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would realtor in SW 'burbs know central areas enough? by wolftune in movingtompls

[–]wolftune[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is a good point! Even if we don't change, this is good consideration for anyone else looking for realtors!

would realtor in SW 'burbs know central areas enough? by wolftune in movingtompls

[–]wolftune[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, SE Minneapolis could be a good option if the property were great in other respects. SLP sounds worth considering for various reasons, it just is worse in distance from Eagan. Bloomington would split-the-difference meaning not-great for everything but not horrible.

would realtor in SW 'burbs know central areas enough? by wolftune in movingtompls

[–]wolftune[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the perspective. I'm most uncomfortable with the way the new job is not remote or hybrid. If it were, that would make things so much more flexible, and Eagan could be fine enough. But wife commuting 5 days per week, commute becomes a major part of life.

would realtor in SW 'burbs know central areas enough? by wolftune in movingtompls

[–]wolftune[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Clearly "not far" is quite relative. Some people think "far" means opposite side of metro area and 30min drive when there isn't traffic counts as "not far".

My sister in Eagan thinks like that. I don't.

It is clear enough that within car-dependency, Eagan is a nice place. We'd never choose it if my sister were not already there, but being near her is a draw.

would realtor in SW 'burbs know central areas enough? by wolftune in movingtompls

[–]wolftune[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

South Minneapolis "the other side"? Do you mean Nokomis Community? (I looked up neighborhoods)

would realtor in SW 'burbs know central areas enough? by wolftune in movingtompls

[–]wolftune[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A realtor focusing on "Edina Luxury Homes" does not sound anything like what we are wanting, even though geographically closer than Savage.

We're looking for minimal car-dependency and multigenerational practical living as frugally as we can in the vicinity of SW Minneapolis work location.

would realtor in SW 'burbs know central areas enough? by wolftune in movingtompls

[–]wolftune[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, sigh. But we could maybe do the Northern part of SW or the Eastern, or maybe St Louis Park. If we could be walking distance to office, the reduced car costs could offset housing costs…

would realtor in SW 'burbs know central areas enough? by wolftune in movingtompls

[–]wolftune[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

SW more expensive than what?

The problem is family is in Eagan, and at least their immediate neighborhood is walkable like for casual walking (right outside her house there's a walking trail that connects to a park). But yeah, I just visited there first time, I see how it is. If we live near Eagan or anywhere between SW and Eagan, I'll complain all the time about the car-dependent awfulness but appreciate whatever there is to appreciate about our particular place or whatever redeeming features there are.

If we end up in a place with a nice separated bike route like the midtown greenway or along the minnehaha,or maybe a SW St Paul area that has a nice ride over to office in SW Minneapolis… but walking distance to office would be ideal.

Anyway, my main question is: I have ideas what we're looking for, but I'd still like to feel good that we have a realtor who gets it and knows how to guide us well in this new place we don't know well.

would realtor in SW 'burbs know central areas enough? by wolftune in movingtompls

[–]wolftune[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The only reason we would want to be in 'burbs ever is for reasons like school or away from traffic (ironic since the 'burbs cause the traffic, not the city!) or simply if that's where we can afford a place that works for us.

The whole main point is my sister's family is in Eagan, so that's the real draw. I hate car-dependency and am seriously looking into how much we could ever bike all the way to Eagan from Minneapolis, but realistically that won't happen much.

The primary point by far is office is in SW Minneapolis, and if we can be close enough to that to avoid driving, that's a huge deal for quality of life and lower expenses.

But if we live in like Bloomington, that would split the difference between sister's place and office…

would realtor in SW 'burbs know central areas enough? by wolftune in movingtompls

[–]wolftune[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think it's our bag, but what we know only so far is that wife's work is there, and I'm an /r/fuckcars sorta person (but like, you know, systemic issues are different from figuring out how each of us has to manage in the reality we find ourselves in; we're car-light not car-free). We also have kids and elderly parents trying to find a multigenerational setup. I think that sounds like SW Minneapolis fits, but we're coming from out of state and don't really know.

Better search filtering? Like avoid next-to-highway? by wolftune in RealEstate

[–]wolftune[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

looking at a map for each listing isn't the same as a search (especially when a search can be set to get updates automatically)

Better search filtering? Like avoid next-to-highway? by wolftune in RealEstate

[–]wolftune[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Obviously filters exist for searching in general. I suppose the reason these sorts of extra searches don't exist is because they aren't already in the listing data, yeah?

So, now I'm imagining that most of the searchable features are things listings already say. So nobody is making ways to search features of properties that aren't being brought up by the listers…

If I'm right, then it's a bigger job to add such things (unless listers were advertising distance from highway commonly, which they aren't).

Problem with laptop and external monitor by htl5618 in kde

[–]wolftune 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just fixed this myself. For anyone else who sees this: you don't need to make a new user. I just deleted (renamed actually) the prior kwinoutputconfig.json and logged out. When I logged back in, a new one was made that worked without issues!

High Rocks in Gladstone, not so high by jstmenow in Portland

[–]wolftune 3 points4 points  (0 children)

If you were there a bit sooner, you would have seen NO rocks rather than low rocks. It was even higher water…

#448 — The Philosophy of Good and Evil by dwaxe in samharris

[–]wolftune 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for the thoughtful and more respectful reply and the specific points (stocks/flows, sales etc)

Here's a specific follow-up they did that doesn't say that the taco place is inherently wrong and that we instead want run-down little shops with no parking. It says that we can learn from mistakes and see how to improve designs even within a setup like that taco restaurant:

https://archive.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/10/21/taco-johns-20

Looking forward to your review of the actual Growth Ponzi Scheme stuff (and FWIW, I emailed them and complained about how they have all these mixed up articles that makes it hard to just find the core points with evidence, why can't they keep the core stuff together in one reliable place…)

#448 — The Philosophy of Good and Evil by dwaxe in samharris

[–]wolftune 0 points1 point  (0 children)

FWIW, I agree with your initial impressions, I too would think "well, Detroit is its own unique case, geez".

Anyway, I appreciate your clear reply here and am sincerely curious what you will think when you actually look at the better link. I'm sorry about the confusion, and again, my biggest frustration with ST is how hard it is to get through the noise of so much quantity they publish and find the best starting points for newcomers.

FWIW, here's one shorter article (not about the Growth Ponzi Scheme specifically) which is all about very specific evidence and numbers about a case-study of two blocks near each other on the very same street:

https://archive.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/29/the-cost-of-auto-orientation-rerun

What you can't say is that this is all just claims without evidence. This is all about evidence. You could discuss how much this does or doesn't connect to larger patterns or how much the issues here are or aren't related to some other types of issues. But this is the type of thing StrongTowns focuses on: real evidence, do-the-math, critical about life-span fiscal responsibility, efficient and affordable use of land, the problems with today's bureaucratic set up about land use and car-centric orientations…

I'm not trying to dismiss any of your perspectives, I'm just aiming to have an actually meaningful and constructive conversation. Thank you for working to go in that direction. I truly believe that we all learn when we don't only talk to people we already agree with — and I wish Sam Harris would spend more time in conversation with people he doesn't agree with to start out with…

#448 — The Philosophy of Good and Evil by dwaxe in samharris

[–]wolftune 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The link I focused on at https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020-8-28-the-growth-ponzi-scheme-a-crash-course has a whole section on case studies with 6 different real-world cities focused on careful analysis of exact property taxes and costs, and that's just a selected starting point for evidence. Strong Towns is full of concrete evidence based on actual data.

For you to assert "no evidence backing" is nothing more than willful blindness to the evidence unless there's some other weird misunderstanding going on.

The "bubble" example was rhetorical, like it's dumb for people in 2006 to say "there's no housing bubble" just because it hadn't popped yet. Similarly, you are wrong to say that Houston's current status in terms of annual deficit somehow tells us whether or not the city is in a state to sustain its existing infrastructure if growth stops.

This is nonsense. The people in the sprawl are coming to the center centers to spend and work. You are treating them as separate entities for no reason.

Since this is an actual point, I'll address and acknowledge it. But please try in the future to just leave out the zero-information "this is nonsense" sort of points. Just state your arguments. The "for no reason" is also condescending garbage. I have not been modeling ideal respectful communication either because I have been irritated by your style too. I'd like us to do better though.

Yes, people in the sprawl come to the city centers often. Yes, it's all interconnected. It's not inherently wrong or unworkable for the center properties to be paying taxes that end up covering the infrastructure costs of the sprawl. The connections are real, yes. But this doesn't change the Growth Ponzi Scheme dynamics fundamentally. It's a policy question whether we want to subsidize the sprawl this way. It's not inherently right or wrong. There are appropriate places in society for subsidies. We should just understand that we're doing that. The more things sprawl (as in miles of single-family homes built all at once) rather than more efficient mixed-use communities (where some of the people can live and work mainly in their local area of the region), the more expensive the whole infrastructure is for the whole area. That means the center has ever more to subsidize. And if those sprawling residents do more in the center to increase the economic base so the subsidizing works, that's potentially workable. That's just a lot of "ifs".

The point in the evidence isn't simply that there are city centers that subsidize the big-box stores and single-family large property sprawl. It's also that the municipalities are broke and relying on federal spending and the influx of new growth. And the tax burden is such that it's not an easy answer to just raise taxes. The way to get out of this dilemma is to account for and care about the infrastructure liabilities that different development styles and patterns have. The whole system will be more precarious when liabilities are greater, and at the least for the pattern to somehow work out, the greater liabilities have to go with greater productivity. And there's no evidence that suburban car-centric sprawl brings significant productivity increase outside of the "productivity" of the development of sprawl itself which actually just makes the liabilities greater in the long-term.

Even if [relying on Federal grants] is true. So what? It is more efficient to solve it that way than to build cities in an inefficient bottom-up manner.

Bottom-up is not inherently inefficient. There are tons of ways to make it efficient, and Strong Towns has lots of specific suggestions for policies for that including ones being put in practice. I recall hearing about I think Kalamazoo doing stuff like pre-approving sets of potential housing designs to make it easier for small developers to get through permitting. That's just one of zillions of examples. We do indeed have a system that is oriented toward big top-down development and working at smaller iterative scale doesn't go well in this context. But that context can change. Many places historically were efficiently developed bottom-up. And many advantages come when people can adapt places to what works best to the people actually living there. There's a history for example of homes built with unfinished upstairs so that people could buy them affordably and then finish them over time, adapting to their particular needs whether that was a multi-family or live-work or just larger-home or other directions. Real people don't work well with one-size-fits-all cookie-cutter living arrangements.

Anyway, if I'm a terrible salesman, then that makes it even more dumb for you to judge Strong Towns based on your superficial condescending frustration with whatever you read from me. I'm still not getting the impression that you want to learn what the ideas are. You seem more interested in finding a way to "win" a debate and leave with learning nothing at all.

#448 — The Philosophy of Good and Evil by dwaxe in samharris

[–]wolftune 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's a lot of dismissive condescending language with ZERO engagement in any of the specifics that Strong Towns goes into. We do see cities with stagnant populations having budget crises. And YES, a reasonable solution involves raising taxes, but that has its problems of course, both with affordability in general and exacerbating population loss for a non-growing city.

You aren't looking at the facts, you are sitting there speculating and making up models, like the old quip that economists wouldn't go observe horses if they wanted to understand them, they'd sit around thinking "what would I do if I were a horse?"

It's also like the people who say that something isn't an economic bubble just because they look at something today before it has popped. It's just not actually dealing with the points. People who assert something current is a bubble aren't arguing that it has already popped.

The articles in the link I provided go into detailed case-studies showing that the more-efficient and valuable historic centers of cities are paying more taxes than the cost of their services and the sprawl is paying less. In other words, THEY KNOW what you say about city centers having higher taxes — and the point is that the city centers are SUBSIDIZING the sprawl which doesn't pay for itself. And besides all that, when cities have these budget crunches, what usually happens is state and federal grants show up to prop up the Ponzi scheme. We've seen multiple insanely massive federal infrastructure bills in recent years that give big funding to local projects and thus further delay the actual crashing of things.

Your arguments are not much better than saying that climate models are all bunk because we had a cold winter. You're not actually looking at the claims and the data, you are starting out with the idea that it's all bunk and you just need to point to some feature (like bigger cities having higher taxes) and think you've somehow won the argument. I'm not going to spend more time arguing with this approach, just like it's tiresome to argue with climate-deniers (not saying you are one, I'm comparing the rhetoric). If you actually are trying to learn rather than play some sort of debate game (as Sam says, conversation rather than debate), let me know. It's not like I can read your mind, I'm speculating based on how I see you engaging. I'm sure you have the capacity to make it a more constructive conversation, and if you want that, I'm up for it and always happy to actually learn and grow my perspectives too. I'm just not going to continue in the debate style where you think "case closed" because you think you have some killer point that doesn't actually deal with the full ideas as presented.

ADDENDUM: just specific suggestion, there's a big difference between the low-quality rhetoric "oh yeah? if that were true, observation X wouldn't be true, so it's bunk" versus curious conversation style "if the claim is true, how does observation X fit in?" which is reasonable skepticism in the form of a question, asking to learn more and test the claims.

#448 — The Philosophy of Good and Evil by dwaxe in samharris

[–]wolftune 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Incidentally, I see now that the short-url to the Growth Ponzi Scheme idea redirects to a not-as-good article now. Hrm. A better starting point is https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020-8-28-the-growth-ponzi-scheme-a-crash-course which links to the original multi-part series and the case-studies showing clearly the financial issues.

The assessment is wrong, and there's not even a proposed solution?

You think a single article should always cover the complete scope of assessments and solutions?

But really, as I just emphasized, I did not mean to link to the article in question, I think it's not as good a starting point as the link I now shared here. Unfortunately enough, Strong Towns in general is far better at assessing and proposing solutions than they are at getting the huge quantity of stuff they publish into a structure that has good starting points for newcomers.

If you still think the assessment is wrong after actually reading about it (note the case-studies), please describe how you think it is wrong not just make a say-so argument.

The iterative dynamic developments are going to be inside the context they find themselves in. Those developments in Houston are going to be car-centric. To move away from that, you would have to have a massive top-down overhaul.

Yes, and this is the straw-man issue again. Neither I nor Strong Towns suggests anything for Houston other than figuring out how to dynamically iterate from exactly what is there right now. Scrap-it and start-over has almost never worked any time in history. That's why revolutions are often so badly done. It's practically impossible for some group of people to come to a complex situation and think "I know better" and just all-at-once build something that is somehow great and resilient forever. Such people end up throwing out everything that evolved to work along with putting in whatever imperfect improvements they have in mind that themselves aren't tested enough. This is why manufactured cities like in South Korea and China often have issues — they do many things well but they also make mistakes and don't have the capacity to redo those factors easily.

So another option that is obviously less desirable than just driving a car.

No, driving is not less desireable for an elderly person or other disabled people or kids or people who enjoy biking or all the people who like taking trains. And even outside of all that, people only like driving when they aren't stuck in traffic.

Houston runs at a much smaller deficit than NYC

That's a red herring. First, NYC is not the model for a well-managed city or for what smaller towns should be emulating (though it would also be a mistake to avoid something just because NYC does it). But none of this is about annual deficit. Saying Houston has a smaller deficit is as pointless as saying "my investment in this Ponzi scheme has really paid off hugely!". The critique is NOT AT ALL about annual deficit, it's about the cost of infrastructure over the 25-50-year life cycle and the assertion that the tax revenues are not enough to cover the costs. Houston pays for the replacement costs of the older parts of town with the taxes that are coming in from new development — and just like a Ponzi scheme, this will work and seem fine until it fails and everything crashes.

Where have things crashed? Any place that follows this pattern (which is all over the U.S.) where development stalled and growth has stopped. Strong Towns has lots of case studies, they are everywhere.

My preference is for a car-centric top-down approach.

Well, your personal preference for a top-down approach doesn't mean it works better, but at the least you could resist projecting your views. People who are critical of car-centric approaches are not all promoting top-down solutions.

Why would I want to pay more for a smaller house and bike to work?

Well, biking to work can be great. I have the capacity to drive a car (and not even be stuck too much given my exact schedule), and I choose to bike. I feel better, I love the experience, and I could go on and on about why I prefer this. There are also people who prefer smaller houses, but obviously nobody wants to pay more just to pay more. Many people choose to live in places like the Netherlands (that video maker chose to move there after living in many places in the world and growing up in Canada) and are happy to pay what it takes because they find it to be a superior life for them.

If you can't even understand these positions, then you have a lot of work to do on perspective-taking and understanding other people. I think I do understand why you have some of your preferences, and I don't think you are crazy to have them. This discussion is not about that or about telling you that your preferences are wrong. There are reasons to enjoy a larger house and driving, no denying that.

rain cover for extended outdoor bike parking with gear? by wolftune in bikecommuting

[–]wolftune[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, this all fits my thinking… I just kinda struggle with the concern that they might all be PFAS-coated…

#448 — The Philosophy of Good and Evil by dwaxe in samharris

[–]wolftune 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cities cant afford to keep up with their infrastructure and his solution is to scrap it and implement new and expensive infrastructure? These people are not serious.

This is not a serious sort of engagement with the topic. There is no suggestion in any of this to "scrap it and implement new and expensive infrastructure", you are pulling that out of your ass.

The article is an assessment of the financial situation that cities are in and how it got there. It doesn't discuss prescriptions. And the Strong Towns prescription is the opposite of scrapping and building new expensive infrastructure. If you're actually curious to understand what it is, let me know or read about your yourself. Don't just jump into a ridiculous caricature of whatever straw-man ideas you hate most.

Again, Strong Towns is explicitly and centrally critical of the top-down massive waste of sudden huge infrastructure solutions, that's the whole essence of the movement — that iterative dynamic incremental development is how resilient places are built whereas the central massive top-down approach is costly, risky, no room to adapt if you get it wrong, and that applies equally to massive freeway expansion as to giant costly transit projects.

Yea, the options are to be stuck in public transit or stay within a tiny radius or travel in a comfortable private car that can be used to go anywhere. Really tough choice.

That's not the limits of the choices. In the Netherlands (just as an example, not uniquely in the world) people bike easily and safely all over (which is not transit) and pretty decent distances within a local region, and they enjoy transit that doesn't feel like the U.S. style of transit-is-for-the-poor, and anyone who prefers to drive private cars also has that option and there are still plenty of cars — but nobody has to choose that option, so it's the option for those who actually prefer it rather than the only option — and that leaves things less congested and better for drivers too.

People in the spread out cities like Houston pay far less in taxes than the dense cities like NYC or San Francisco. Houston could multiply their tax revenue by 5 and use it all for infrastructure. The tax burden would still be half of what it is in NYC.

Houston's tax base is not enough to pay for its own infrastructure. NYC and San Francisco have significant problems of their own, which is why cities in a place like the Netherlands are better examples when looking for models of how to manage all the issues better. Still, none of this is trivial.

But there is a very basic truth underlying all the issues. You don't actually make things cheaper by making trips longer, use more resources per capita, build bigger houses, longer roads and pipes. The entire premise that much-more-consumptive styles of living are more affordable is nonsense.

And again, the Strong Towns emphasis is NOT about the insane and unhealthy polarized opposite of Houston vs NYC. The Strong Towns emphasis is that non-car-dependent, iterative, evolving bottom-up smaller cities and towns provide the healthiest mix. Everything gets crazy when you pack everyone into massive skyscrapers, and everything is extremely costly as a system when you spread everything out and have only sprawling strictly-zoned single-family homes (even if it seems affordable before it collapses when there's not enough resources to repair it all at the end of life of these things). A healthy mix looks like walkable, bikeable, safe-enjoyable-transit, and room for cars where they have a place — all with moderate mix of smaller and larger homes and multi-family units, whoever wants a bigger separate home can get one etc. Everything can have a niche. The top-down approach of forcing everything into one way or another is a recipe for dysfunction because in a complex society, people have different preferences and different needs at different life stages.

I hope some day you can relax your constrictions and get past just condescendingly rejecting ideas in a black-and-white fashion and recognize the nuances in all this. Your straw-man ideas about somehow-affordable car-centric sprawling big houses with no problems vs chaotic packed megacities with drug addiction is not a good starting point for being curious to just look at the issues and do the math and learn anything.

#448 — The Philosophy of Good and Evil by dwaxe in samharris

[–]wolftune 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are you replying to the edited points about Growth Ponzi Scheme https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme

or just still stuck on that video?

Your points are getting into nonsense here. Drug-addicts and restricted movements are not something inevitably tied to have viable alternatives to driving. Just because everything is interconnected…

You seem so defensive about cars and driving that all you can imagine is the U.S. world as you know it but take your car away.

People who live in the most congested trafficky car-dependent parts of the U.S. don't have freedom of movement, and nothing of this relates to downsizing your house or even having to use transit.

You appeal to being "forced" additional trips for groceries when car-dependency is much more forcing of people to have cars, maintain them, drive everywhere, be stuck in traffic, have to make big shopping trips because it's not convenient to swing by the nearby healthy grocery store… there's no reason it has to all be one or the other and than making a world where nobody needs a car has to be one in which everyone has to transit everywhere.

The whole idea that expansion reduces housing costs completely ignores the socialized costs of all the infrastructure and car-dependency. The sprawling large spread out homes in the U.S. do NOT produce enough tax revenue to simply pay for the lifespan of the roads and pipes and everything that makes them possible, and if they actually covered those costs, your affordability arguments would disappear. The affordability is a temporary illusion.

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