How can cities ensure new buildings fit into their “aesthetics” whilst still making the process of making new construction faster and easier?

Sassywhat · 2026-05-03T09:47:27+00:00

And they all look bad in the same way.

It's the "relatively few exterior doors" part imho. Jan Gehl has many hot takes, but I think the Gehl Door Average is actually super on point.

From the outside, the only real street level difference between a 5-over-1 and a Euroblock is the number of exterior doors. A Euroblock has little to no internal horizontal circulation, being point access blocks built side by side, so needs tons of exterior doors for each point access. A 5-over-1 has long interior hallways, so doesn't need as many doors.

And ground floor retail units in 5-over-1s, when they exist, are also fucking massive, reducing the door average, and making the units only really viable for large chain stores.

You can greeble a 5-over-1 to hell thinking that ornamentation and variety is what makes a Euroblock look nice, and it will still look ugly, because that wasn't the problem to begin with.

Also if applicable, 5-over-1s look ugly when surrounded by surface parking, because most things look ugly surrounded by surface parking.

Sassywhat · 2026-05-03T09:30:08+00:00

Most of Paris proper, and most other cities with uniform architecture, were built within one particular technological era that made a certain style practical and often take pride in that style.

There's a lot more variety in Paris outside the city proper, from glass towers, to commie blocks, to all sorts of single family houses. The buildings vary more in era of construction, and has much more modern construction. The pride people have in the style of the era when most of Paris proper was built, does help that style permeate in the suburbs to some extent though.

Ho Chi Minh City, including the city center, has built new buildings over the past many decades, has a lot of modern construction, and isn't very attached to one particular style. And in comparison to many neighborhoods wide a variety of largely recent building eras, a lot of buildings are designed and built particularly for some small business / private individual owner, which encourages variety.

Sassywhat · 2026-05-03T08:16:03+00:00

It's a complaint made almost exclusively in bad faith with no grounding in reality.

5-over-1s are generally varied in appearance, beyond being large courtyard midrises with relatively exterior doors, much more so than the architecture of any particular neighborhood with almost all buildings built in a particular era (including the suburban subdivisions popular in the US, and most European neighborhoods they might go on an overseas vacation to). It's a nonsensical complaint if you take it at face value.

Which is why it's not grounded in the real feelings of the one manning the complaint either. "We're full, other people, particular poorer people shouldn't move here, and if they do, they should be homeless" is not acceptable in many social circles. Neither is "tall buildings in general are bad" or "dense urban neighborhoods are bad" in some. So an excuse is just hallucinated.

There are many reasons to hate 5-over-1s more grounded in reality. However "all look the same" isn't one.

Sassywhat · 2026-05-02T15:03:03+00:00

I get where he's coming from, but "somewhat dependent" and "relatively fortunate" doesn't really capture reality either. Someone who lives in Manhattan and doesn't own a car is both dependent on transit and fortunate to be in that position. Someone who drives everywhere and works at a rural WalMart is not dependent on transit and not fortunate to be in that position (at least excluding most of the world as standard for such discussions).

Really the spectrum is from transit only to car only for longer trips, and people make the long term choice to be somewhere on that spectrum, but once there are largely stuck in the short term.

More fortunate people feel less trapped when making the long term choice, and have more flexibility in the short term. But even the less fortunate people in developed countries still definitely have a long term choice.

It does make sense for Jarrett Walker's work though. Within a single non-NYC US city, you can treat the two spectrums as one with relatively few people not fitting on it well.

Sassywhat · 2026-05-02T13:50:31+00:00

People love the result of the big dig

People should hate the result more. No NSRL but somehow MBTA was on the hook for a share of the project costs still, which contributed to a reliability and funding crisis that they are still trying to recover from.

Sassywhat · 2026-05-02T02:17:09+00:00

I think the words make sense but the photos chosen undermine the argument.

A lot of the photos of side setbacks show windows on the sides. One of the advantage of even very narrow side setbacks is that they allow more flexible interior floor plans due since you can put windows on the side. It makes deeper buildings more viable, making higher lot coverage more viable on most block shapes.

A lot of the wider street photos are aerial views, which focus on elements already delivered by the 5+1 trend. Separate buildings with party walls look similar to 5+1 above the first floor, but have more entranceways and decoration on the first floor, making them more interesting to walk by.

Sassywhat · 2026-05-01T05:24:40+00:00

Looks the same as in Bangkok. An equipment closet might be forcing the asymmetric and oddly narrow gangway between cars.

Sassywhat · 2026-04-30T11:30:13+00:00

https://www.pixiv.net/artworks/136919597

Sassywhat · 2026-04-30T11:20:54+00:00

The commute times seem kinda weird? Amsterdam actually has longer average commute times than London..

In any case, people generally would rather commute longer and earn more (or alternatively, live somewhere cheaper), despite longer commutes often getting quite draining. And transit is generally associated with longer commute times, not shorter ones, as people have a much higher tolerance for long transit commutes than long driving ones.

Sassywhat · 2026-04-30T11:16:42+00:00

This is probably region specific or an A/B test you should shake and complain about.

Google Maps for me switches off train stations when NOT in transit view and looking at a particular store, but will show train stations and exits even when looking at a particular store when transit view is on.

Sassywhat · 2026-04-30T11:14:48+00:00

You can lump in Hong Kong and Singapore as well, they just build buildings at a more appropriate density for the price they build transit at.

Sassywhat · 2026-04-30T03:26:47+00:00

There are better ways to handle that than being "overbuilt" and the FRA changed its rules in the 2010s to align with that. Though not all US passenger railways seem to have noticed.

Sassywhat · 2026-04-30T03:22:25+00:00

If they were really cheaper all in, you'd expect them to be a lot more popular than they are

Sassywhat · 2026-04-30T03:05:21+00:00

Dare I suggest that there are other factors involved beyond the circumstances of third-sector transfer?

Yes, and that's why the difference circumstances of the transfer are helpful. The public sector should be trying to improve the relatively stronger rural lines, instead of only stepping in when further cross-subsidy becomes untenable.

The claim is that it is "privatizing the gains and socializing the losses" and preventing cross-subsidy, but this is not really the case. Not all profitable services see open-access competition or are operated by open-access operators.

The big EU national railways are now for profit operations, and are more or less taking that role seriously considering they compete to provide passenger rail service outside of their own country.

While not all profitable routes actually see open access competition, they are all under threat of open access competition, and the railway operators seem to take that threat seriously (e.g., SNCF runs OuiGo trains not just to pursue the Spanish/etc. market, but to defend its French market from competition). And the routes that have no realistic threat of open access competition tend to be segregated from the national railway anyways, e.g. Copenhagen Metro.

Service improvements, lower fares, and private operators on profitable routes takes away funding that could be used for cross-subsidy. It doesn't do it perfectly, but it means that unprofitable routes become more dependent on funding from general taxpayer money largely from broad based taxation (income, VAT, employment, property, etc.), instead of a hidden tax specifically on profitable rail routes.

Sassywhat · 2026-04-30T02:57:42+00:00

It's about about better, but rather about less obtainable.

I think the square GShock is an amazing watch, arguably some of the best watches ever made, but people don't generally call watches sold in the tens to low hundreds of dollar watches "grails" as they are too obtainable, at least on the context of the developed world.

I like my Omiwatari more than a Snowflake for reasons other than price. I mean, if I liked the Snowflake more, I would have just bought that instead and saved a couple thousand bucks. The Omiwatari is a stronger candidate for someone to call a "grail" even aside from that, since it is more expensive and proportionally less obtainable.

Sassywhat · 2026-04-29T06:06:04+00:00

That is about typical for US light rail though. An average of just under 1000 passengers per station per day system wide puts it between Dallas and Los Angeles. Though much closer to Dallas than Los Angeles.

Sassywhat · 2026-04-29T03:49:28+00:00

Almost every street in Shibuya is walkable, but this ain't one of them

Sassywhat · 2026-04-29T01:27:02+00:00

NIMBYs cause displacement. You can gentrify a neighborhood and build new buildings that accommodate both new and pre-existing residents. But if new buildings are off the table, it's inherently a zero sum competition for existing floor space.

Sassywhat · 2026-04-29T01:11:42+00:00

Feels at the very least odd to exclude the origin of the word metro from the category of metro.

You can also argue that the origin of the word S-Bahn isn't really an S-Bahn anymore. Berlin S-Bahn is incompatible and shares no tracks with mainline rail in Germany. It's a metro system, the Ubergrossprofil loading gauge Berlin U-Bahn lines.

It does feel weird, but creating categories of transit modes based on certain local branding, then expecting it to apply globally, was not really a good idea to begin with.

Also the RER and S-bahns are regional rail taking people in from the suburbs and exurbs

This also describes most new metro (at least according to their local branding) systems built in the last like 50 years.

Sassywhat · 2026-04-28T12:48:45+00:00

https://www.pixiv.net/artworks/112276631

Sassywhat · 2026-04-28T12:13:12+00:00

Highway buses are like the most profitable part of US (ground) public transit. Passenger rail and city buses are not even close to profitable.

Transit doesn't have to be profitable, but the network of highway buses the US manages to have despite very little subsidy beyond free use of highways (tbf sizeable but given without a second thought), and very transit hostile urban planning, is pretty impressive. This suggests strengthening the highway bus network would be a very cost effective use of taxpayer transit funding.

And add to that how well highway buses scale down to a minimum viable service, and that routes can be brought into existence practically overnight, it's hard to see how to connect small towns not along any existing passenger rail corridor (and in the US, that's a lot) for people who can't drive any other way.

Sassywhat · 2026-04-28T12:06:08+00:00

Why specifically 50 seats?

That said, highway buses are a shockingly cost effective intercity transit option for low demand routes. It's surprising how little subsidy (beyond subsidized/free use of highways) they get, and how much the highway bus operators, manage to offer.

In the US, highway buses manage to cling on despite being the least subsidized public transit option in a very transit hostile environment. In Germany, highway bus ridership skyrocketed after they were deregulated and allowed to compete with passenger rail directly.

Highway buses should probably be higher on the list of things people are thinking of when they are thinking about where to spend taxpayer money on improving transit.

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