How could you have made High Density public housing WORK?

[Guardsman Bass]

1-2% growth was fairly rapid at the time in historical terms, and it was an average. If you look at the Maddison data I linked to, it was pretty volatile - you'd have spurts of Chinese-level growth (7-9%) for a year or two, followed by a crash and negative GDP growth, and so on. There also may have been a regional element to it, with urban areas getting spectacular growth rates and rising incomes, but with the overall estimated average being dragged down by stagnant or declining rural incomes and growth at a time when at least half of Americans still lived in rural areas.

You're right about New York City having some geographic issues that would favor greater density over shanty towns.

[PainRack]

With regards to vandalism, Singapore enacted some controls which could be quite....... draconian.

Urinating in lifts is punishable by fining (enforceable by sensors, although it is my belief that most of these aren't installed nowadays) and it is possible to lose your HDB apartment if you continually violate some ordinances. I'm not sure if this has ever been enforced but considering these ordinances seem to revolve around public safety such as killer litter....


Some of the ordinances such as pets can be a bit strange, but this has to take into account of the fact that the initial flats at Queenstown/Toa Payoh were built to house rural villagers and the regs were drawn up when villagers brought in lots of cats/dogs/pigs or started attempting to grow crops along the corridors.... Some of the estates now actually has a public garden where residents could grow chillis and some other crops.

[Simon_Jester]

1-2% growth was fairly rapid at the time in historical terms, and it was an average. If you look at the Maddison data I linked to, it was pretty volatile - you'd have spurts of Chinese-level growth (7-9%) for a year or two, followed by a crash and negative GDP growth, and so on. There also may have been a regional element to it, with urban areas getting spectacular growth rates and rising incomes, but with the overall estimated average being dragged down by stagnant or declining rural incomes and growth at a time when at least half of Americans still lived in rural areas.

I think maybe part of it is that improvements in manufacturing, at a time when the gold standard limited inflation, meant that you could get major growth in the standard of living, without major growth in per capita GDP as measured in dollars.

All kinds of goods were getting cheaper to create and handle in bulk, but a lot of this could have simply been eaten by deflation without producing any major economic growth of the sort China's experienced by undergoing the same Industrial Revolution at an accelerated pace.

[K. A. Pital]

With regards to vandalism, Singapore enacted some controls which could be quite....... draconian.

I wouldn't say stopping people from urinating in lifts or their dogs from shitting all over the place is draconian. To me that's the norm, and shit-strewn streets and stinky elevators are the abberation.

[PainRack]

With regards to vandalism, Singapore enacted some controls which could be quite....... draconian.

I wouldn't say stopping people from urinating in lifts or their dogs from shitting all over the place is draconian. To me that's the norm, and shit-strewn streets and stinky elevators are the abberation.

Placing sensors and security cams in lifts on the other hand is. There's also stuff like the non playing of soccer in the void decks(commonly ignored :D:D:D) and fines for Public mischief(vandalism with non permanent markers) and caning(for permanent paint and etc).

I sure you can agree that using torture for graffiti is overboard..... Especially since the initial intent of the vandalism law was intended to be utilised against communist agitators.

Not to mention creating anti nudity laws in your own home.Thereotically, if someone spotted me nude when I leave my bathroom, its my fault.

[Darth Tanner]

Placing sensors and security cams in lifts on the other hand is.

If it stops scum from vandalising the lifts/common areas what’s wrong with that?

Obviously using violence as punishment isn't desirable to most societies but what you describe as public mischief is still vandalism that should be stopped, I don't see why a fine would be a bad thing.

Not to mention creating anti nudity laws in your own home.Thereotically, if someone spotted me nude when I leave my bathroom, its my fault.

Close your curtains! Failure to do that is your fault.

[K. A. Pital]

Placing sensors and security cams in lifts on the other hand is.

Considering the brutal murders that happen in lifts and/or in staircases in large houses, I think that's an acceptable intrusion. The lift is not your private property. There was a case when a murderer killed a person coming upstairs, leaving her to bleed out on the staircase near the lift. A camera in there may have saved her life.

I sure you can agree that using torture for graffiti is overboard..... Especially since the initial intent of the vandalism law was intended to be utilised against communist agitators

My disapproval of corporal punishment is universal; if I don't support it for anyone, I obviously don't support it for vandals too. But corporal punishment isn't the only way to keep people from doing that stuff.

Not to mention creating anti nudity laws in your own home.Thereotically, if someone spotted me nude when I leave my bathroom, its my fault.

I know about this and I consider it bullshit, just like the stories about asking to arrest people for "indecent behaviour" like e.g. kissing in a bus. Dunno if they're true or not. But I am not sure this is the only reason why it works. I mean, Hong Kong and mainland China don't practice these types of punshment and don't consider these offences, but high-rises are still intact and not vandalized.

[Thanas]

Close your curtains! Failure to do that is your fault.

What is so threatening in nudity to you that you would require people to face punishment if you see naked people?

[Borgholio]

What is so threatening in nudity to you that you would require people to face punishment if you see naked people?

In America, we're afraid of nipples and other dangling body parts.

[Darth Tanner]

What is so threatening in nudity to you that you would require people to face punishment if you see naked people?

I have no problem with nudity or desire for it to be punished but if you’re in high density living conditions and have neighbours that can readily see in through your windows its common decency not to walk around nude in front of them. I wouldn't advocate it being an actual crime though but it would certainly count as anti-social behaviour.

[Guardsman Bass]

I don't really care if I see the neighbor naked in the window, as long as they're not making an unwanted sexual advance at me with it (like deliberately masturbating with me in view or the like).

[Channel72]

My theory:

There's a certain fixed percentage of the population that is highly dysfunctional and will 'shit where they eat' in that they damage and prey upon their own living spaces and infrastructure. This percentage has little or nothing to do with any other economic factor, it's just that, say, 5% of all humans are crazy and dysfunctional and have no sense of community.

In the developed world, where the poor make up a minority of the population, these 5% of dysfunctional humans are overrepresented. Being poor doesn't mean you're a vandal. But being the sort of person who routinely vandalizes property means you are likely to become poor, or stay poor, because it correlates with being dysfunctional.

Now let's make up some numbers for the sake of having an example.

So if, say, 15% of the population is poor enough to need public housing in a First World Country, if 5% of the population is dysfunctional, and if virtually all dysfunctional people become or remain poor, then if you build housing for poor people, one in every three tenants will be a thug, vandal, addict, or lunatic. Not good. This means that housing in the poor areas will suffer a LOT of vandalism, and the only thing you can really do is try to screen out the (numerous) thugs, vandals, addicts, and lunatics.

Your success rate will be finite, and over the long haul the poor community experiences a massive amount of vandalism compared to a richer one. And it is less equipped to repair the vandalism, so the damage becomes permanent.

...

By contrast, in a Third World country where, say, 75% of the population lives in housing no better than the First World's public housing, the population of vandals, thugs, and freaks is still only 5% of the total. Now, instead of having one in three people be a vandal, it's one in fifteen. Which means that the community can police its own ranks, punish or ostracize vandals, and that the overall rate of vandalism declines to something that can hopefully be kept under control by maintainence even in a poor environment.

It also helps if the housing is under strong social controls that penalize people for acting like thugs, vandals, or freaks. Singapore does this, based on the descriptions I'm seeing. I imagine that, say, housing blocks in the Soviet Union had this too- I can't imagine them being ineffectively policed to the extent that public housing in parts of the West is (and was at that time). You, Stas, would know more of that than I.

That's a compelling hypothesis. But I think ethnic/national solidarity seems to also be an important factor. Anecdotally, at least, it seems that all the various "Chinatowns", "Little Indias" and "Little Portugals" of major US cities seem to be a lot safer than places like the South Bronx where the population is a mix of mostly impoverished black and Hispanic people of various nationalities. Tight, ethnic communities seem to have less crime, less graffiti, etc., probably due to a stronger sense of community and pride, despite the fact that the residents are often just as poor as anyone in the projects.

[PainRack]

If it stops scum from vandalising the lifts/common areas what’s wrong with that?

Obviously using violence as punishment isn't desirable to most societies but what you describe as public mischief is still vandalism that should be stopped, I don't see why a fine would be a bad thing.

I'm actually ok with the use of sensors and public cams in the lifts although I know that many people view them as intrusive into privacy. Public living seems to be a delicate balance between privacy and social needs though.

I kinda against the use of caning for vandalism though. Its a relic of our anti communist past that's resurfacing as "its just a strict penalty for anti social behaviour". Especially since for all intents, vandalism should fall under the act of 'public mischief', which indeed, it WAS until communism prompted the change in the laws.

Close your curtains! Failure to do that is your fault.

I think the back and forth between posters on this angle is interesting.

Public high density living involves the management of different expectations and cultures and the alleviating of tension that results. We seen this dispute arise in this thread.
In Singapore, this is managed through the aegis of the law or through meditation between a appointed mediator . Other issues, like public urination is managed through social engineering, for example, sensors and cams to indicate that such behaviour is undesirable and has a penalty.

How would others resolve this?

Considering the brutal murders that happen in lifts and/or in staircases in large houses, I think that's an acceptable intrusion. The lift is not your private property. There was a case when a murderer killed a person coming upstairs, leaving her to bleed out on the staircase near the lift. A camera in there may have saved her life.

The cameras aren't manned in a CCTV manner. They're used purely for punitive purposes, so, you need someone to report the peeing first, that or the weight sensor going off for the police/council management to look back through the camera and find out who did it.

[Flagg]

Why not just put police precincts in the various complexes?

[Crossroads Inc.]

Wanted to repost my thoughts from the first page since it got cut off at the bottom

I have always maintained that the ket to a "Stable" Population center is mixed housing.

"IMHO" the main reasons why Housing projects fail, is that they are JUST 'housing'.
Having a construction where people don't just "go home" but can go to "Live" is the key.
Buildings that have "Shops" on the first floor "Office" space on the second and third, and then living spaces from their up allows people to find jobs very close to where they live. So people with little income, who can't afford a car, can find a job within walking distance.
Also adding shops and business within the grounds of a"project" offers a further incentive for people to take pride in their surroundings and protect it.
Another key aspect is including truly comprehensive programs and facilities, making a project a True City within a city...
You need not just shops and business, but…

A dedicated police station for the project.
A dedicated medical and dental clinic for the project.
A dedicated firefighting force.
Schools, Libraries and day care.
Grocery and food stores.

And one of the most key aspects, having a transportation hub link to the project, so it can be directly linked to a larger mass transit system.

For those interested, I invite all to read up on Pablo Soleri and his theories and works concerning Acology

[PainRack]

With regards to Crossroads inc, HDB has gone through various incarnations for their planning projects, but each HDB estate has within its area

1. Various medical and usually a dental clinics.
2. Schools.
3. Shopping and eating.

Police and firefighting isn't that divided, although each....... section? Anyway, there's a neighborhood police post covering each section of the more mature estates but firefighting is more centralised. There isn't a need to spread out firefighters every few kilometers.


There's been swings here and there, but its impossible to go beyond walking distance to purchase basic groceries and eat out. Part of the reasons for the new wave of upgrading is to make our estates more elderly friendly, which includes more wheelchair access, making more shops easier to access and the like.

There are differences between HDB estates based on the age it was built in of course. Boon Lay was built during the older era, where commercial shops were placed on the first floor. Tampines zoned commercial within a central hub for each block of flats. Throw in increased access at gas stations(I used to buy fresh fruits and vegetables at the gas station in my previous apartment) and well..... you get all your basic commercial needs within walking distance.

Collasace that around a central shopping nexus, which usually means a mall which nowadays also means a train station. There's........ attempts to situate sports facillities within each estate but land constraints mean this has to be done sparingly and it may not be in the central transport nexus.

Entertainment is the only reason why we need to move out from walking distance, albeit, in the Singapore context, that means a few kilometers away.

Granted, that's the ideal, some estates are just too large however for all of the above to be strictly true, although facillities are still kept within short reach. Its just that with an aging and increasingly dense population, they're not accessible enough.

[K. A. Pital]

Few kilometers, like 2 or so, are not outside walking distance, maybe except for the elderly. What I often see here, though, is that in contrast even to a Chinese-style hutong, there are no services underneath large houses and therefore no community. A high-rise may be locked somewhere on the outskirts of a town, leaving you with 2-3 km to the next grocery store. Of course this is absolutely unacceptable, but in the West there's no general rule that the first floor of a building is to be occupied by shops, police depts, hairdresser rooms and the like, which seems to be always true in the East.

It is hard to have a "sense of community" if your high-rise doesn't have any community to speak of.

[Zaune]

You see that even in the kind of relatively low density three-to-five bedroom housing estates that are pretty much all that get built in the UK anymore; my family was relatively lucky in that we had a convenience store less than a quarter of a mile away, as well as a football field attached to a sports centre, whereas a newer housing development a short distance away didn't even have footpaths.

[PainRack]

Actually.... its one of the things I could never get used to for Western cities. I..... literally can't understand how one can live in a block where you have to drive, for kilometers to reach a grocery store.

Australia zoning for her cities to me made at least much more sense. Its a further walk than I'm used to but the shops are within walking distance. Well, unless you live in the suburbs.... Or god bless you. Outback.......

Few kilometers, like 2 or so, are not outside walking distance, maybe except for the elderly. What I often see here, though, is that in contrast even to a Chinese-style hutong, there are no services underneath large houses and therefore no community. A high-rise may be locked somewhere on the outskirts of a town, leaving you with 2-3 km to the next grocery store. Of course this is absolutely unacceptable, but in the West there's no general rule that the first floor of a building is to be occupied by shops, police depts, hairdresser rooms and the like, which seems to be always true in the East.

It is hard to have a "sense of community" if your high-rise doesn't have any community to speak of.

I don't think anything more than 2 kilometer is feasible for someone carrying groceries to class as walking distance. But that's what public transport is for.

Our new attempts to introduce elderly friendly estates had a proposal to situate eating and the US equivalent of corner stores within one block....... sadly, the era of corner stores in Singapore is slowly coming to a demise.

[K. A. Pital]

Public transport in the West sucks donkey balls. Also, if you wish to go to a grocery store being forced on a tram or a subway is just wrong. Wastes lots of time for people working 8-9 hours a day and creates only resentment. If I were choosing between an East Asian and a Western big town, the Asian town would win so easy it's not even funny.

[Simon_Jester]

That's a compelling hypothesis. But I think ethnic/national solidarity seems to also be an important factor. Anecdotally, at least, it seems that all the various "Chinatowns", "Little Indias" and "Little Portugals" of major US cities seem to be a lot safer than places like the South Bronx where the population is a mix of mostly impoverished black and Hispanic people of various nationalities. Tight, ethnic communities seem to have less crime, less graffiti, etc., probably due to a stronger sense of community and pride, despite the fact that the residents are often just as poor as anyone in the projects.

I believe it- but I submit that part of the way that manifests is that solidarity among the functional-poor members of the community makes it easier for them to control the dysfunctional-poor minority in their midst.

Also that ethnic communities tend to contain more immigrants. And for a given income level, immigrants will tend to have a higher proportion of functional-poor than people born in the US. Most of the people who immigrate to the US are functional people who were quite capable of getting along in their original society; they're just here for the money. Almost none of them are at their current level of income because they're too antisocial to hold down a job or things like that.

Whereas in a native-born community with a lot of poverty, the percentage of people who are bad neighbors, and are poor because of whatever makes them a bad neighbor, is higher.

Actually.... its one of the things I could never get used to for Western cities. I..... literally can't understand how one can live in a block where you have to drive, for kilometers to reach a grocery store.

In the US, pre-1945 cities were 'normal' from your point of view. Then the automobile industry and real estate industry took off. As a result, basically every family had at least one if not multiple automobiles, and the real estate industry made a tremendous push (advertisement and lobbying) to get the American middle class into single-family homes.

Thing is, if you try to put 1000 people in single-family homes, they will necessarily be spread out over a couple of square kilometers of land- which means impractically long walks to shopping. An entire generation of "bedroom communities" sprung up, places where people literally only lived to sleep, and commuted to work by road or (sometimes) rail. A certain amount of basic small business springs up in bedroom communities by default, but it never reaches the same level of vibrancy you get in an urban environment where work and living space are mixed together.

Meanwhile, because nearly everyone who could afford a house in the suburbs was buying one, a cultural expectation grew up that having your own home in a large, residential area surrounded by like-minded people was "middle class." Living in denser housing, being around immigrant populations unable to afford single-family homes of their own, and of course living in an apartment over a shop were all signs of "lower class" living.

Fast-forward twenty or thirty years, and not only were the middle class systematically fleeing urban centers and taking their money into the suburbs, but policymakers responsive to the middle class had largely forgotten or started ignoring one important fact: that not everyone had their own car, the way the middle class did. So public housing projects went up in places inappropriate for people without their own cars, and city layouts in urban areas were redesigned in such a way that they became practically unlivable without a car.

To some extent this was accidental (textbook example being Brasilia, which is not in the US but fell prey to the 'automotive city of tomorrow' disease). To some extent it was deliberate (the easiest way to keep out poor people from your residential space is to make it impossible for them to walk there).

Australia zoning for her cities to me made at least much more sense. Its a further walk than I'm used to but the shops are within walking distance. Well, unless you live in the suburbs.... Or god bless you. Outback.......

American suburbs experience the same pressure as Australian suburbs, plus what I just described.

[PainRack]

Simon, you see, I can understand that for people living in the suburbs. I just don't get that for cities. I been to San Francisco and Perth and a comparison between the two is.... well......... beyond words.

I'm not talking about getting clothing and the like within walking distance, but having to DRIVE to get food is absurd. There were corner stores and places where you could get basic needs, but they were the equivalent of 7-11 in Asian cities.......

[Simon_Jester]

Yes, I agree. It's irrational; the product of perverse incentives, and perverse attitudes toward how business and residential areas should intermix.

[energiewende]

So my original, satirical contribution:

Throw out all the actual poor people and replace them with children of upper middle classes who are unemployable because of their non-marketable skills.

Now indeed seems to be the majority position. The way to fix public housing: require middle class norms and kick out anyone who violates them. Fine, I agree that will work. You wonder why in the US and Europe this doesn't happen? Because most people with middle class norms live in low density private homes. Places like China people with middle class norms have to live in econoblocks because they are poor, and places like Singapore they have to live in them because land is expensive. What, then, is the high density public housing for? What do you do with the persistently anti-social? Cane them until they shape up, as proposed? Leave them to die in the streets?

[Zaune]

I'm fairly sure going to regret asking this, but would you be so kind as to explain precisely what you mean by 'middle class norms'?