Recent comments in /f/rva

goodsam2 t1_j2xb8ar wrote

Reply to comment by STREAMOFCONSCIOUSN3S in Your City Is the Most Livable in America, Until We Publish This Article About It by ValancourtB

>Are you referring to housing or businesses?

Both

>If you continue building, is there a risk you erase what is currently nice about a place?

I mean why can't we add something new fan style housing one of the most popular neighborhoods. Most people in urban Richmond city live in 100 year old housing, old factories converted into apartments, or brand new apartments that are a very recent development for the most part. That or shitty cape cods and more everywhere suburban sprawl.

>What if the low density is what makes a certain place desirable?

I mean yes in some cases but how many neighborhoods haven't built anything in decades and you are just yelling stop and watching as things increase as price fundamentally changing the nature of the area IMO more than building ever would have. I mean this view preserves the infrastructure but not the price point at all.

Increasing density has massive network effects, so it would almost all be clustered closer to the center. Most suburbs are too far away to really make sense for much higher density. Short pump to Willow Lawn is 9.8 miles, high density along that corridor maybe but bus times would be absurd. Nobody is adding more than like a couple of duplexes in any free market context to most neighborhoods and 90% of people can't tell the difference between a duplex and single family home.

>I know this will get downvoted because most Redditors would like to live in 100 sq ft apartments built 80 stories high, but I'm actually curious what you're saying.

I mean why don't we have more 2,000 sq ft row houses from this century that are actually urban?

Also people don't want small spaces but the 100 SQ ft places would actually take a huge bite out of the homelessness population, smaller places could be a lot more affordable. To me banning things below a certain size sounds to me like you are saying we should only build mansions, because I don't want to live next to poor people.

IMO the blight on this city is shitty post war cape cods. Which if you like them good, we have a shit ton of them (because they built stuff back then and now we don't). They are old and have no character association especially to Richmond.

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MediocreDriver t1_j2xay0c wrote

Reply to There’s a car in the middle of Shields Lake by Patthelionheart

I really want to know HOW this happened according to bystanders and the person(s) operating the car/in possession of it. I’m curious about how people tell the story of such an incident to themselves and others regarding control (or lack of it), responsibility, and accountability/blame.

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plummbob t1_j2xaigb wrote

Reply to comment by STREAMOFCONSCIOUSN3S in Your City Is the Most Livable in America, Until We Publish This Article About It by ValancourtB

Prices tell you if a place is nice or not. So if home prices are higher than the cost of construction, then you're not at risk of making a place undesirable, because if it was undesirable, prices would fall below construction costs.

And there is a missing middle for businesses just like there is for housing. The zoning restrictions basically create a price floor that small businesses/low income people can't ever reach, effectively pricing them out of the market.

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RVAWTFBBQ t1_j2x8my0 wrote

Reply to Your City Is the Most Livable in America, Until We Publish This Article About It by ValancourtB

Spot on. I have a toddler parent friend couple that moved here last year from NYC, drive a Tesla, and can't believe that they were able to afford a new construction home within walking distance of Carytown for a price that anyone who has lived here for years would find eye-watering while keeping their NYC salaries. This is about them.

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Scuzwheedl0r t1_j2x5fve wrote

Reply to comment by goodsam2 in Your City Is the Most Livable in America, Until We Publish This Article About It by ValancourtB

Your point is well taken, but from a different prespective: I saw this article cross posted on r/Eugene (Oregon), and when I went down the comments thought you were talking about Eugene and not Richmond, VA.

We have exactly the same problem: extremely constricted urban growth boundaries, and people worried that the town "wont be the same" if we just give into "urban sprawl". Meanwhile, prices are insane and everyone complains the town already "isn't the same" because they are so packed in and everything is so expensive.

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