• @A_Random_Idiot
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    3 hours ago

    But that runs counter to my need as a developer to bulldoze the entire area, build mcmansions 6 inches apart from eachother and at the barest mimimum of code (and perhaps even lower with a $$friendly$$ inspector), and then plant like a grand total of 5 trees that wont survive the first year.

    Oh, and also pave everything over. Gotta pave everything over. No one wants green space! /s

    • @MintyFresh
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      123 seconds ago

      When I was first committing to my no automobile lifestyle, one of the first things that struck me was the pavement. Fucking everywhere.

      Next time your about town , take a mental picture. Then subtract the parking lots. The huge road. Put the buildings closer together. Make a nice bikelane, something just wide enough to get a fire engine down. Plant some trees. Pretty nice right?

      Instead we have salted earth. It really is just rude to the earth. Fuck your car!

  • @GoofSchmoofer
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    187 hours ago

    The best part about this is that this will give blackrock more homes to purchase with cash to the rent out to people at ridiculous prices. /s

    Sorry, I’ve become way to cynical these days about virtually everything, I need to go touch grass.

  • Krik
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    2610 hours ago

    Why building something on it instead of converting it into a park? People love green stuff, you know.

    • @FooBarrington
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      179 hours ago

      Why does it need to be a dedicated park? They’re not proposing getting rid of all the green stuff. Even better than having green stuff some distance away is living in the middle of the green stuff.

      • Krik
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        449 minutes ago

        Look at the picture. There’ll be not much green left. They’ll only leave the trees alone and based on the figure of 40 000 new residents the buildings will be taller than the trees. I don’t think that is great.

        Cities are more livable when there are parks every few blocks. I mean big ones, at least half a mile long. People need nature, not a tree here and there.

      • The_Caretaker
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        87 hours ago

        @FooBarrington @Krik
        Close the asphalt streets. Rip them up and plant trees and grass. A 9 foot wide pathway for pedestrians and bicycles in the middle. Subways and streetcars to transport people from one green belt to the next one road with access for emergency vehicles, public service vehicles and deliveries circling every 9 square blocks.

        • Krik
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          156 minutes ago

          Interesting idea. I’m not sure if that works everywhere but it’s a start. :)

    • @[email protected]
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      39 hours ago

      Why building something on it instead of converting it into a park?

      Because rich people need money to build a bigger golf course somewhere else

  • Sʏʟᴇɴᴄᴇ
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    3313 hours ago

    Not sure how it works in the US but here in Oz (where water scarcity is always present in our collective psyche) golf courses are usually placed on flood plains where it would be dangerous/too expensive to build housing. In addition most allow people to walk through them and many even allow dog walkers so they have quite a lot of public amenity.

    I would still prefer if they were just designated as public parks rather than having huge swathes of grass that needed frequent watering, but they’re not nearly as bad as most make them out to be.

    • @Agent641
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      6 hours ago

      Public golf courses are one of the best things about Oz. They provide a forest island for birds and mammals among the suburbs. Many golf courses have large swathes of natural bushland around them. They are often run by the local council, and are hence not for profit, and generally they are very cheap to play.

      They make most of their money via selling beer and expensive golf clubs.

      Turn them over to property developers, and they’ll pave it with cheaply built single dwelling houses and flog them for way too much money resulting in just more urban desert and padded the obese wallets of billionaires.

      That’s if they are even build able. Some areas on floodplains and marshes that serve as a local soak for stormwater, hence the water hazards. Some are built on landfills that contain mu icipal waste or even asbestos, hence you can’t risk putting houses on them where someone might dig up the asbestos or waste. Turning them into a revenue-generating forest parkland is one of the few good things you can do with that land.

      The revenue earned by the golf course that is used to offset local parks and recs costs would otherwise be gained by taxing the local residents through land rates.

      I used to hate on them a lot before I learned that the economics of public courses is way different to that of private ones. There are still some private courses, and I wouldn’t be opposed to these being taken back into public hands and/or converted into affordable housing. To the gallows with the greedy exclusive fucktillionaires.

    • @[email protected]
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      2012 hours ago

      Yeah, here in the US, golf courses can be extremely wasteful. There’s two golf courses on my drive into the city, one is on a river floodplain, the other is a HOA golf course full of sprinklers that could absolutely be more housing. If I go the other way, there’s another HOA golf course that could be housing too. So, to start with, there’s three golf courses in a 15km radius.

      One of the HOA ones is exclusive access to the surrounding retirement community, the other HOA one doesn’t have a fence or anything, but idk if they chase people off. The one on the floodplain you have to pay to access the grounds.

    • @[email protected]
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      710 hours ago

      In Germany most courses only have a few public walkways and if you leave them security will escort you right out

  • stebo
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    1111 hours ago

    but then where should the rich people go golfing?

  • @[email protected]
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    -65 hours ago

    What are all those stupid shapes, and why does it look like there about 3 feet between each one?

    • @[email protected]
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      34 hours ago

      Looks like normal European four-story buildings. I live in one with some strange corners. No Problem with them.

    • @[email protected]
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      34 hours ago

      There’s no reason cities have to be boring squares. And those shapes could preserve the most trees.

      • @[email protected]
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        04 hours ago

        There’s a reason houses aren’t shaped really oddly. Also a reason there’s more space between them.

        • @[email protected]
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          4 hours ago

          Compare the space between them to the space between the blocks that exist. There’s way more space.

          Also, do tell what the reason is besides it just being cheaper to build on empty land? If this isn’t meant to be a car centric neighbourhood, you really don’t need everything to be straight.

  • @karpintero
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    16320 hours ago

    Let’s also get rid of golf courses in arid deserts in the midst of droughts

    • @PugJesusOP
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      13920 hours ago

      You had me at “Let’s get rid of golf courses”

      • mosiacmango
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        19 hours ago

        This is a municipal course as well, so Seattle could literally do this. The city government doesn’t want to.

        This heavily neglected sidewalk, next to the fenced off golf course, alongside a high speed and very busy highway onramp just 2 blocks from a light rail stop, tells you just how much the city cares about the area.

        There is no excuse not to cleanup and widen this sidewalk except apathy and malaise from the city.

          • @Soup
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            1118 hours ago

            A fairly generic lady and that’s what you took from that guy’s comment?

            • SatansMaggotyCumFart
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              123 minutes ago

              There’s nothing generic about that lady in fact that’s a pretty cruel thing to say about someone.

  • @urata
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    3617 hours ago

    I work at a golf course and I’d rather be doing something meaningful like building homes so this post speaks to me directly.

    Unfortunately the big thing lately is we’ve been dropping a bunch of trees.

  • @[email protected]
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    8719 hours ago

    You’re probably not going to save 95% of the trees given the major earthworks likely needed for managing sewage, stormwater, and other utilities. You’ll probably save most of them, though.

    40k looks pretty optimistic for the size and number of buildings, too.

    • @[email protected]
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      19 hours ago

      I don’t know if it’s the same in USA but with all these new regulations building houses these days is an environmental disaster

    • @[email protected]
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      1417 hours ago

      probably not going to save 95% of the trees

      I was wondering that too… maybe they meant: plant new trees, and the total number of new trees would be 95% of the number of old trees?

      • @[email protected]
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        3016 hours ago

        I’m guessing they’re just not aware of construction impacts on trees. It’s not something most people think about.

        • @PugJesusOP
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          2516 hours ago

          I supposed they meant “And this amount of space is still available for greenery” rather than “These, specific, trees will be preserved”

    • @[email protected]
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      17 hours ago

      Depends how many floors they have but yeah, that would be quite high density at 60k/km²

  • @pHr34kY
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    18 hours ago

    That area should hold about 400 people, not 40,000. The trees won’t survive unless they can see the sky.

    • Polygondenimland
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      47 hours ago

      In the United States of America, the average lot size for a single-family home is 0.19 acres (which is equivalent to 8,176 square feet). This math means that around 5 average-sized single-family homes can fit into one acre of land.

      (Source)

      So even if we’re talking regular single-family homes you can already build 800.

      Many trees do very well in the shade, as long as their crowns get sun part of the day. Leave some room between buildings and you can easily build 4-6 stories tall and still have trees in between. You can easily fit 20 apartments per acre that way. That’s about 3200 apartments. With 3 people per household that’s close to 10k people.

      I agree 40k is optimistic, but 400 is way pessimistic

  • @[email protected]
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    3119 hours ago

    If you just repurpose for housing you just wind up with 40,000 people needing transit and overloading the system you’re trying to promote.

    We need to think beyond housing and towards having communities that largely provide the needs of the people living with them. Shops, offices, other non-office/shop jobs, and recreational activities need to be considered as well.

    • @MisterFrog
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      27 hours ago

      The neat part is that businesses can be in the bottom couple of floors. Though often this doesn’t seem to be done unless it’s the CBD…