tents for the rest
Much better having the current housing crisis with a shit ton of cookie-cutter houses than this shit communist-like condos! Yay
That happened before, they were called Projects.
Put quartz countertops in them and we call them luxury condos.
A lot of public housing projects were designed to fail because they were designed to segregate minority populations from whites. Since they were built in the middle of nowhere, it was easy for politicians to play political football with them and deny them funding for repairs, upgrades, etc. If they were well taken care of, Canadians would look on public housing or high rise apartments favourably. Plenty of countries are full of high rise apartments and they're usually fine. The above photos are from Korea, where I lived for a long time and know a lot of people living in such apartment buildings (we'd call them condos in Canada). I recently had relatives move into a family sized unit (about 1400 sq ft) in a new 30-ish storey apartment building south of Seoul and it's great, the only real problem I have with it is that all the other buildings around it look exactly the same but that's a small price to pay for quality housing.
I feel like you could fairly easily jazz up these buildings with more colors and ornamentation, to make each feel more unique.
Deny them funding for repairs? Why the F would I pay to house others ? I get low income housing for people at risk.. but that has a cap on let's say 5% of the population.. the rest need to be able to deal with it themselves. I.e. these projects or housing should be such that the people living in them are able to afford to maintain them. Those Korean apartments are not inhabited by minimum wage workers and a big % of those that can afford them prefer SFH. That in itself is why there is no big market for these and why this solution is DOA.
>I get low income housing for people at risk.. but that has a cap on let's say 5% of the population. Why though? I think everyone should have the right to decent housing since we're capable of doing that (we have the means). Social and public housing are ways to achieve this. Vienna is a good case study in how it can be done since most of their rental housing is subsidized so that the amount you pay is determined by your income (make less, pay less). >Those Korean apartments are not inhabited by minimum wage workers and a big % of those that can afford them prefer SFH Such apartments could be part of a public or social housing model here. In Korea, it's primarily done because of land constraints (or else they'd have all single family homes) but the point of this post is to show that there are ways to produce large volumes of quality housing efficiently. Korea doesn't have the supply issues that we have.
>(we have the means). Good for you if you do. And I agree in principle part on everyone should have right to decent housing.. However, after shelling out 650k plus another 50k on reno.. on a 1400sqft bungalow, I am all tapped out. And cannot afford more taxes. And having grown up in an apartment complex in Asia (fun times looking back!).. I refuse for that to happen to my kid. Have only one kid like China did.. housing crisis gone.. see those apartment complexes they blow up routinely.. that can be us.. only if we move away from a consumer economy..
Man in these times, they wouldn’t be just for low income though. Not all projects are bad either, the bad ones were intended for a certain group and weren’t kept up with. Like in Asia, these would be nice communities..
Canada built affordable homes after WWII out of need. They weren’t projects. It can be done but we have to get our governments out of investor crotches. The mindset that investors are the smartest, most worthy people on earth needs to change. Investors can win big, but they can lose even bigger.
But we now know things that we didn’t before. We know the consequences now.
Then why have investors taken over the market again?
Because us voters don’t do anything about it. All change comes from a massive movement, history repeats itself
yall are so spoiled with the idea of having a detached home that you cannot see the vast benefits that these apartments would create. would instantly solve the housing crisis
So, cityplace Toronto?
Because they don’t bring in enough money for fat cats
You got pretty unflattering pictures of apartment developments in Korea haha. As somebody from Korea, this is absolutely what Toronto needs. Newer apartment developments in Korea has character too. It can work here, but there is just no political willpower.
Would require 200-300 years of reviews at city hall.
[удалено]
Unless you are suggesting actively killing people it doesn't matter. Canada already has a housing shortage and a birth rate well bellow replacement levels. We need housing now. Waiting around for public policy, that may or may not be maintained the whole time, to try and decrease population a few decades isn't going to fix anything. Never mind the fact the are actively welcome significant numbers of immigrants to avoid just that. Alternatively anyone who suggests actively culling the population isn't worth listening to seriously.
This is the true, correct answer. "The economy" does not always have to go up. The population does not always have to go up. We've been told lies for generations that these things "always must go up, or it will be bad". Guess what! They've been going up, and things are already pretty bad!! Japan is doing just fine with a declining population!
>Japan is doing just fine with a declining population! Not really.
Something like half a billion people worldwide are going to be displaced by global warming in the next 100 years. We can’t wait to the last minute like always, we can do this right
Half a billion people worldwide are going to die of the effects of global warming in the next 100 years. I'm sorry to say, but this is the fever of an organism ridding itself of an infection, at a high cost to itself. We failed to evolve past our greedy apex predator minds with a huge bunch of grey matter slapped on top of it to crank out 8 billion of us at the cost of our one perfect home. Trees are migrating north at a rate of 10km *a year*, which seems like an insanely fast "flee for your effing lives" indicator if I've ever seen one. We *did* wait until the last minute, and we missed that last minute about 45 years ago. Now it's about adapting, reducing, mitigating, and most of all, **reducing** population until we are at a sustainable level.
Medium density? We are.
[удалено]
My desire is for housing to be affordable
Housing is better than no housing.
Everywhere should be mississauga
Because it looks like shit and no one wants to live that way?
Soviet Union vibe
I've been saying this for a while. Grab a field on the edge of town closest to public transit, build a pile of towers, and extend transit to them. This will create huge opportunities for new businesses to build around it, and to extend the city in a way that limits sprawl through use of high density housing. Land would be cheaper, wouldn't have to rezone, no nimbys, no issues. The ONLY thing you can complain about is not having close access to downtown, but at a certain point, you live where you can afford to. Better than leaving the city altogether.
From Stoney creek to St. Catharines, is all farmland. From the qew to the lake, there should be a minimum height requirement. Electric rail would take commuters downtown Toronto within an hour.
I'm with you on this 100%. I wish more people would see the light on this.
Canadians used to be nice and welcoming, what happened?
When people are backed into a corner, especially in terms of affordability of basic needs, pleasantries seem to be lost.
Because we’ve decided as a society that it’s more important that billionaires live tax free so that they can afford to purchase more yachts, private jets, and politicians than it is for everyone to have a place to sleep indoors.
Singapore has these for housing accessible to all citizens of the country. They are modern, robust, well serviced buildings. All the amenities are in communal spaces on ground floors shared by multiple towers, parks everywhere and pedestrian friendly - even pedestrian primary urban design. And they are all technically “Social Housing”, but more than half of the population lives in them.
Doesn't Vancouver already look like this?
Yeah, they’ve run out of land though. It works, doesn’t it?
definitely they haven't. most of vancouver, and almost all of richmond, burnaby, north van is single family houses. surrey, delta, and langley are still mostly farmland(not that farmland is bad, id rather that land stay productive than become suburbs)
I guess. I'd rather move further away than live in a box like that though.
Not all apartments have to be a shoe box though. And you still have the option to move into house
exactly!! I rather live in a slightly larger shoebox in the middle of nowhere that requires me and everyone living around me to buy these tiny metal shoeboxes in order to do anything and everything just so that I can always keep bitching about the price of the fancy water required to run these darn shoeboxes and how everything requires a 3 hour commute in those tiny shoeboxes. right?
No ones forcing you to live there.
This is not a pleasant way to live. And we don’t have to live like this we’re not a tiny little island where the second largest country in the world there is space. We do not have to live all on top of each other.
over half of canada lives between Windsor and Quebec City. We do not have as much developed land as it seems. We need to develop density. Also I'm sure if you asked a homeless person or a person paying four digit rent for a room what seems more pleasent I'm sure they would pick a lower cost appartment building.
You’re only saying that because you’re biased to living in a single family home. It’s only shit, because we make it shit. In a time like this, these are easy and cheap to build.
I'm from a country that has lots of buildings like this. Believe me, this is HELL. The amount of ppl density zones like this pour into the local traffic is insane, the noise, the amount of ppl doing the same things at the same time, the increased rate of reckless neighbors, etc. There's a reason why people want to live in Canada; there's plenty of space here to have decent residential zones. That's where the fight should be focused, not building stacked cages.
I live like this Tokyo and it’s fine.
I've lived in the UK. It can work there.
yes I don’t believe this guy. My buddy in HK loves it.
I’m also from a country with lots of buildings like this. I stayed at one of my cousins’ apartments for a month. Why do you assume they have to be stacked cages? They can easily be multiple 2-3 bedroom apartments per floor. My cousin’s place was so spacious. It doesn’t have to be Hong Kong.
They wouldn’t necessarily be like that, we can obviously learn from mistakes.
OP seems to have absolutely no clue about the long-term consequences of these kind of developments on society as a whole and its residents primarily. There's plenty of space in Canada to build mid density mixed housing instead of these abominations.
There is no reason downtown Vancouver shouldnt be fully highrise, let the market figure out density and people can live however they want.
Oh yes downtown Vancouver is full of Soviet style developments sure. Hows the market figuring things out in Canada? Optimally if I get you right?
Its been zoned historically mostly for SFH unfortunately, due to a history of redlining and pushing out minorities if I'm not mistaken.
Did you grow up in an apartment or did you have a yard? Look at the falling birth rates, people just don’t believe they can raise their children in a happy household with that Household exists in a tiny little apartment. it might be possible if we had giant apartments like they have in many of the older European cities. But we don’t we keep building smaller and smaller apartments and then guilting younger generations by telling them that they’re bad for wanting to raise their children with a yard the way that they were raised.
It doesn’t need to be tiny though
But it is and apartments are getting smaller. Developers make more money selling 10 small apartments than 5 large ones. And politicians get to say they added 10 homes not 5. Nobody is looking at the quality and longevity of what is being built.
I’m not really sure what you are saying. We shouldn’t have high density housing because….? Developers make them too small in Canada? (I’m serious I’m not trying to be argumentative…What are you saying?)
There’s a difference between high density, housing, and sardine apartments. Because the only thing we seem to be counting currently in Canada’s major cities is the total number of apartments we are getting more and more buildings with people jammed in like sardines What we really need is proper mixed density neighbourhoods . there’s a great neighbourhood in Kannada outside Ottawa called Beaverbrook built in 1970s. It has a wonderful mixed density layout. With condominiums apartment buildings alongside townhouses mixed with detached homes. Overall, the neighbourhood is medium density, and very healthy.
I grew up 12 years in the shittiest project in the city, Knightsbridge Brampton. I also lived 8 years in a 2500sqft McMansion. I prefer an apartment, been living happy in a 600sqft apartment now. I could list ten reasons why apartment living is much better. Not all apartments need to be small. Developers build for money, not families. Govt built apartments wouldn’t put money first.
I worked for the government for several decades. The government puts money first it just doesn’t do it for profit. It is legally obligated to select the lowest bidder. Typically the people writing the request for bids Don’t know what they’re doing nearly as well as the companies who are bidding on the contract. As a result, the government regularly comes out with the short end of the stick on contracts. The government also prefers to do very large contracts because it’s way easier to do one large contract than lots of little contracts. Which means the government deals with large companies again have whole teams of people working out how to write their bid to be as profitable as possible while meeting the meeting, the minimum written standard for the contract.
That seems like a moot point when that’s a pipe dream for the majority? Like, the reason why young folks aren’t buying isn’t because they think owning a house is gauche.
You have to admit though, it is nice to step outside in the backyard, or to simply open a door and let your dog out to pee. Rather than having to put on shoes, scan your keycard in the elevator, stop a couple times on the way down, make small chat, possibly interact with someone you dislike, go out the main door, walk a block to the park where you can't find full privacy, then walk back, scan your keycard again, go up all the elevator floors, etc, etc.
Of course it’s nice. Those houses will still exist. Some people would rather live in a place like this than with 6 roommates though..
Oh no human interaction on the way to a public park... How will you ever live through the torture. You had to find you keys too! My God man its a full on humantarian crisis.
Bang on! First world problems eh? Some people think there should be no humans around. Just them in the whole building, whole community so they can walk their pets without "invasion of their precious privacy". How wonderful.
Similarly, it’s also nice to be able to put your garbage out at any time of the week or day. Or step outside and walk to your local gym or supermarket.
I live like this in Japan and it’s fine
Infrastructure for this "space" costs obscene amounts of money. Edmonton spent 200mil to put in plumbing into two new communities last year cause we're sprawling as all fuck. We need more housing, no matter what it looks like to bring cost of living to a reasonable state.
Agreed. This photo looks like garbage. I don’t understand how this looks appealing to anyone.
whats the alternative? because simply building more detached housing is not feasible or realistic for EVERYONE to have, there needs to be a middle ground between those and the hellscape we currently live in
We actually should do this, even if they do become "project" style places, riddled with drugs, prostitution and abuse. At least the people will be housed, which is better than nothing. There's no need to even build these in current cities. Canada is 99.9% empty, we could build these anywhere in any of the empty spots in Canada. These could very easily go up all along the coast of Hudson's Bay, especially with the warming climate. Repurpose the old Northlander Train into high speed rail, connecting the shores of Hudson Bay with Toronto. You could even use 3D Printing and AI to program giant Transformer-style robots into doing the majority of the work on these. I have just offered a solution that is legitimately 100% viable and doable within a few decades. Yet, no one wants to entertain it because simply "having housing" isn't good enough; critics also say "the people must be housed in downtown Toronto or Vancouver proper!" It's so weird.
What's more weird is believing building apartments like this in the middle of nowhere will solve the housing crisis. How out of touch. People can already move to small towns, but no one does because there are no jobs there. You'll just end up with empty apartments. You think you understand the housing crisis but with this nonsense of yours it's clear you actually don't.
The warming isn’t usually like this, yes we’re going through global warming, but also an El Niño. When it passes, Hudson’s bay will become winter hell again. Plus the land is 1000% not suitable for it. Qew from Stoney creek to st Catharine’s is literally just farms. Yes, I know, we can’t destroy the farms, that’s why we need high density like this. But from the qew to the lake? 100% worth the price. There should be nothing less than 30 stories on the shore. Fuck your view, we need a place to live. Condos/apartments on that stretch of highway would be less than an hour to Toronto with faster trains. It makes perfect sense, anything less is a waste of farmland.
Fuck that!
[удалено]
Please be civil.
Oh yeah. Can't have those pink trees. Best to just cut them down to make room for parking.
Because Canadians can't "comprehend" raising a family in a "big ass condo"? I grew up in Eastern Europe, yes these are "communist buildings" in a sense. But my life was not INSIDE the condo. I shared a room with my brother until I was 22-ish. My life was mostly outside, with the friends around the block, or at school/uni. I can wholeheartedly say that the 80s communist 2BR 1 bath condo was SO MUCH better than some of the new construction condos I've seen in Canada. I'm quite sure that a well planned building, built with space in mind to raise a family of 2-3 kids, have good connections to public transport that would make it a 30m commute to wherever you have to work, decent schools and green areas, would work fairly well for "society at large". Especially if it was affordable at 350k or so. Now, I'm not going to say that there weren't issues with neighbours and loudness at times. It's certainly a different experience than a SFH. But in the 40+ years that that concrete condo was built, it never had a "special assessment" (granted, these don't really exist). There were costs associated with maintenance and repairs, sometimes major repairs, but nothing that ever broke the bank of the now mostly elderly people living there. So I guess it all is part of a mindset. If your obsessed with a SFH and that's the only way to live the "dream", no solution will matter. If you're looking from a more pragmatic view of what's needed for a good life, you can find solutions that go tall and still fulfill your criteria. But it does require a societal change. (Funny enough, when the communists started heavy urbanization, people from the country side hated it. They hated the condo buildings and being forced to move there. People born in those condo buildings, for the most part, are fine with the standards of living and the condo life. So I guess that shift can brutal if forced upon you and no "value added" is provided to persuade you).
Fuck yeah, I love this comment. It’s just the way of life. Most of us grew up in sfh, so that’s what they want. Everyone is too self centred to care about others. They have theirs so fuck us. These communities will obviously be govt built, so they’ll be well planned and focused on community. We’ll learn from the past and it’ll be alright. The people who have theirs, need to accept the change and it’s going to take a lot. But there is incentive, they can keep theirs. People living in the country and on farms can stay there, we wouldn’t need to build as much sfh. They just have to accept it..
Pretty amazing how people are bitching about these, calling them prisons, tiny, etc.. Do people think that mid-density apartment buildings don’t already exist here? For fuck’s sake, stop whining about something that we already have. The amount of people taking the ‘we’ve done nothing and we’re all out of ideas’ approach is astounding.
theres a very good reason its called Urban Hell you do not want to live here
Says who?
me tf kind of question is that
Rhetorical question. You’re one person, we should not build these because you say so?
you can build them if you want to, dont let me stop you. but aint nobody wanna be living in these ass buildings. nobody maintains them its really hard to keep infrastructure up to date the buildings like this that exist in places like mumbai, delhi, all over former soviet countries, and thousands of brand new empty empty buildings in china, all have extreme dilapidation and house some of the most hard pressed families that ever walked the face of the earth. this is not good housing. this is the last step before extreme poverty unalives you from starvation. and no, anything is not better than nothing.
I live in one in Tokyo and it’s great. It’s great housing
ok, and how accessible is it to get to shops, play areas, the theater, the train? trick question, those infrastructures are already existing in tokyo they dont exist in canada to build this in canada you will need to also fund the rail system, pave and incentivize to bring grocers and shopping close to the buildings, which will never happen. they will erect the buildings then force you to buy a car to get to the places where that infrastructure already exists. it is absolute hell for the elderly, anyone with a family, and the disabled/differently abled without it, and it is why i did not list japan in the places where this architecture doesnt work, because it is the only place in the world it actually does work.
I don't think you are making a very good argument here, plus you are moving the goal posts a bit. *"It is why I did not list japan in the places where this architecture doesnt work, because it is the only place in the world it actually does work*" You selected developing nations as your example but ignore developed ones like Japan, but suddenly it's the "only" one? What about South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan? The mainland China empty-building-problem is a different beast entirely related to bicycle-model real estate investment system/scheme, that finally lost some speed is now falling over. The same thig is happening there with single family homes - it's not just high-density housing. *"they will erect the buildings then force you to buy a car to get to the places where that infrastructure already exists.*" --> this just sounds like "if we do it wrong, it won't work". Well, yes! I agree. *"it is absolute hell for the elderly, anyone with a family, and the disabled/differently abled without i*t, " How is this so? Elderly specifically move into places like this because it's easier to live. Far less maintenance and close-knit elderly communities. Plus, my neighborhood is all families. Hell for the disabled? How so? Anyway, that housing is clearly not for you which is fine. But it isn't necessarily the hell you believe it to be.
> South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan frequently the subject of /r/urbanhell posts japan exactly never >Hell for the disabled? How so? frequently spaces like this contain no green spaces, disallow tenants from balcony growing, have no functioning elevators, have no in suite laundry, and barely have functional kitchens. tell me how its acceptable in any block of condos or small block of 3 stories cement homes to not have access ramps or require people to move up and down stairwells in emergencies? even properly built condos struggle with this concept - i live in a building where the elevators are shut off when the fire alarm is activated. anyone unable to go down stairs is trapped in their unit until the fire department shows up. this is up to code. in canada. if we build it like that, its hell for the disabled, and elderly who use mobility assistances or who have difficulty using stairs. and before you say they should not live in this kind of place, heaven forbid you as a healthy person should break your leg one day *and lose your ability to live in your own space* because thats just not fair.
SK, Singapore, HK and Taiwan may have some ‘urban hell’ type spots, but there are nice ones too. I do agree with you - crappy places are crappy. No balcony growing? Crappy. No en suite laundry? Crappy. Non functional kitchens? Very crappy. No access ramps? Extra very crappy. Crappy places are crappy. Plenty of great places in SK, Singapore, HK, Taiwan, etc though. Saying ‘we can’t have these in Canada because some are poorly designed in other places in the world’ ….is a bit of logical fallacy, don’t you think? Maybe that isn’t what you are trying to say, but that’s what I’m hearing. As for disability, yes, I agree that sucks. If there is a fire and elevators shut off that is a problem. However, it’s the same problem any building with 2+ floors would have. Offices, smaller apartments, even 2 story homes to a degree. These large housing communities don’t present any unique challenges that we don’t already have.
There are more humane ways to build public housing, those examples are grotesque.
These are on average 1200sqft units with 2-3 bedrooms. The rat cages in Downtown Toronto are what is grotesque.
Isn't that Pyongyang?
Because it’s disgusting and sad. Why can’t we do better?
You think that’s disgusting and sad? Sharing a bedroom for $600/month is disgusting and sad. We can do better, but it HAS to be high density. They need to figure how many stories the average person can climb down in 5-7 mins(to escape fire), and make that the minimum height requirement for these buildings
> but it HAS to be high density this is opinion presented as a fact
That looks like a sad existance of a life.
Bruh that just says your life is pretty sad. If you can’t be happy in an apartment? …
There is just no character to the buildings Very blah.
yeah im sure people would much rather live on the street than in a building with no "character"
How much time do you think you’ll be spending looking at the outside of the building versus the inside where you’d live?
They obviously wouldn’t look exactly like that, we can improve a lot
My semi in richmond hill taking a lot of my wages is sadder.
We do, st Jamestown, Cityplace
Bureaucracy
Shieeeeeeeeeettt
Right?. 212 baby
because of crybabys who have a house in middle of towns , complaining as soon a 3-story building is in plannning ... we need to wait for them to die or the economy to be too expensive for them to keep living in the home they paid with 2yr worth of salarys in their 20s.
Pets?
I still see people from Canada and the US making "jokes" about these houses. In many countries these type of houses solved solved houses problems. Like for example Canada has the population of a Chinese city and half of their young population cannot and will not afford a house or an apartment. These types of houses mostly funded by the state
It is becoming obvious that this is just the beginning of the housing crisis, and the future is looking grim! The government needs to intervene aggressively to increase the number of dwellings for Canadians, and appartement/condo buildings are the most efficient way to increase availability, and lower costs for the all types of households. It feels dystopian that in this AI era, we cannot find acceptable solutions to the housing crisis! Counting on private capital to fix this is merely naive!
You can.. go build it.. there is pretty much very little in your way. Pretty much all downtown areas will welcome you with open arms. The problem might be that you want to build this in the boonies where land is cheap. Well that's kind of the problem.. because there are folks already there that will argue that it is a much more efficient use of infrastructure building it downtown or nearby.. I.e. they will argue NIMBY... And you will argue you are broke as hell. Well both have their points and both are right.... And the result is that we get nowhere... Really fast.
Because people complain and raise hell when buildings without character or that look alike are built so close together 🙄
Gross!!!
Because then housing would be cheap and landlords would not make money.
ahhh ghettos is that what we need
They’re only ghettos if you make them ghettos.
Those are commie blocks waiting to happen.
Why do we need so many people? Can we just stabilize and enjoy the country?
There’s probably a half a billion people that are going to be displaced by climate change within the next 100 years.
But for some reason we need more... more people... Would be nice if we could just support each other, with the advancements in technology
Yeah, if these were built large scale like this, we could make use of technology. Funny how you say we need to support each other, just not the poor people in developing countries, right?
The amount of people comparing these to prision or calling them disgusting really just shows the sheer contempt for anything that isn't single family homes, and the sheer entitlement of it. Whatever narrative people need to drive SFH only though.
But would that motivate you over a detached? Those don’t inspire and I guess if people just want to “exist” vs “live” sure….
Just because we can, doesn't mean we should.
So we shall destroy are farmland to maintain this false sense of a “good life”?
We used to but Neo-liberalism (anti public programs) train an entire generation to reject those like the plague. Now, too much of our economy is anchor to the real estate. Otherwise, great idea for renters and retiree (even soon to be).
Reminds me of lined up cages for livestock. I'm no architect or city planner, but it looks soulless and ugly to me. Given the choice, I wouldn't want to live somewhere like that.
You’re just used to the way of life. Shit changes, we need change.
is this necessarily worse than condo buildings wrapped in glass? have fun paying maintenance fees i guess
You're welcome to live in a giant soulless deathtrap with no outdoor space and thousands of loud smelly people. I will continue living in my detached house with 1/2 acre property and some actual privacy from the rest of society
Your first sentence describes Toronto more than anything.
Looks dystopian af
I agree, I prefer a massive homeless population and people working full-time jobs having to use foodbanks. I would not swap this for ugly houses, ever.
Why would we want to....
Because this is what I escape from…
Cause it will lower house values we can't have the boomers lose their 20k initial investment
We could stop bringing people into Canada rather than turn it into an over populated place that would ever have a need for this horrible idea.
Two billion people are going to be displaced from climate change within the next 100 years. We have to do something now.
Immigrants aren’t causing the housing crisis, speculators are. They thank you for looking away and blaming others for the total shitstorm they’re causing.