Spain lives in flats: why we have built our cities vertically

https://especiales.eldiario.es/spain-lives-in-flats/

by altilunium • 3 years ago

496 436 3 years ago

especiales.eldiario.es

ttfkam• 3 years ago

Love the visualizations.

unwind• 3 years ago

Yes, it was very beautiful.

As someone up in the dark pre-wintery Sweden, it would have been awesome with some floating photos of each neighborhood too, to convey the feel of each a bit better.

The 3D maps were initially very impressive, but photos would have made the various housing forms come to life even more, at least for me.

digitalsushi• 3 years ago

I agree it would have been more immersive but I believe real photos would distract from the information they were conveying; their use of color coded building shapes was an easy way for me to follow along with the points their graphs were making. This presentation made me feel like I was walking into a dark corridor of a new science museum and feeling captivation

whalesalad6• 3 years ago

Different strokes for different folks. I’m a very happy single family home dweller. Living in a dense city feels claustrophobic.

capableweb3• 3 years ago

Indeed :) Living too far away from any metropolitan area makes me feel claustrophobic as there is usually very little social groups active in my favorite hobbies/niches unless near a city.

jansan• 3 years ago

You really should look up the meaning of "claustrophobia"

anonzzzies• 3 years ago

Indeed. I'm very happy I can live in a large house with a lot of land for next to nothing. Please all stay in cities, but don't complain about the housing crisis and housing prices; it's quite obvious that if you want to all live together prices will rise.

bitwize• 3 years ago

The Anglosphere is more car dependent and more prone to NIMBY policies and housing shortages than continental Europe, because continental Europeans are more comfortable with density. Density is the solution to many land management problems.

galangalalgol3• 3 years ago

I would love to read more on that. It would also be interesting to look at the places in former english colonies that do have higher residential buildings to see if continental immigration there might have been involved. It sounds like spain had a brief love affair with sprawl as well. Perhaps some of it is just that when the population boom arrived for the US sprawl was in style and we had the room?

dotcoma2• 3 years ago

Yes, but they got many things right in the Netherlands even with an incredibly low percentage of people living in flats.

Bikes, not cars, please.

bluescrn• 3 years ago

It's not about being 'comfortable with density', it's about having a society where neighbours respect each other, behave decently, and keep noise/mess under control, don't keep setting the fire alarm off, etc.

The noise problem isn't limited to loud music and parties, just the noise of kids playing loudly and running around in communal areas can become infuriating to neighbours.

Even if you've got good neighbours, there's other downsides with flats - a lack of parking/EV charging, often nowhere to safely store a bicycle even. No space to install personal 'green tech' such as solar or a heat pump. No garage/shed to store tools/bikes/hobby equipment.

jeffbee3• 3 years ago

I suggest that the cause of the anglosphere housing crisis is a shared legal system, which sucks, and which is not practiced by anyone else.

schnitzelstoat• 3 years ago

Spain also has a housing crisis though.

jbellis• 3 years ago

OTOH continental Europe seems to be more prone to try to solve housing affordability with rent control, which basically results in NIMBY through the perverse incentives it imposes.

alphanullmeric3• 3 years ago

Nice way of saying your proposed transportation system doesn’t work without forcing people to live in cities.

mardifoufs• 3 years ago

No, we just hear more about the anglosphere's problems because... we sadly live in an anglosphere obsessed world :). English being the dominant language means that we all hear about their problems but it's harder to internationally hear about say, France's problems.

jeffbee3• 3 years ago

Everyone on the receiving end of a tacit subsidy is pretty happy about it.

whalesalad6• 3 years ago

not sure what this means

bigbacaloa• 3 years ago

Living in a single family home may be nice, but it's resource inefficient to the point of wasteful. Among the resources wasted are energetic and spatial resources. There is a reason per capita energy consumption in the US dwarfs that in other countries. The society bears a huge cost for the individual decision to live alone.

rsynnott5• 3 years ago

Yes, takes all sorts, and probably a lot of it comes down to what you're used to. Paradoxically I find being down the country claustrophobic; in truly rural areas (and in places with particularly poor provision for pedestrians, like most of the US, this often manifests even in outer suburbs) you can't really get anywhere without driving, and you may not be able to leave your house at all without driving (probably no footpath, narrow unsafe road).

I'd never consider living somewhere where I couldn't, at minimum, walk to supermarkets, bars, restaurants, parks, etc.

nerdbert• 3 years ago

Same here. If I can't walk to things I want to do and people I want to see, I feel like a prisoner.

stetrain3• 3 years ago

More dense construction in urban areas will probably help make single family homes affordable for those who want them.

I imagine people who own single family homes in nice suburbs are pretty happy about it, especially if they bought it when prices were half of what they are currently and are paying <3% interest.

Axsuul• 3 years ago

More dense construction in urban areas will probably help make single family homes affordable for those who want them.

Probably the opposite effect for SFHs in the urban areas. People usually prefer living in a detached house, especially when raising a family, and those are gradually being replaced by these multi-family dwellings, so the supply of them is actually going down.

jjav12• 3 years ago

More dense construction in urban areas will probably help make single family homes affordable for those who want them.

That seems highly unlikely. Let's look at how SFH have become very affordable in the densest area in the US, Manhattan. Or the second densest, SF.

matsemann3• 3 years ago

I feel being trapped in a suburb more claustrophobic. Can't walk anywhere, entirely car dependant for even the smallest things.

stronglikedan• 3 years ago

Same. I grew up in a house, but I've lived in apartments and buildings in the city. When it came time to buy, I bought a house. I can't ever see myself not living in a house ever again.

mupuff12342• 3 years ago

Have you ever lived in a city?

There's also a pretty big variance between a European city for example which usually doesn't have very tall high rises, and living in midtown Manhattan.

whalesalad6• 3 years ago

Yep - SF and Honolulu were frustrating places to live. Waiting for elevators. Shared laundry spaces. No privacy. Noisy neighbors. Noisy parking garages. Noisy street traffic.

I spent 6 months in Sweden and have traveled to a handful of other European countries.

The quiet suburban/rural life is for me. After growing up in LA, bouncing around SF, DC and HNL I have settled in Michigan and really enjoy it here. Plenty of room, not very congested, progressive policies. Life is good (albeit sometimes very cold)

j_heffe• 3 years ago

Single family homes are fine. The problem in the U.S. is that it's illegal to build anything _but_ single family homes in the majority of suburbs. Wouldn't it be better if people had access to a walkable grocery store, coffee shop or park? Or if kids could safely walk or bike to school? Many communities have absolutely zero options and are completely reliant on cars in order to go about daily life.

bluGill12• 3 years ago

Most suburbs also have higher density zones where you can have apartments. The single family homes get the majority of the land space, but there are also apartments and townhouses which are more dense.

jjav12• 3 years ago

The problem in the U.S. is that it's illegal to build anything _but_ single family homes in the majority of suburbs.

This is always repeated, but could you point to studies documenting in which cities it is illegal? All around I see townhouses, apartment buildings, 2/4/6-plexes and other variants being built, none of which are single family homes. Maybe it takes a bunch of paperwork (I don't know) but clearly it isn't illegal.

Wouldn't it be better if people had access to a walkable grocery store, coffee shop or park? Or if kids could safely walk or bike to school?

This is a false dichotomy. One can also live in a SFH and walk/bike to all of these things and more. I do, and I do, so does my kid.

SkeuomorphicBee• 3 years ago

Different strokes indeed. As a very happy apartment/flat/condo dweller, the suburban home life feels to me like being trapped in a tiny deserted island (the cartoon ones, with a single coconut tree), just a tiny personal plot surrounded by endless nothingness, with nowhere to go within reach. When in the suburbs I end up just staying in the couch all the time, because I can't be bothered to face the big journey necessary to go places, feels very isolating.

whalesalad6• 3 years ago

just a tiny personal plot surrounded by endless nothingness

Truthfully this is the dream.

jjav12• 3 years ago

As a very happy apartment/flat/condo dweller, the suburban home life feels to me like being trapped in a tiny deserted island (the cartoon ones, with a single coconut tree), just a tiny personal plot surrounded by endless nothingness, with nowhere to go within reach. When in the suburbs I end up just staying in the couch all the time, because I can't be bothered to face the big journey necessary to go places, feels very isolating.

This sounds like a cartoon version of suburbs! Can you point at actual suburbs (google map links) where you might be surrounded by endless nothingness and can't walk anywhere?

I've lived most of my life in suburbs in the US and have never experienced this. The only time I lived in a place I couldn't walk to any destination was when I lived in a quite rural area. But that was rural, not suburban.

RicDan• 3 years ago

Great way to tell a story and bring data closer to the reader. Educational pages could learn a thing or two from this one.

lelima• 3 years ago

Great point, imagine learning about Roman history and some 3d models of the Roman cities pops up.

Work environment have changed so much in the latest years and I feel school remained the same. Last week a young family member asked what does excel do? and she's about to enter college, and we're talking about Ireland that it supposed to have a good school system

pantulis2• 3 years ago

Spaniard here, I expected to see an infographic basically based around Madrid and Barcelona but it seems that special care has been taken to cover the whole country, kudos to El Diario team.

serial_dev• 3 years ago

One thing that annoyed me is that I constantly had to pause and Google all the locations. They really could have put some images about the different places and buildings so that it's easier to imagine what they were talking about.

... and I think I'm about to throw up, but that's a smaller issue, I take one for the team to encourage creative web development.

causality0• 3 years ago

Always interesting to me that the Spanish get a special demonym. I am American and also an American, but a Spanish person is a Spaniard.

lsllc• 3 years ago

No need to feel left out, in Spanish you're a Estadounidense.

https://www.quora.com/What-does-estadounidense-mean-in-Spani...

huytersd3• 3 years ago

What would the standard demonym be here? Spainian? Spainese? Seems like the British, French and Polish also get unique ones.

coldcode• 3 years ago

Great analysis. I wonder if Spanish town planners have different powers than we do in the US. Town layouts are generally historical, you get to today by the sum of decisions potentially made decades or centuries or even millennia ago. It's very difficult to change a town layout drastically.

bertil3• 3 years ago

Powers are comparable, but people’s expectations are dramatically different for many reasons:

* Climate: a shaded courtyard is pretty much necessary given the weather, for instance;

* History: not only most city centers in Spain were built in the Middle Ages, but they were also built in the Arabic tradition of having fountains, slated blinds;

* Economic: Spain grew economically a bit later than the US and the rest of Europe: 1980 rather than 1960, they had a similar wave of car adoption, but a decade after rebuilding the country after the Spanish war.

* Ecology: most of the country is pretty arid: there are beautiful vistas, but it’s not the place where one wants to stay out, baking in the sun, as much.

Spaniards want to be outside, but not in a sea of green grass. They much prefer a table in the shade.

anthk9• 3 years ago

Not all Spain has a Mediterranean climate.

cracrecry• 3 years ago

Spaniards want to be outside, but not in a sea of green grass. They much prefer a table in the shade.

If you want to talk about Spain, you need to live in Spain ALL YEAR long, not just the summer.

Almost the entire country but the north(in the north it rains in summer) is arid in Summer, because of the Azores' anticyclone, three or two months, depending on the place, but the rest of the year it rains.

Also the arid place is Murcia and Almería, some part of Alicante and Monegros. There is a lot of rain in Extremadura, or places near the Ocean, like Galicia, Asturias, Pirineos, Huelva.

In august you are going to see anything yellow, but it gets green in Autumn, Winter and Spring.

That is, 9 to 10 months a year it rains. There is sun too and it is a good thing because it is cold, specially inside. Madrid is very sunny and cold in Winter so the sun is great.

I was born in Spain, I live and work in Central Europe but I go to Spain in the Winter as it is a much better Winter there. In Central Europe anything is burned by the cold and then you have snow everywhere.

So it is actually much more green Spain in Winter than in most of Europe.

capableweb3• 3 years ago

Very nice visualization, bit slow animations but overall it was informative and looked well!

It seems they're getting the data from the catastral (official goverment data), I wonder how accurate this is? Not sure how it is in other cities around in Spain, but in Barcelona there are a ton of illegal atticos and other addons to buildings, which would add more height to the building in real life compared to the visualization.

After a quick look, I could see at least two buildings I know are taller than what the visualization says (the building next door is the same height in the visualization, but has one more floor when you see the building in real-life).

vanderZwan• 3 years ago

I wonder if Barcelona's "ventilation-oriented" architecture from the cholera period had a measurable effect on the spread of covid. Of course the article itself notes that a lot of the architecture was "speculative", and that modern-day Barcelona is very densely populated, but still.

IIRC Spain was also one of the first countries during the pandemic to publish research on the importance of keeping rooms well-ventilated, so now I'm wondering if there is a connection to history there (meaning: more likely to look at the importance of ventilation due to cultural history).

jvican2• 3 years ago

Keep in mind Barcelona and Madrid are some of the densest cities in the whole Europe. It's one of the reasons why COVID took such a big hit at the beginning of the pandemic.

pjerem• 3 years ago

Barcelona is pretty aerial though. I’ve been there twice in my life and I’m very impressed by its original urbanism. At first sight by looking at a map it looks really American inspired but once you dig a little, it’s in fact a unique "modular" urbanism (of course I’m not talking about the historical city center, that’s another interesting topic).

What amazed me is how that city manages to be so densely populated but is designed so you never feel packed. My only "complaint" would be that there could be more trees but there were still more than in most French cities (which I’m from) so …

flagged24• 3 years ago

I'm okay with these high rises so I can enjoy the quiet tranquility of rural Spain. Everytime we do stay in an apartment in Spain the lack of sound proofing really stands out. Perhaps even more so because everything is tiled, no carpets.

bedobi• 3 years ago

was gonna comment the same :melting face: I'm an armchair urbanist and all about density, and in well built buildings it's fine, even with tiled floors you can't really hear your neighbors

but in Spain it's as if the buildings are built with zero soundproofing - you hear every single neighbor in the whole building and their tvs, radios, conversations, footsteps... it's maddening, I don't understand it

galangalalgol3• 3 years ago

Noise is the largest complaint my spouse has with dense buildings. I tune things out easily, but I also found myself self conscious about walking softly when I lived above people.

randsp• 3 years ago

I can confirm this. I am from Spain and I have lived in a few cities all around the country and the lack of soundproofing in every building is a common thing, regardless of town or area, it seems like all buildings from 1970 were built ignoring any sound proof.

pja3• 3 years ago

The Spanish just don’t seem to care about noise at the institutional level. I spent a week in a small Spanish city last year & the local rubbish collection went down the street outside the door, pouring bins full of bottles from the local bars in the back at midnight. Midnight! Just when even the Spanish are trying to get to sleep.

Co-incidentally, there was an article in the Spanish national press that week detailing all the ways in which noise in Spanish cities was deleterious to health & wellbeing and asking why no-one ever did anything about it. Constant noise just seems to be accepted as being an inevitable part of life, rather than something to be fixed.

Maken2• 3 years ago

Noise is not the biggest problem: Cheap apartment buildings from the 60s and 70s has such thin walls what they have no thermal isolation whatsoever. In poor neighborhoods you will see air conditioner machines everywhere because there is no other way to keep the flats livable.

outside1234• 3 years ago

The Spanish love the noise is my theory. They are a very social people. They probably think of it as comforting versus annoying, and like the person that lives next to the waterfall that can't hear it, it probably fades into the background of their consciousness.

(I lived in Spain for two years.)

LegitShady• 3 years ago

it's maddening, I don't understand it

Costs less to build, sells for the same money, more profit made.

Tade05• 3 years ago

As someone who grew up in a commie block, I think density over a certain point just sucks.

Cities in southern Europe are generally denser than what the communists built and to me this is simply too much.

I remember staying in Bilbao and the garbage truck waking me up on each garbage day because its sound bounced back and forth between the walls and some genius thought it would be a good idea to have it do its run during the night.

Meanwhile back at home if it weren't for a construction site that propped up recently there would have been at least 70 meters to the building next to mine.

Havoc• 3 years ago

Possibly also cultural. Noticed that some cultures tend to talk louder.

brvsft• 3 years ago

One time when I was younger, my mom was talking to my grandmother on the phone, in Spanish. I could hear my grandmother on the other end too. They're both yelling. No idea what they were talking about, but I had to ask, something to the effect of, "Mom, are you angry? Why are you and grandma yelling?"

Nope, nothing was wrong. That's just how they talk to each other in Spanish. Weird. It also never occurred to me why I didn't notice until whatever age I was, a teenager in high school. It never really occurred to me that they were always 'yelling' while talking to each other until that moment.

There is the possibility that they really were upset and yelling, but my mother didn't often keep things from me (at least not as far as I know). I also noticed the yelling afterwards, so I'm confident that was me simply realizing that's how they talked after years of not noticing.

mathieuh• 3 years ago

I live in northern ireland in an actual house and the walls are thin enough I could dip my bread into my neighbours' soup.

It is the number one reason I could never see myself living in an apartment, I'm very sensitive to noise and I get disproportionately angry at even low levels of unwanted noise. I'd be too worried about noise from neighbours.

matsemann3• 3 years ago

I live in a modern apartment in Norway (2019). I guess some of our heat insulation demands make it so that we get extra thick walls and floors, but I've never heard any noise from neighbors. No tv sounds, no stamping feet etc. Maybe twice a year someone drills a hole to mount something on the walls and I hear that for a few minutes. Even have a train passing by outside I can't hear with the windows closed.

Point being that it depends.

Edit: modern fire safety also dictates a bit how contained each unit should be, I guess.

browningstreet2• 3 years ago

I live in northern Nevada in an exurb. I go for a walk everyday that requires me to go on a road for half a mile before I get to the dirt path. On that half mile road the traffic is so constant and so loud (from my small gated community) I can’t hear whatever I’m listening to on my headphones. The clamor is so aggravating I’m usually a bit angry by the time I hit the dirt path. My exurb neighbors (multiple) have loud grinding ACs and they run them all night. I can’t leave my windows open while I sleep even when it’s in the 50s outside, because of their grinding noise.

I recently walked about 20 miles back in SF again. It was comparatively pleasant. Road traffic was slower. The materials they use to make the roads reflect less of the sound than here in Nevada. I wasn’t triggered by vehicles or traffic or trucks. I stayed in the Panhandle and could sleep with the bedroom window open.

There’s a way to make heaven or hell in both cities and rural areas.

torton• 3 years ago

Construction methods and quality vary a lot. Older concrete and brick multistory apartment buildings generally have excellent soundproofing. Wooden apartment buildings, like five-over-one or 3-4 story all wood apartment buildings, not so much. Low rise wooden hotels, built as cheaply as possible, are at the lower limit of “I can know exactly what my neighbours are doing if I pay attention”.

sampo• 3 years ago

I live in Finland in a modern apartment building. Walls have good sound insulation, and triple pane windows insulate for both heat and sound. I am next to a busy road, but can not hear it inside, unless I open some windows.

mocha_nate• 3 years ago

I could dip my bread into my neighbours' soup.

What an expression. I love that

xivzgrev• 3 years ago

Me too! Do you ever hear music from neighbors that goes on for hours? But the problem is, it’s not so loud that they’re having a party and you can complain. No, it’s just loud enough to hear, but not loud enough to record or for others to easily hear.

I had one set of neighbors who fell into this range for about a year. I suspect their place was sparse, I could even hear them push their chair out from dining table. I felt happy when they moved out!

arethuza2• 3 years ago

I lived in flats in the New Town of Edinburgh (i.e. fairly old buildings) for ~30 years and never heard a sound from neighbours - probably because the walls appeared to be ~1m thick sandstone!

JCharante• 3 years ago

I’ve lived in multiple modern apartments and never heard my neighbors. One time I did hear someone playing music loudly, but my watch measured it at 35dB

jmartrican• 3 years ago

I thought you were going to say, "I live in northern Ireland, and I can hear Spain from there."

gyre007• 3 years ago

I want to second this. Living in flats sounds cute for most of the people who never lived in ones that are being built with cheap materials and thin walls. It's all nice and dandy until a sill neighbour moves in and then you've got nowhere to hide.

anotherhue• 3 years ago

Had that in Dublin, moved to NYC in a modern building in the freaking centre of the city and it's remarkably quiet.

Shitty construction hurts.

hzay• 3 years ago

I get disproportionately angry at even low levels of unwanted noise.

I also suffer from this problem. Is there a name for this?

s_dev• 3 years ago

I live in an apartment in Dublin -- noise is not a problem for me. I'll concede there is a bias in Ireland against apartments. I suspect it's because of the perception that 'flats' are either like the Ballymun flats or Luxury apartments no one can afford with little room in between.

It's a real shame this bias exists in Ireland it really does little to help the housing crisis or the egregious amount of one off housing in rural Ireland does little to help infrastructure connections.

Arctic_fly• 3 years ago

Same. I try to rent exclusively on the top-floor (next to impossible in a big city) because of a memorable experience I had with a an overweight upstairs neighbor who favored jumping jacks as his primary form of exercise.

ska3• 3 years ago

This really depends on the build.

I have lived/stayed in places in the middle of dense urban areas where you essentially never hear anything (occasionally sirens if the windows are open, that sort of thing), and others where you can tell when your neighbor is stirring tea.

One of the factors is cost, yes, but also age of the building and materials/techniques matter. I suppose it also matters if any of your neighbors are 23 and like powerful stereos - but that holds pretty much anywhere that isn't very rural.

Oh, and in dense urban/busy areas, height matters too. Living on the first 5 floors is far different than say 15+, in terms of how much street noise etc. you will hear with an open window (or even without).

throwaway8877• 3 years ago

Nowhere else I have seen a conversation to constantly erupt between total strangers than in Spain. They just can't. So I can imagine that this constant involvement in the lives of others might be not a problem for them.

NikolaNovak• 3 years ago

That's fascinating! I've lived in apartments or condos most of my life and it just wasn't an issue. Possibly structural, possibly cultural - people tended to live a quiet life, unless you were unfortunate and got a real party neighbour. I live in a house right now and in some ways my life is louder (closer to the loud streets, neighbour's barking dogs and lawnmower and snowblower machines and constant little constructions etc).

astronads• 3 years ago

There’s evidence that constant unwanted noise can negatively impact our health: https://archive.ph/5mvYQ (nytimes)

I don’t mind visiting cities, but I certainly would never live in one.

rickydroll• 3 years ago

When I live in rural low noise areas bp is 125/75 range. high noise areas bp is 155/105 range. BP drugs only drop it a little.

Unfortunately just bought a house in a rush hour high noise area. wife loved in the house, I loved the visible sky, and we both loved the yard/garden. we saw it on a Sunday (very quiet day. :) Now I have a hard time being outside or taking my scope out for observing.

Waiting for a stroke or kidney failure from the high BP.

dijit• 3 years ago

Cities aren't loud.

Cars are loud.[0]

I live in Malmö on the southern edge of Sweden opposite Copenhagen, it's quieter here (pop: 350,000~) than my friends home village in Northamptonshire (Thrapston; pop: 6,239 as of 2011).

This was largely because of the sheer volume of cars on the road, because you essentially have to drive to get anywhere. London is similar, despite not everyone needing a car there is traffic everywhere, you can notice that there's back streets and they tend to be very quiet until there are lots and lots of people, think >200 in a 100sqm area.

Having the ability to escape noise is the most important part of noise management. Cities like London have almost no respite from the noise and thus it can be physically draining for many people to experience it. Including myself.

[0] https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8

prmoustache9• 3 years ago

Only badly made cities, where authorities do not care about noise, are loud. And the irony is that most of the noise comes from people living outside of the cities, bringin their cars outside in the typical egoism of the modern suburbanite and rural inhabitants.

It is like people who complain about public teansports who are usually the ones actively participating in ruining it for everyone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8

treespace8• 3 years ago

I feel that's why many people, especially families prefer detached homes. Sound proofing is guaranteed by the air gap. And if there is a problem with soundproofing you can solve it yourself by making changes.

Perhaps row houses are best? Good density, and with a solid concrete wall seperating units to stop sound and fire from spreading?

Scoundreller• 3 years ago

Dunno about Spain, but in France, a relative in a ?9 story building basically gutted their place.

Unlike North American condos, in France they own their windows and can replace them.

They also built out a “frame” to install noise insulation on top of the shared walls, losing a bit of interior space (and a huge free bonus to the neighbours). Can’t remember if they did the ceiling too.

Unfortunately, no flooring standards are an issue. In my Canadian condo, if you redo the floors, there’s some noise insulating requirement for your choice of flooring as it’s against concrete.

rsynnott5• 3 years ago

Only in South Korea more people live in collective dwellings than in Spain.

I... have doubts.

(Looks like they're only looking at OECD countries, so Singapore and HK, the most obvious counter-examples, are excluded.)

alephnerd• 3 years ago

Singapore and HK are outliers in general as they're city states (and the latter won't be a separate government in 23 years anyhow).

Also by OECD standards it definetly tracks.

bertil3• 3 years ago

I’m tempted to think that the author saw those two examples (and Monaco) as cities more than countries, which, for an analysis of urban density makes sense. That would be like excluding the Vatican from an analysis of immigration.

rsynnott5• 3 years ago

Ah, yeah, I think it's fair enough to leave them out; they're very much special cases.

hbarka• 3 years ago

I agree with you. Also, comparing by countries is intuitively not a good measure due to the averaging out of highs and lows. It would be absurd to compare Spain versus Alaska or Texas but these are two US states larger than Spain. How about comparing by cities? How does Madrid fare versus New York City or Chicago or Hong Kong?

rsynnott5• 3 years ago

You then get into messy definitional stuff; what's a city, anyway? :)

dghughes• 3 years ago

Population is one thing but density of people per sq km is another. For these cities people must be crammed into apartments I can't imagine that density would mean people are in single homes.

Mumbai India pop. 23,355,000 density 24,740

Hong Kong Hong Kong pop. 7,347,000 density 25,254

Dhaka Bangladesh pop. 15,443,000 density 33,852

Density is almost a pun "dense city"

medo-bear2• 3 years ago

One of the worst things about new development in post-socialist urban areas (high density vertical) are lack of public and green spaces in neighbourhoods.

thriftwy• 3 years ago

Socialist housing has schools and kindergardens on large plots of land, lots of kids playgrounds between houses, a small park here and there. "Microraion" planning deprioritizes public road so every apartment house is a part of a superblock a-la Barcelona.

The downside is often that places of commerce are lacking. They have to be built separately or have first floors repurposed for commerce. I've heard that capital city of Brasilia had this problem too.

medo-bear2• 3 years ago

Precisely. Yugoslavia had plenty of commercial places planned. So much so that even today many of these commercial spaces remain empty. A good example of what I mean is 'New Belgrade' in Belgrade and 'Split 3' in Split.

rambambram• 3 years ago

One of the first websites with all kinds of Apple-like scrolling effects that doesn't slow down the scrolling experience. I'm on a RPi4 by the way. Good job of the dev!

jmyeet• 3 years ago

Americans have a very skweed view of what apartment living is actually like, in part because the construction of such buildings in America (outside of the ultra-luxury market) is generally terrible.

Lumber is abundant in North America and cheap so everything is timber-framed, which is awful for noise. I actually do not understand how people can live in two-story houses in the US. Such people complaining about noise seems crazy to me. Only drywall separating rooms. Only a plank between floors pretty much. Awful.

Anyway, a lot of apartments in the US are what's called 5-over-1 construction. That's 1 concrete framed floor, often commercial and then 5 floors of timber-framed apartments above that. Terrible.

Live in a decently built apartment and it's a completely different world. Actual high-rises tend to be decent because they have to be concrete and steel framed (although they may have cheap walls). Any pre-war apartments in NYC are generally amazing.

It's also worth pointing out that complaining about noise and wanting things to be quiet isn't universal. Whenever you hear such complaints, make a mental note of their demographics and see what patterns you notice.

ernestrc• 3 years ago

Spaniard living in the US here. I grew up in apartment complexes and don’t ever remember worrying about noise. I think there’s definitely a component of just being used to it. Agree with your point on construction materials in the US, in relation to noise levels: the only time in my life that I was bothered by my loud neighbors was when I lived in a multi-family home unit in San Mateo, CA. It was a 4-unit home and I could literally hear all my neighbors whereabouts 24/7.

bluGill12• 3 years ago

You have a very incorrect build of what modern American construction is like. Yes it is mostly timer-framed, but we have fire codes which means walls are not as thin as you seem to think. Sure if you look at an apartment built in 1950 your summary is valid, but that isn't done anymore.

5 over 1 refers to section 1 and section 5 of the building code and not the number of floors built for each. It is coincidence that with section 5, five floors is about the max you can have - but that is an about (sometimes 4 is all, sometimes you can get 6 - see a proper civil engineer for details). Section 1 is a lot more expensive to build, but it is also higher strength (and other features that make is useful for a parking garage)

fragmede• 3 years ago

it's still cheap and shitty and doesn't isolate sound, causing all sorts of problems with the neighbors that don't need to exist.

thick concrete walls might as well be hypothetical, theoretical building material given how much not expensive it is, and thus how much rarer it is.

kube-system• 3 years ago

5-over-1, 5-over-2, 4-over-1, and 3-over-1 are all often used terminology and they're referring to the number of floors in a podium-constructed building, not different sections of IBC. All of these podium construction styles are a product of section 510.2 of the IBC which allows for these to be treated as two separate buildings for fire purposes.

https://www.woodworks.org/resources/code-path-and-requiremen...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-over-1

refurb5• 3 years ago

Disagree. Sounds in a concrete building can travel a very long way. Someone drilling into a wall or dropping something on the floor can be heard from several floors away. Timber construction usually limits sounds from neighboring units. And when it's well constructed with noise insulation, you don't even hear neighbors.

shiroiuma9• 3 years ago

Lumber is abundant in North America and cheap so everything is timber-framed, which is awful for noise. I actually do not understand how people can live in two-story houses in the US. Such people complaining about noise seems crazy to me. Only drywall separating rooms. Only a plank between floors pretty much. Awful.

I like dumping on American housing standards, but this is completely wrong. Modern US timber framing has fairly thick walls filled with insulation. Some crappy apartments of course skimp on the insulation and you can hear the neighbors, but properly-constructed apartments are quite quiet, because of the insulation between units. In a single-family house, properly-made ones have low-grade noise insulation ("low grade" meaning it has a lower R-value than exterior insulation, because you don't need it between rooms) in the walls between rooms, so kids don't have to hear their parents screwing. "Only a plank between floors"? Please.

That's 1 concrete framed floor, often commercial and then 5 floors of timber-framed apartments above that. Terrible.

Yeah, try actually spending some time in any decently-constructed modern apartment like this. They're not noisy at all.

Say what you want about the earthquake or fire resistance of buildings like this, but noise is not the problem you think it is.

Actual high-rises tend to be decent because they have to be concrete and steel framed (although they may have cheap walls).

If they have cheap walls, they're going to have the noise problems you're complaining about. Cheap walls = drywall (on lightweight steel studs) with little or no insulation.

Noise is almost entirely a function of how well insulated the walls in a building are between units, except in places where the units are completely separated by solid concrete. It doesn't matter if it's wood-framed or steel-framed.

Vinnl2• 3 years ago

What's interesting is that the Netherlands is pretty low on the list of countries with the highest percentage of people in collective dwellings (at 21% vs Spain's 65%, only the UK is lower), even though it's one of the most densely populated countries in Europe. I suppose that's the result of the mentioned "mushroom neighbourhoods"?

Great visuals btw.

itointegral• 3 years ago

That's what surprised me too. I think it might be because for every big, dense Dutch city there are n farmhouses in Friesland, Groningen, etc. Also I'm not sure whether they categorise semidetached houses as houses or flats, given how common they are in the Netherlands the 21% would be no surprise if they're considered houses.

user_78322• 3 years ago

From what I’ve seen while cycling between cities in the Netherlands, the “rural” areas still have houses frequently (and even more in “urban” areas - for example between The Hague and Rotterdam you probably won’t be able to go 500m without finding a house/building).

However, the density of most cities isn’t that high (most/median residential buildings are probably 4-5 floors or less, except Rotterdam). For comparison Mumbai has way more taller buildings than almost any city in the Netherlands except for Rotterdam, and Mumbai hasn’t had a lot of high rises due to FSI limitations.

Vinnl2• 3 years ago

Yeah, I think often the Netherlands makes more sense if you just think of the Randstad -or even the entirety of the Netherlands- as a big city. Population-wise, that's not a crazy idea either. Then obviously it will be denser than an entire country like Spain, while it can still be less dense than actual cities within Spain.

pxndx• 3 years ago

Lots of deserts and mountains in Spain, while the Netherlands is mostly flat and it's a bunch of small villages that are really close together.

Earw0rm• 3 years ago

Smaller plots of land, also. UK family homes (at least until the 70s or so) tend to have large gardens, Dutch seem to have less private outdoor space but put more effort into making the street-scene nice in residential areas, which UK is terrible at.

On the flip-side, the Dutch attitude to their countryside (or let's say, non urban land) is pretty brutal outside of the national parks. There's not the fetishization of "country" living that you get in the UK.

j-a-a-p2• 3 years ago

In the Netherlands an exceptional high percentage of houses are social - so they should not be expensive. But most of them are single family houses connected 'rijtjeshuis'. Think of them as flat buildings flipped over. I can imagine with the countries muddy soil it was the cheaper solution to build this way.

About weight, you can see the strength of the soil in the historic buildings. Like Delft: 3 stories high. Zaandam: 2 stories where one is build from wood. Amsterdam is build on wooden piles allowing for 5 stories.

And you can also see wealth in the height of the building. The Hague is most famous for that (as they say you come from clay or from sand), poor areas were build on clay -> low buildings. Rich areas were build on sand, high ceiling heavy buildings. Living on sand was/is healthier also, another reason why the rich flocked there.

em500• 3 years ago

But most of them are single family houses connected 'rijtjeshuis'. Think of them as flat buildings flipped over.

Usually known as terraced houses, townhouses or row houses in English.

seoulmetro• 3 years ago

That list was basically picking and choosing countries to list so wasn't that great of an indicator. For instance China nor Singapore was listed...

gniv• 3 years ago

That whole graph is surprising. The differences between European countries are astonishing and would warrant a story article. Is it cultural? Or climate-related? Or some statistical quirk? So weird.

spaintech• 3 years ago

What a fantastic site! Wish more titea were build this way. It was an awesome experience! I’m an outsider living in Spain for the last 22 years, I think that while the content portrays a reality of the high rise movement in Spain, there is an angle that was missed. It is important to say that the at time draconian land laws pay an important role in the urban landscape. Not to mention that Spain relative young democracy ( we won’t talk about that the today ) also plays am important role into shaping the urban seen. Lots of change in the government parties have also lead to constrains and or retains during several periods. Ok his has mean that different areas would grow artificially dependent on the “favoritism” at play at the moment through favorable zoning changes or subsidized public housing. Albeit and thankfully at the moment, Spain has not discovers property taxes like the US, it contains growth with little planning and driven by massive speculation which has been an economic driver for major cities even with relative low occupation rates. There is also the fundamental culture of buy vs rent that drives for more flats been built to keep up with the demand. On the plus side, one the the biggest differences I have seen in Spain is a relative wide spread economic demographic in the cities, where you don’t see the major changes like most other major city across the world, it happens but it’s neither common or as drastic as the rest.

wackget• 3 years ago

Unpopular opinion but I hate the design of the site. The transitions are too slow and the entire site is inaccessible to anyone with vertigo, visual processing or balance disorders. Needless to say it also doesn't respect the browser's `prefers-reduced-motion` preference.

A massive case of style over substance for me.

Narishma• 3 years ago

Agreed.

Another downside is that it consumes huge amounts of memory.

pb73• 3 years ago

If we built everything to tiptoe around every 0.01% disorder out there, we wouldn't have anything nice.

pier25• 3 years ago

I agree and I don't have vertigo or any other disorder. This is just bad UX.

The charts and graphs are also not very good. You can't search, sort, or filter in any way.

Also no light mode which is also terrible UX. People with astigmatism can have a hard time with dark mode.

https://medium.com/@h_locke/why-dark-mode-causes-more-access...

xhkkffbf• 3 years ago

Anyone know more information about how this was built?

derivada3• 3 years ago

Spain has not discovers property taxes like the US

I wonder what you mean by this, since homeowners in Spain do pay a property tax with similar rates to the US's (around 1% of assessed value).

mupuff12342• 3 years ago

I find the ideal building height to be up to 6 floors at most - anything more makes the streets start to feel a bit too claustrophobic and the area less "neighborly".

elric• 3 years ago

~6 floors is sometimes referred to as the goldilocks zone of building density. Treehugger has some good articles on it [1]. Horizontal navigation is much easier than vertical navigation (gravity and all that). Having a bunch of ~6 floor buildings next to each other makes for great walkability, while still allowing for ample daylight (and trees and whatnot), without attracing the windy conditions of all towers.

[1] https://www.treehugger.com/search?q=goldilocks

shiroiuma9• 3 years ago

Horizontal navigation is much easier than vertical navigation (gravity and all that).

Vertical navigation should be easier, at least for going down. All you have to do is jump... If they could just come up with a safe and reliable way of getting people from the top of a tall building to the bottom quickly, taller buildings would be easier. Perhaps a spiral slide? Faster elevators would be nice too. If they allowed up to, say, 3gs of acceleration, we could move between floors of tall buildings much more quickly. "Going up. Brace yourself!"

bobthepanda2• 3 years ago

Building comfort is really a function of height divided by roadway width and surrounding open space. What makes a single lane road claustrophobic might be light and airy on a six or eight lane road. Central Park is surrounded by skyscrapers but is plenty airy.

There are also strategies, like setbacks, to make the building massing less imposing and obvious to the person at street level, who at the end of the day is walking with their head straight, not craning up to the sky.

ajmurmann4• 3 years ago

Yeah, places like Pudong, Shanghai really drive this home. Pudong felt very open and airy to me when I was there last in 2009 because there is so much space between the buildings. That said, it of course felt somewhat sterile and didn't have the awesome qualities you by contrast get from the cool parts of Tokyo that have much lower buildings, but right next to each other and allow every building to be different, have businesses on random floors etc.

mixmastamyk• 3 years ago

Believe this is called the "missing middle." AKA, low-rise apartment buildings.

abdullahkhalids• 3 years ago

6 floors pretty much requires elevators. Better to stick to 4 floors or three flights of stairs.

dvt• 3 years ago

A bit ironic how the first example is of La Coruña and literally everyone from there absolutely hates the fact that the ugly brutalist Franco-era flats absolutely destroyed the vibe of the coastal cities in Galicia (e.g. Cayon, O Grove, Baiona, etc.). My sister lives in Santiago de Compostela and her in-laws are from the area so I've had a lot of conversations with them.

kdmccormick4• 3 years ago

So talking with your in-laws is enough to make you sure that literally eveyone from there absolutely hates them?

derivada3• 3 years ago

That was probably the point of the article.

mathverse2• 3 years ago

Condos are absolutely atrocious, inhuman way of living. If I could I would move to a villa or a suburb house.

willio584• 3 years ago

By condo you mean apartment right? Condos are usually just apartments you own.

Apartments are not inherently bad. They allow for density which, if you went through the tour this site provides, you know allows for cheaper public services. I've lived in many great apartments and a few bad ones. It's not the style of building that's bad, it's the owners and the laws they are forced to or not forced to follow.

Suburbs are _heavily_ subsidized. They require a ton of money from taxpayers to sustain their existence. So much so that many North American cities are essentially permanently in a state of insolvency because they can't sustain the infrastructure needed for suburbs. Think about this, for a suburb you have inherently more roads and more distance to cover for things like sewers, power/cable lines, water mains, etc. Plus you just take up more space so suburbs don't tend to be walkable in terms of productive travel. You can walk your dog in a suburb, but if you need groceries you'll be driving. So you pay more for suburbs even if you don't live in them AND they require you to pay for a car which depending on circumstances can total a few thousand dollars a year, especially if you don't have the money to drop on a car that doesn't require a lot of maintenence.

As mentioned in this website, suburbs should always be considered a luxury. The vast majority of people should live in more dense areas. It's better for the environment, personal finances, city economies, physical and social health (ever wonder why Europeans live longer?), etc. If you want to live in a suburb, good for you! But I believe we should fully stop subsidizing them. Start making suburb communities compensate cities financially for the imbalance they impose on our systems.

mathverse2• 3 years ago

I always feel bad not replying or replying with a short sentence to such long comment.

Anyway I have never lived in NA and while I understand your concerns I dont think they are valid.

I am not a cattle that you need to optimize.

In Europe we subsidize many, many things and I dont see a reason why living like a human should not be one of them.

imiric2• 3 years ago

Suburbs are _heavily_ subsidized. They require a ton of money from taxpayers to sustain their existence.

That's highly relative. Urban areas have high maintenance costs as well, precisely because of the higher density. The infrastructure requires more maintenance, higher sanitation costs, law enforcement, etc. Not to mention that cramming hundreds of people per km², surrounded by concrete and no vegetation, in small and dimly lit apartments, is awful for mental health. I know where I would prefer to live during the next pandemic.

It's better for the environment

How is it better for the environment, exactly? Cities destroy the environment just by existing, and they hardly have enough green areas to sustain wild life.

physical and social health (ever wonder why Europeans live longer?)

This has nothing to do with the urban lifestyle. Europeans live longer on average because of less socioeconomic inequality, healthier diets, and better healthcare systems.

jjav12• 3 years ago

more distance to cover for things like sewers,

I don't know which one becomes more expensive per capita, but "more distance" is very simplistic metric.

Think of how much money and time and coordination it requires to dig a 200ft trench somewhere in Manhattan. Street closures, permits with multiple organizations, coordinate with tons of utilities and other underground facilities, engineering surveys if you're digging near high rises, etc.

Meanwhile in the suburbs one guy in a pickup shows up with a digger and gets it done before lunch.

Density also bring in enormous complexity, so it's not that simple.

You can walk your dog in a suburb, but if you need groceries you'll be driving.

I live in a suburb and I walk to one of three nearby (< 10 min walk) grocery stores.

ClumsyPilot• 3 years ago

Try living in a damp victorian house in Bimingham, with unfixable mould problems, where the floor has 6 carpets from 6 generations stacked on top of each-other and the bathroom is all weired because originally toilet was designed to be outside.

That's like half of UK housing.

The people who would rather live in an old 50 sqm house than a modern apartment must be abusing some serious substances

Lolaccount• 3 years ago

Excellent site ... except for the UI nit of not being able to judge how long the article is ... on my browser, at least.

Saved for later as I had no idea how long it will take to read it ...

treis2• 3 years ago

Spain also has the lowest fertility rate in Europe at 1.28. Not sure how much apartment living is cause or effect on that but it's a grim number. Every generation is only 60% the size of the one that came before it.

jack_riminton2• 3 years ago

That was shocking so had to look it up, and it seems to be true.

UN article on it here: https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/events/pdf...

alfonsodev• 3 years ago

Does it take in account population age ? Spain absorbs a lot of European elderly that decide to retire in Spain.

foliveira• 3 years ago

The UN report shared by the sibling poster, has a graph that distinguishes the rates between Spanish and non-Spanish nationals, so I think that’s a positive answer to your question

codr7• 3 years ago

You'll find similar patterns in many countries.

The population explosion isn't happening very much, quite the opposite.

Lord-Jobo3• 3 years ago

This is slightly aside, but the concerns over fertility rates in the first world really seem REALLY misplaced to me. Population growth concerns are easily mitigated with immigration which will stay in demand until the rest of the worlds fertility rates catch up(40+ years), and the population growth concerns themselves are a reflection of an outdated (or soon to be outdated) economic model that we should probably focus on replacing or phasing out? Im not sure why THAT isnt the next step, and instead we have so many whackos in government trying to force pregnancies and other wild policies. Yeah, its a hard, big, complex problem and will probably require a decade of modeling/testing like what is happening with UBI testing in small cities. Maybe its just a reflection of the times when the people we elect reach for the most insane heavy handed solutions for every problem, and proceed to publicly fill their pants at the very concept of change.

Unearned5161• 3 years ago

I'm curious to hear what sort of economic models you have in mind that works with a non-growing or declining population

analognoise3• 3 years ago

“We made it terrible for our own people to make families, but don’t worry! We can keep the party going by importing loads of people due to economic forces!” Sounds so incredibly shitty.

If an economic system works so poorly for people they have to be imported (I.e. locals who want to form families can’t) it should be dismantled.

I care about “global capital” far less than I care about my compatriots ability to form strong families. We should absolutely be worried by terrible birth rates.

cies7• 3 years ago

population growth concerns themselves are a reflection of an outdated (or soon to be outdated) economic model that we should probably focus on replacing or phasing out?

I have the same sentiment. Though I take that "reflection" means that it was the economic model we live in/under is what gave rise to the "population growth concerns".

That's part of why it's so hard to think of alternatives from within this model.

Joeri• 3 years ago

I agree that immigration is a quick fix for a low fertility rate. But the people worrying about fertility rates fear cultural displacement by immigrants. They want less immigration, not more, and instead see a return to family values as the answer to the fertility rate problem.

Anyway, the problem is not the current decline in population, it is a fertility rate that remains far below a replacement rate. That means there is no bottom to the population decline. The immigration solution would need to be applied again and again.

kubb2• 3 years ago

It’s ideology. People living in religious communities often worship fertility, and try to make breeding as widespread as possible. Blood based nationalism is obsessed with the “race” (unscientific term) not dying out. For both, having children and raising them in the same ideology is crucial for preserving their existence.

For the global liberal capitalism, the only way it can maintain its egalitarian promise is for it to rely on infinite growth. You can promise to the exploited that they will have even more people to exploit in the future if they keep their head down and stick with the status quo for long enough. It’s starting to hit external limits given by the environment, and available space only recently.

Meanwhile, some societies are aging and doing fine. The economy can be fine tuned to prioritize basic needs, and sustainably supply the people regardless of their age. For example automation in agriculture means that we’ll need less and less people to produce food. UBI is just one tool that could be useful here.

csharpminor• 3 years ago

A government’s source of revenue is working age taxpayers. Its biggest cost is the social safety net for the elderly. It seems natural for them to care about population growth? Where would they get the money for UBI if their tax base is contracting every year?

Immigrants (at the scale Spain needs) don’t want to move to a shrinking economy. Spaniards themselves are leaving the country to look for work. As an example, Central American immigrants will immigrate through multiple low growth countries specifically to get to the U.S. for work.

To GP’s point though, I think Spain’s population problems aren’t all that related to dense apartments and more tied to economic opportunities.

ShrigmaMale3• 3 years ago

you're acting as though an immigrant from any of the dense population centers has the same impact as a native-born child on the culture and economy. that is false. sometimes it's for the better (in America, we have many well-educated immigrants from India and China). sometimes it's for the worse (see Europe's struggles with uneducated muslim immigrants from north Africa and the Middle East).

importing large groups of people sometimes works; we did it pretty well in America because we had so much room to grow. transportation and communication were also much harder, so it was less easy for people to maintain ties to their former country and family there; they adapted a little more, though ethnic ghettos were still a problem.

it's not an intractable problem but saying "just get immigrants bro" isn't really a good solution. we are sometimes biased in the US because we are selective (too much so, I think). we bring in the best from high-population areas like Africa and India and we see benefits for that. on the other hand, while migrant working and a moderate level of illegal immigration are fine and even economically beneficial, it would be silly to deny that the current levels are causing severe problems. when you lose that selectivity and control, things don't turn out so well. and to import enough people to make up for falling birthrates we would have to broaden our horizons beyond skilled workers.

Tade05• 3 years ago

world really seem REALLY misplaced to me. Population growth concerns are easily mitigated with immigration which will stay in demand until the rest of the worlds fertility rates catch up(40+ years)

The population of prospective immigrants who completed 12 years of education or more is already largely gone, because the fertility rates in countries with this level of development are either already below replacement or on the way to it at a rapid pace.

And you need at least that to contribute to an advanced economy.

3seashells• 3 years ago

Worked for Beirut, herzigovinah etc.

LudwigNagasena2• 3 years ago

This concern over fertility vs immigration seems REALLY misplaced to me. The goal is not to maximise the tax revenue of an abstract entity called “country”. It’s about people, their values, their desires and their abilities to achieve them.

BeetleB2• 3 years ago

This is slightly aside, but the concerns over fertility rates in the first world really seem REALLY misplaced to me.

Since the early days of humanity, we've relied on children taking care of us in our old age. I haven't seen a solution for that.

Nursing homes are not a solution. I listened to some grim statistics from my state recently. In many nursing homes, the ratio of staff to patients is 6:1. It takes 6 full time employees to take care of 1 patient. Now I'll grant that these numbers were outliers, because the population was challenging - many/most of these patients had dementia, etc. And they were handling rural areas - you'd get better scaling in the city. Still, I'm sure in a major metropolitan area it's at least 2:1.

And that doesn't account for the poor existence in those places (abuse by employees, abuse by fellow residents - you're screwed if you don't have family members advocating for you).

And that's for patients who get to go. Many elderly will have chronic conditions which are bad enough that you can't live alone, but generally not bad enough for Medicare or health insurance to pay for assisted living. Examples are things like mobility issues - only long term health care insurance covers this, and it's way too expensive. I don't own such a policy and likely won't ever be able to afford it.

treis2• 3 years ago

Population growth concerns are easily mitigated with immigration which will stay in demand until the rest of the worlds fertility rates catch up(40+ years), and the population growth concerns themselves are a reflection of an outdated (or soon to be outdated) economic model that we should probably focus on replacing or phasing out?

It's way way easier to deal with neutral/slight growth than shrinking. Like take teachers as an example. In an ideal world the demand for them is the same year in year out. Every year X of them will retire and Y new graduates will be hired. In a declining world you need 3% fewer teachers every year so when 3% retire you don't hire new ones. Multiply that across every industry and you have a youth unemployment crisis.

2-718-281-8283• 3 years ago

i don't see why that should be grim. having more people around isn't beneficial in and off itself.

avgcorrection5• 3 years ago

It might be “grim” due to demographic skew in terms of age over the long term.

avgcorrection5• 3 years ago

It’s also far from the most densely populated European country so your interjection seems out of left-field.

(But: it might be pretty “urban” for that matter since some countries have a lot of empty spaces which bring down the population density.)

rewmie5• 3 years ago

Spain also has the lowest fertility rate in Europe at 1.28. Not sure how much apartment living is cause or effect on that but it's a grim number.

Spain's economy is very screwed up. Unemployment rate tends to hover above 20% and I think it has the highest rate of students dropping out of basic education.

To top things off, cost of living in urban centers is way way above the median income, specially nowadays. Young families have to make do with either sharing apartments/renting rooms or living way outside city centers in small apartments. In some cases the only affordable option is renting rooms way outside the urban centers.

So the average Spanish couple has to make very hard decisions on if/when to start a family. Quite often the decision tends towards "not right now, we can't afford it."

Marketing brochures tend to emphasize Spain's "terraza" lifestyle, as in people hanging out in cafes/bars/restaurants in the afternoon, evening, and even night, and brag about the fantastic social life that sprouts from there, but the ugly truth is that one important factor of that pattern is the fact that housing is very expensive and very low-quality to the point that staying indoors in one of those flats can have a huge detrimental impact on your mental health, and the only way to avoid that is to minimize the amount of time you spend indoors.

jvican2• 3 years ago

Unemployment rate tends to hover above 20% and I think it has the highest rate of students dropping out of basic education.

The first claim is true, but there's a lot of under-reported economic activity, and a lot of fraud (people claiming they don't work when they actually do), so the unemployment rate figure can't be trusted.

Your second claim around the highest rate of students dropping out of basic education needs a citation.

tspike• 3 years ago

Grim from an economic perspective, perhaps. Meanwhile, the biggest thing you can do to impact climate change is have fewer children.

ajmurmann4• 3 years ago

Not sure if you are from the US, but apartments in the US will give you a very different idea of apartment living than you can get in other countries. Due to restrictive fire cods, US apartment either are terrible or terribly expensive. https://www.niskanencenter.org/how-to-build-more-family-size...

simple10• 3 years ago

I love sites like this! Instead of reading them, it's an instant switch to code view and looking through their javascript libraries. It's built on scrollama and d3. Excellent implementation with very smooth scroll behavior... at least on desktop.

bluGill12• 3 years ago

On a fast desktop. I have a slower desktop (pinebook pro laptop) and it was not smooth.

seltzered_• 3 years ago

The site is beautiful, and yet I ask myself questions like:

What is the hydrological impact of urbanization?

This can both impact hydrological cycles (see millan millan's papers "greening and browning in a climate change hotspot") and possibly subsurface in karst and aquifer life

bluGill12• 3 years ago

Don't forget when asking this question that a higher city is less wide (probably) and so while it affects the area it covers more, there is less area affected at all.

manbitesdog2• 3 years ago

Also car usage is way lower

anovikov• 3 years ago

Poverty, that's how. They live in flats because they can't afford US-style houses (climate would allow them easily), and can't afford 70km average commute radius - car-only because sprawl can't be covered by public transport.

They live in apartments not because they are so conscious about urban planning, but because they can't afford to do otherwise. Give people money and they want to move to single-family houses in suburbs.

Darmody• 3 years ago

That's far from the truth.

People want to live near the city center. They want to be able to walk and get anywhere easily and that's means they want to live in an apartment in a city.

Actually, nowadays is cheaper to buy a house with a garden than an apartment and guess what people are trying to buy?

electrozav• 3 years ago

It's much more expensive to live in the center of a big city. And not just in Spain.

anthk9• 3 years ago

No, buddy, it's the reverse. The sparsest provinces with rural backgrounds (the Castilles [except for maybe Zamora-Salamanca-Leon] , Aragon, Extremadura)... are the poorest. The most populated ones are the ones with the most quality jobs and people has much better salaries and ofc the cost of everything it's on par: Bilbao, Valencia, Barcelona, Madrid...

Also, as they stated owning a flat in the center of your city or town it's expensive as fuck, while owning a 'villa' in the outskirts in the middle of nowhere in Ye Olde Farmtown it's dirt cheap.

manuelabeledo3• 3 years ago

... and can't afford 70km average commute radius

Do we consider this abomination a luxury now?

germandiago• 3 years ago

It is true. One of the things that stroke me the most when I first visited England is that, at least in Hove and Brighton and Eastbourne, all streets had houses, no flats at all.

This also made distances longer.

Written from a flat :)

notahacker• 3 years ago

Tbf, some of those houses have been turned into as many as half a dozen small studio flats (worth as much as proper houses in some other UK cities - Brighton is expensive)

nologic01• 3 years ago

Excellent storytelling, fluidly integrating geospatial data and other visual elements and statistics in a smooth flow.

Who knows, maybe one day such a "visual space" inside a browser would be interactive, a Google Earth type of thing as far as navigation goes, but with data queries that allow on the fly to populate various widgets. An expert could livestream a story or "save" it for later publication.

subpixel• 3 years ago

Journalism presented as some sort of CD-ROM experience was quite neat when we were all a little bit interested in what web browsers could do.

Today I assume a web browser and/or the device it is on could kill me and eat my lunch given the proper input.

I just want to read an article with illustrations, a format that will never cease to be effective.

j-a-a-p2• 3 years ago

The New York Times regularly have this flowing style of stories. It is often quite impressive. Once they did a simple flowless scroll type of story called 78 long minutes, about a scared police force during a school shooting. Very impressive, you keep thinking do something! while reading and scrolling.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/05/28/us/school-sho...

bluGill12• 3 years ago

I don't have a large enough sample to make a statement, but my impression is apartments in Spain are larger than in the US. Even if you want to live in an apartment, if you want more space you are forced to buy a house. You can't get a 4 bedroom apartment (3 kids? separate office? hobby room?...) You can't get an apartment with two "living rooms" (music room, tv room, rec room...). You don't need any of that, but if you are not poor you may want those things and be willing to pay if it was available.

davidw2• 3 years ago

Not sure about Spain, but in Italy, you definitely find a lot of 'family size' flats. We had a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom flat in a 6-plex, and that is a pretty common sort of living arrangement.

balfirevic3• 3 years ago

What's the area of those flats? Where I live there are plenty of 3 bedroom flats, but they are usually under 100 m^2 (often smaller) and almost always under 150 m^2.

3 bedrooms in 100 m^2 is pretty cramped.

siquick• 3 years ago

One of the major problems with apartment living here in Sydney (or Melbourne) is the lack of 3 bedroom apartments - there just isn’t any. So once you have a family you either stay in a 2 bedroom (most of which are pretty small) or move miles out to the outer suburbs which have zero amenities and commute for over an hour each way.

Panzer04• 3 years ago

Or spend a couple of million on a gigantic house in the inner suburbs.. :/

derivada3• 3 years ago

Yeah, in Spain "apartamentos" refers to smaller flats; since most of the population lives in flats there's a much wider array of sizes to choose from. The typical middle class family-sized flat is about 80-120 m2, 900-1300 sqft.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK2• 3 years ago

I live in a high rise condo now, love that basically everything I need is one elevator trip away. Grocery delivers in under 15 minutes, like a charm. Maintenance takes me one hour a month, mostly changing various filters. Building is of higher quality so no noise issues. No steps to climb. But I'm a lazy retiree. For young people with children and dogs math is different.

mlrtime2• 3 years ago

Counter point: (I lived in apartments/condos for 20+ years)

I live in a SFH now, love that I can simply walk 5 feet from my kitchen to the back yard and have no noise and fresh air.

No noisy neighbors above me constantly dropping things on the floor, no smelly hallways, or people leaving garbage in common areas.

I don't have to wait for an elevator, or hope that it doesn't have maintenance issues.

Maintenance takes no hours a month other than a call to a handyman to fix various issues in the house.

I could go on, but to each their own, pursuit what makes you happy!

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK2• 3 years ago

Yeah, I too call a handyman everytime neighbors above me think of dropping something on the floor!

glitchc2• 3 years ago

One should not discount the impact of climate/weather on the style of construction. Buildings enclosing gardens or a common area open to sunlight in an internal square is a great idea in moderate climates, but would work poorly in heavy snow regions.

rewmie5• 3 years ago

In Spain, most of those socialized residential housing projects were not designed with quality of life in mind. Instead, they are more in line with France's post-war operational urban planning approach mainly designed to maximize how many lower-class people could be stored in small areas. They might place a roof over your head, but apartments are extremely small with extremely small rooms, quality of life is very poor, and zoning didn't even allowed any type of non-residential use. Some neighborhoods are outright designed after prison blocks. In contrast, the middle/upper middle class residential areas often come in the form of locked up apartment blocks manned by one or more "conserges" (like a mix between a janitor and private security guard) with the ground and first floor completely locked up.

omginternets• 3 years ago

I'm not sure I agree with your characterization of post-war urban planning in France. In particular, the "HLMs" of the 60's and 70's are known for their explicit interest in providing for quality-of-life in communal living. What happened instead is that these utopian plans didn't survive contact with reality.

Tade05• 3 years ago

Define moderate climate.

I'm currently in a building from 1990 in Eastern Europe which apparently was inspired by those in Barcelona, because it's the same shape and we have a common area with greenery and trees, but the latitude is 51° N and we used to have -30°C winters as recently as the late 90s, so I wouldn't call the climate (at least back then) moderate.

glitchc2• 3 years ago

Do you get a lot of snow? How do you deal with snow accumulating in the centre?

thebigman433• 3 years ago

It really isnt that bad. I lived in an apartment building in Bozeman, MT for 3 years that had an enclosed courtyard. It was pretty small and didnt get a huge amount of use anyway, so it isnt the best comparison, but overall people just sorta make do if they want to use it.

You grab a shovel and clear out a bit of snow in front of the doorway to it, and then do whatever you want outside in the snow. Snowball fights, build snowmen, even bring out a bbq if you want.

I could see how people would imagine that things like this wouldnt work well in a wintery climate, but overall Ive found that people just make do. They live with snow everywhere else outside, so why wouldnt they do the same in a courtyard?

layer8• 3 years ago

I dream of a world where, given the data set, such a presentation would be straightforward to create with standard office software, or from a few interoperable ubiquitous software components, and easy to safely share online and offline, in a format that could be assumed to still work without issues 20 years later.

ShrigmaMale3• 3 years ago

i'm glad they're happy but that sounds actually terrible. infinitely worse than living on a large plot of land with trees and a garden, having a nice shop to work in, a comfortable home office, a spacious kitchen, plenty of space for cars. i honestly can't see how people prefer this; i am assuming at this point it's cope and/or people who are trying to gaslight everyone into preferring it for policy/environmental/political reasons.

kdmccormick4• 3 years ago

I don't live in Spain but I live in a reasonably dense city.

* More things to do.

* More people to meet.

* More restaurants, which leads to the best restaurants being better.

* More mom and pop businesses. I didn't know independent shoe stores were a thing until I moved here.

* Live entertainment everywhere, both to enjoy and to participate in.

* Walking to get coffee is very nice. Walking to get groceries is super nice.

* Huge freedom of movement on a bike. OK, rural rail trails are cool, but they're lines. In a good city, I have trails but also the entire street grid.

* Access to trains and buses which will take me to places I can drink without worrying about DUI.

* Watching the innocent shenanigans that go on around makes life more interesting.

The peace of mind of knowing that my living arrangements are reasonably sustainable, both environmentally and economically, is also nice.

FWIW, I could afford to life in suburbia or the country, but I like the city better. I do love taking weekend backpacking trips in the mountains, so I'm not some nature-phobe.

gumby2• 3 years ago

Between 1950 and 1975, thousands of Spaniards migrated from the countryside to the city. Franco's dictatorship Ministry of Housing promoted the construction of high-rise housing estates to accommodate them.

The same thing happened in other countries like the US, UK and France, yet the outcome was negative rather than positive. What was different about Spain that it worked out well?

(side point: I would rather have read an article with figures than a movie-like feature like this).

sofixa• 3 years ago

How was the outcome negative in France?

There were failures in ensuring the new high rising estates don't become ghettos due to lack of opportunities and self-reinforcing vicious cycles, which have been in large part corrected and have been taken into account for any new high rise / housing (re)developments. And there has been a lack of enough developments in the big cities for a variety of reasons. But overall I wouldn't say the outcome wss negative. Millions of people have somewhere to live which is more often than not with decent quality and availability of opportunities.

gumby2• 3 years ago

How was the outcome negative in France?

Your point is good: I have friends in some developments around Paris and they are perfectly fine. But the hostile banlieus are pretty bad, and such hostile environments have developed in the UK and USA to the point where they are being torn down.

Is the same true in Spain?

wiseowise• 3 years ago

Percentage (%) of population living in collective dwellings, as opposed to single-family houses and townhouses

Love how they’ve included only advanced western/westernized countries there and not third world hellholes or post-soviet dumps.

ska3• 3 years ago

Love why? It's not the only comparison/analysis that can be made but it's an interesting one, to pick countries with roughly equivalent planning parameters.

nzzn• 3 years ago

Outstanding—compelling presentation loaded with data. Perhaps the conclusion should be that the world should move to efficient 75% or so apartment living. UK at 15% is a huge outlier for a top 10 economy.

pvaldes3• 3 years ago

Much more efficient to bomb also (2023 was a real eye opener).

shiroiuma9• 3 years ago

The lesson there is: if you're going to live densely, then don't make enemies out of your neighbors who have a lot more military power than you.

RomanPushkin3• 3 years ago

The website is ugly, this is exactly how you should NOT build websites, consumes CPU, and everything is lagging. Animation is like 0.1 FPS

acchow2• 3 years ago

Animation is smooth as butter for me (M1 Mac, Chrome)

RomanPushkin3• 3 years ago

Linux, Chrome. I can't even read the website, feels like it watching animated GIF loading on dialup modem in 1994. It jumps from one area to another randomly

dathinab• 3 years ago

not nice for skimming, but very nicely done, gave me a feeling I just made a trip to a museum, thanks

kleton• 3 years ago

Isn't there an optimum of about 8-12 stories for any sort of building, before the cross section of plumbing and elevator shafts make it less economical?

bombcar3• 3 years ago

The optimum is based on land value, clearly, because in places where the land is effectively free or incredibly low cost, buildings don't seem to naturally get above 2 or 3 stories.

So somewhere between 3 and 12 stories is a local optimum, and it's probably about where you need additional "machine floors".

bluGill12• 3 years ago

Where land is free 5 floors is the optimum just because nobody will accept more than 3 without expensive elevators (it may not even be legal if you would accept it!). Most people are willing to pay a little bit more for a larger foundation just for less floors.

For car oriented locations 1 floor is optimal because the type of building that can handle more than one level of cars is so expensive you want to just build a large parking lot. (In theory the humans could be in taller buildings, but the space used for humans becomes a rounding error, and so you may as well avoid the expensive elevator)

jupp0r3• 3 years ago

This is obviously a function of the price of land, otherwise you wouldn't see very large high rises in Manhattan or similar.

bluGill12• 3 years ago

There are lots of different factors the come into play as you go higher.

Above 3 floors you need elevators for the disabled, while shorter buildings often cant get by without. (check with a lawyer for what your local law says - I've been told that the 3 floor isn't what the ADA doesn't actually say the highest is, just what most consider it to say). Even without disability laws, people generally want elevators to go higher.

Conventional wood framing is the cheapest, but 5 is about the max floors you can get. Brick framing can apparently get you to about 10 floors. There are lots of other construction methods - check with a proper civil engineer for what the limits and costs of each are.

Somewhere around 6-15 floors your city water will no longer have enough pressure and so your building will need booster pumps. Similarly, drain water needs special care to ensure the falling water doesn't burst the plumbing.

You local fire may code allow for less strict standards if the fire department ladder trucks can just drive up to each window and rescue someone in a burning building. If that cannot happen people need to get down the stairs in case of fire (I've always wondering how the disabled will do this) so you need to ensure those stairs can be used in case of fire.

Floor space per person is also a factor. Richer people tend to be willing to pay for more space than poor people, and poor people tend to have more kids. Thus if you make larger apartments you don't need as much elevator space. This one is tricky though as rich people tend to prefer newer buildings so you might discover that when the building gets old you can't rent some apartments because of the building max occupancy. Still, office buildings tend to have a lot more people per area, and they are more likely to leave at the same time, so I don't think space per person can be a big factor. (but school dorms need to consider all students going to class at the same time)

As the person paying for a building you get to optimize those factors (generally for profit, but you can pick other considerations). Good luck.

dzonga• 3 years ago

look at the anomaly that is the uk.

no wonder uk property prices are crazy.

andyferris• 3 years ago

Great website.

I lived in Spain for 2.5 years. I have to say, the appartment life there was fantastic. I'm back home living in the 'burbs and I still miss the "15 minute city" keenly.

I know the status-quo in Spain, but the history presented here is kinda fascinating. I keep forgetting how dynamic these things are. Also... is anyone else shocked how little development there is currently? Maybe this is just because it doesn't have e.g. 2010-2023 numbers (the downturn _was_ extremely brutal) but I thought the development sector had rebounded at least somewhat.

candeira• 3 years ago

The downturn was brutal, but the drop in development was also needed.

At the height of the property bubble around 2005-2007, Spain (pop ~44M) was building more units per year than Germany, France and the UK (combined pop. ~195M).[1]

During the GFC Spain suffered from population shrinkage [2], surfeit of available housing stock, and the economic crunch pushed into the market some of the housing stock that would previously have been kept in reserve, so yeah, it wasn't necessarily a bad thing that building activities slowed down.

[1] I don't have a source, because I learnt this from a bunch of attendees to a conference on concrete (yes, the kind you use for building) in Madrid in 2007. We exchanged impressions on how software conferences (PyCon forever!) are different from the ones in the building industry, and they shared some eye opening statistics.

[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/ESP/spain/population

ptaffs• 3 years ago

maybe off topic but home ownership is one good and common way to build generational wealth (opinions/citations below) but renting or lease-holding does not realize as an asset which retains its value to be passed to children. (leases can be traded, i suppose, but have a landlord and possibility of termination). But how is generational wealth and social mobility improved or hindered by multi occupancy, high-rise living and city planning such as talked about here?

https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/mortgages/articles/this-is-w... https://www.npr.org/2023/01/04/1146960942/how-buying-a-home-...

globular-toast3• 3 years ago

It's an interesting question. Generational wealth only matters if some are able to do it while others are not. In other words, the only thing that really matters is inequality. I'd rather totally get rid of generational wealth (ie. inheritance) and have everyone start from the same place (or perhaps an adjusted position to compensate for other factors).

Spain has lower inequality than the UK and a lot lower than the US. Inequality in the US is rising, but inequality in Spain appears to be rising rapidly. This might be because those buildings are owned by private entities who are building generational wealth.

ajmurmann4• 3 years ago

Condos are an option to have high(er)-density and own. That said, I question if things we need for our fundamental needs are the vehicle we should chose to build inter-generational wealth. Getting prices of things we must have down, rather than up seems healthier.

ajmurmann4• 3 years ago

I wonder how many of these building types would be legal in the US just due to fire codes that were created for a different area. In most of the US apartment buildings units must have access to two stairwells which in essence limits everything to a double-loaded hallway layout. That makes it harder to build units for families and makes it impossible to have more windows and a cross-breeze. More complete discussion: https://www.niskanencenter.org/how-to-build-more-family-size...

mariojv• 3 years ago

On the topic of fire codes, most Spanish apartment buildings also don't have smoke alarms, as far as I can tell. HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31246950

I'm not against safe building, but some friends of ours were actually denied the ability to be eligible to foster a child because their home didn't have 2 points of egress in every room. The US seems particularly stringent about anything fire-related.

balfirevic3• 3 years ago

It's funny how everyone complains about other people being loud when living in flats. Does no one here like to bang on electric guitar or blast karaoke with friends until 3AM?

huytersd3• 3 years ago

I love to wood work late into the night. Even in a suburb my neighbors would have eaten me alive. I really enjoy my 20 acres.

ArtemZ• 3 years ago

Urbanists hate people like you. Or basically most hobbists. Or large families.

manbitesdog2• 3 years ago

As a Spaniard who has lived in California for the last five years, this is what I miss most about being back in Spain. However, the ability to go without using a car unless I'm leaving the city—managing a month or more on just my bike and feet—definitely makes up for it.

cowboysauce• 3 years ago

No? I think it's rude to be excessively loud so I don't, especially not at night. I don't see this as really any different than "Does no one here cut in line?".

balfirevic3• 3 years ago

That's not what I meant.

I'm saying that many people dislike flats because their neighbours make noise, but not many people are saying they dislike flats because they themselves wish to make noise (which they can only politely do in a house).

WalterBright• 3 years ago

The site has invented a new way of scrolling, that doesn't work with my browser.

Oh well.

ionwake• 3 years ago

Absolutely excellent and interesting site.

Well done.

sexy_seedbox• 3 years ago

2021:

Techniques/technologies used:

R, Rstudio, QGIS and Tippecanoe for data compiling and data analysis. D3.js and Javascript for data visualization. Mapbox for mapping buildings footprint. HTML, Javascript and Scrollama for scroll webpage

https://sigmaawards.org/spain-lives-in-flats-why-we-have-bui...

fennecfoxy• 3 years ago

I wish that more inner city housing was high rise apartment buildings in the UK.

When I first moved here it was super weird to see "okay in London there are small flats, because it's the big city, they don't build up because they complain it ruins the aesthetic/NIMBY/Grenfell tower fears".

So I go out to a small town here for the first time. Large green fields surrounding this town, plenty of space. It's STILL ALL SMALL FLATS!

I think the core issue is that there's such a long history here, everyone already owned all the land a long time ago. Getting a small slice enough for a flat is the most people can do.

My friend grew up in London in a flat, went to inner city schools and coming from beautiful green NZ I just couldn't imagine what that must be like. His flat all surrounded by concrete and endless streets flat up against flat with no space in between. His schools all built up in the same way, often with a school field "down the road".

I think in the UK it's too late to remedy, but outside of cities houses need more space. Inside cities they need to start building modern high rises.

Spain lives in flats: why we have built our cities vertically

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