his_dark_magician t1_j7pfdtw wrote
MA hasn’t build enough housing to keep up with increasing population and population density - it’s supply and demand. Across the Commonwealth, there seems to be an acknowledgment that there isn’t enough affordable housing, but many communities have barred themselves from becoming denser (which is also where more of the jobs are). People will always need a place to live, so demand has increased while supply has stagnated to the point of extinction for anyone who doesn’t own a house already.
Jean Jaques Rousseau said that whether one generation supplied the next generation with sufficient housing stock would be the project that made or broke future democracies. The Greatest Generation built and funded housing, schools and lots of other projects for babyboomers. Since reaching maturity, babyboomers have slashed tax revenues, ran up the deficit and mortgaged the biosphere several times over. I personally believe this was at least in part a response to the Civil Rights movement successfully forcing Americans to invest in infrastructure more equitably.
It doesn’t make sense and it’s why Massachusetts lost a seat in the House.
bostonmacosx t1_j7pj90k wrote
New U.S. Census Bureau data released Thursday shows Massachusetts losing more than 7,700 residents from July 2021 to July 2022. That's nearly 14,000 people in the past two years. Massachusetts hit a new milestone of 7 million residents in 2020, only to see numbers decline since then.
Significant_Shake_71 t1_j7qc2cb wrote
And it sadly won’t stop unless there’s a massive overhaul of zoning laws which I highly doubt because of money and influence
bostonmacosx t1_j7qf37v wrote
Downvote central here I go:
I'm out on that....urban sprawl should not be left unchecked....people who like cities great but not everything should be a city......developers are predatory...period...we've done enough damage to our world to just keep paving everything over and saying isn't is lovely...
his_dark_magician t1_j7uzmyo wrote
Urban sprawl is a logical fallacy people tell themselves in order to deny Black people lines of credit to purchase homes. Humans have lived in cities since antiquity - Nubia, Egypt, Sumeri, Indus River, Cararabe, Olmec. Living in a city has a lower ecological impact for a number of reasons but primarily because people live closer together. The less space between your house and mine, the more space for nature to do her thing. Climate change and ecological balance affect everyone because they are a part of the human condition. In order to survive climate change, more people are moving to cities globally. Any policy that doesn’t rationally embrace those trends, is going to swim against a global storm.
bostonmacosx t1_j7v2ocl wrote
Cities account for over 70% of global CO2 emissions, most of which come from industrial and motorized transport systems that use huge quantities of fossil fuels and rely on far-flung infrastructure constructed with carbon-intensive materials.
his_dark_magician t1_j7whxig wrote
Yeah, because more humans live in cities than rural areas definitionally, so of course the environmental consequences for human life are greater. The one depends on the other.
Any serious policy to help humans generally or Americans specifically live a carbon-neutral, ecologically sustainable way of life needs to account for how people live right now. That’s the starting point to an effective policy.
If your plan is for Americans who lives in cities to become nomadic herbivores who ride draft animals, that’s a serious change from our current way of life. Would we have grazing rights? What about right of ways for our noble steeds?
The reality is that many rural areas are desertifying and other rural areas have barred themselves from developing further, so the options on the table are die or move to a city. People are pretty resourceful and open-minded when the alternative is “or death.” Eddie Izzard said it better.
closerocks t1_j7qq9ok wrote
I agree that urban sprawl and all of its secondary effects such as light and air pollution, should be constrained. At the same time, urban apartments can never be cheap enough to make it worth living there and a public transit only environment would make it hard to escape cities.
3720-To-One t1_j83y1hy wrote
You realize that per capita, cities are far less polluting than suburban sprawl?
closerocks t1_j7qnpsr wrote
Nothing stopping you from forming an LLC with the purpose of developing dense housing. Get some investors, some lawyers and start building
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