How do you think we could change our way of living?

I live in what the Soviets might have called a Krushovka - a low-rise walk up apartment building - and I absolutely love it. In Australia, there is a dread and revulsion for anything that isn't pure suburban car-centric, but as someone who can't drive for medical reasons, living in a cheap unit close to the city is heavenly. I ride my bike to work, walk to get groceries, and pay less rent because units are less desirable. The building is surrounded by a garden with plenty of birds and flowers, and I have a tiny balcony where I have a potted vegie garden and watch beautiful sunsets every day. My family would never ever live the way I do, but even they admit that I live incredibly happy and comfy in this style of housing.

I'm cool with more density for all the reasons stated in this video. But there is one big problem with it and that's what makes me prefer living in a detached house in the suburbs. Noise. Most apartments(at least in the US which is all I can speak for) have thin walls and ceilings. So I have to constantly hear people's feet walking over my head, or hear people's loud TVs coming through the wall. Where I live now I can just open my windows and listen to crickets chirping at night and that's it. I'd gladly live in a walkable area in a condo or apartment if they figure out a way to soundproof it.

I think we should also talk about the quality of housing. For example, privacy and new ways of behaviors. Many people want single house just to get rid of the neighbours noice. Buildings are build poorly without proper sound insulation between units and non existing insulation inside units. Also we became louder, everyone needs home cinema and huge stereo eventhough it is to big and loud for the space. I think people would not care that much about size of their living space as long as it is quality one with access to quality and affordable services. Plus surrounding greenery can make places super attractive.

For 2023, it’s hard to nail down specific predictions for the housing market is because it’s not yet clear how quickly or how much the Federal Reserve can bring down inflation and borrowing costs without tanking buyer demand for everything from homes to cars.

Zoning is probably the main factor when it comes to decentralizing neighborhoods. Not to mention will make the community be much safer and efficient.

When I live in an apartment it was fine when I was single. Once I got married and had my son, it became a nightmare of complaining neighbors. The little guy is active, and the neighbor below could hear him running. Getting a single family was the best decision we ever made.

I agree with this video, but I just moved out of a multi-family building and into a single-family house. The reason for my move was a dispute with the strata council that had turned toxic. I'm reluctant to ever live in a multi-family building again! Unfortunately my energy use will certainly go up and I'm having to spend to furnish my new home. Who your neighbours are really matters, and that's something that's difficult to control.

The problem in the US is that renting an apartment, the vast majority of housing within cities, absolutely sucks. You pay pretty much the same monthly as a mortgage for housing and get nothing in return when you move out. That money is gone. Plus you can't make any modifications that your landlord doesn't approve. When you purchase your own home it becomes an investment. Almost always improving in value over time as you make updates. And at the end when you move out you will likely end up with profit in your pocket. If you could purchase apartments the same way you can a house then it would be a different story.

I live in a coop building. I love living in apartments. What I don't like is how cheap the material many of the new buildings use. My coop building is almost a century old and the insulation is great as well as the sound reduction inside and between apartments. The building my mother lives in is not even a decade old and the walls are paper thin and the winters are cold af if you don't constantly have the heat on.

One thing mentioned in the video is making more townhomes, because those will often be cheaper to buy. I live in Pittsburgh, and developers have been building townhomes all over the city. They are going for anywhere between $700k to $1.5 million, which is nowhere near affordable for most lifelong Pittsburghers. Almost all of the suburbs here are filled with single family homes, and are not very pedestrian friendly. Unless you have a car in the suburbs, you're not getting around.

5:06 I’m in an area of LA which used to be spacious suburbs but is steadily densifying. Because of this, I often see people online complaining about how “crowded” it feels. But I always respond the same way: it doesn’t feel crowded when you’re walking around on the sidewalk in the main shopping center…it only feels crowded when you’re stuck in a traffic jam and trying to get to the shopping center’s parking garage. People don’t take up much space; cars do. P.S. for any LA people out there: CicLAvia is this Sunday. Come out, bring your bike (or rent one), and experience what a neighborhood without cars could feel like!

Toronto has huge housing issues, and it's because of all the reasons listed here

I totally agree with the issue with single family homes. But I live in an apartment building and you don't know the amounts of times I was intrupted of my work or life because of an upstair neighbor's pipe burst issue. Or when someone new moves in and wants to connect to internet and the tech guy literally unplugs my internet connection for hours then forgets to fix it after his job is done. Living in an apartment building as better as it sounds for the environment it is also equally terrible for person life. And I don't think there is a solution for that I don't think anyone can guarantee me that I will have perfect neighbors or people will learn to live in harmony. So my focus is to be able to afford a single family home and move there. Preferably, close to a market or shoping center so I can ride a bike to there. But I will ride my car to my job. If I'm guilty for that then what about super rich people with private planes and car collections. NOT TO EVEN MENTION THEIR HOUSEHOLDS. I'm done chewing on paper trying to drink my coffee of a plastic cup. We're always focusing on the wrong issues. Thank you for the video its well done.

I would never compare Croatian or Jakartian single family homes with US ones. Those in Croatia are dense, narrow, stone, multistorey city houses separated by 1m of free space from one another. Free space is good for cooling and saves energy. The US single family houses are huge mansions, saparated by 10m of lawn around it with no purpose, houses made of wood, that would decay in 30 years and needs to be rebuilt all over again.

My parents apartment sits on top of a shopping center in the city. Everything you need is an elevator ride away. That is the good life!

In the US one of the underlying problems is the very strict zoning and that almost all new residential areas are exclusively zoned for single family homes. British and Dutch style row houses provide a good alternative. You still have many of the benefits of a single family home, but the density is high enough to justify local amenities and public transport.

I wanted to build a tiny house on a trailer in my own driveway of small single family house. For that house, I pay property taxes, insurance, and mortgage. But city hall says that I am not allowed to do that. Apparently I live in a large town, small city, that has little or no imagination. I feel its very unfortunate that although I pay to live, I cannot do what I want on my own property, given that what I want would not hurt anyone. Its very unfair.

I still want a single family home with a nice yard.I currently live in a apartment and I paying rent for something I don't own,two I can hear my neighbors and their annoying music,three the apartment owners can have check ins to my apartment at anytime,four I have to fight for parking in a crowded parking lot and 5 I am disabled and I need a place fixed to my needs.

Apartment style condo buildings are poorly built: Neighbor noise, burst pipes, massive special assessments for maintenance issues. I don't want to smell my neighbors smoking or hear their partying. Condos are overpriced and yet bad experiences.

I left my apartment heater off most of December and January. The other units kept my unit at 72F. The single home was costing me $200-$300 in gas for the furnance.

50% of public transportation in the United States exists in CA and NY.

I grew up in houses and lived in a few apartments in my early 20s. The space wasn’t an issue, but the arguing neighbors , loud music, and booming bass from cars sitting outside my window/ neighbors playing music above me gave me frequent panic attacks . The booming sounds that I couldn’t get away from or drown out with headphones were too much for me as an anxious person.

Don't care about being so green that I have to live right next to and on top of people. Ill choose living on land where my neighbors are close, but far enough that I have space. To each their own..

Having grown up in a small town (

A major obstacle to higher housing density in the US is noise. If buildings could be designed better and constructed better so that noise was not a problem, then the unpleasantness of higher density could be avoided.

I would love to see more "missing middle" housing. I currently live in a single-family in the suburbs. Many people don't know or talk to their neighbors. I noticed during the pandemic, that with people walking out on the street, we met more people in the neighborhood than we did the past 25 years we lived in this house. Also we were playing, biking, walking, running in the street more and there was an actual community feel. Moreover, our house (built in late 70s) has a lot of costs, needs a new roof, yard maintenance, pool maintenance, etc. Our old neighbors moved into a condo because of the cost to maintain their house. I also learned another neighbor, who are original owners of 45 years, are still paying off their mortgage because of the loans they took out on their house to maintain their property. A single-family detached house is not appealing to me at all. The market for missing middle housing is vastly underserved. Living options can't just be single-family or superdense cities. It's a huge detriment to the country that missing middle housing is illegal in most places.

If you live in a building where you share walls with your neighbors, your neighbors' bugs are also your bugs. Roaches and bed bugs spread from apartment to apartment through the walls. I rented an apartment in Houston in 2017. That was 6 years ago, and I still have bed bug PTSD. Never again.

No home being built today (whether an apartment, townhouse, duplex or single family) needs to be larger than 1500 SF. It’s just unnecessary to make it larger. I grew up in a home of 900 SF with my parents and 3 siblings. Although, we also had an unfinished basement, which afforded us laundry space, extra storage, and a place for us kids to roller skate in winter.

I love living in my apartment building - my neighbours are rarely so loud that I am annoyed by noise (the noise from cars on the street is far worse), it's a mid-rise building of only five floors, I have 750 square feet of space with huge windows, I have rent control, and I appreciate that I don't have to be in debt for decades to live here. Apartment living isn't always perfect, but the alternative isn't to promote single-family dwellings, as some people in the comments here seem to thin - the solution is to improve apartments, and provide more options for people.

The solution should be democratized reforestation and asphalt to gravel un-development. It suburban lawns were replaced with native wildflower meadows, permeable pavement and more native trees, then connected into the city with light impact roads and traveled on by electric powered cars, it would go a long way to bringing back space for nature AND preserving the land from agricultural use which promotes monocultures. A suburban neighborhood can support a LOT of plant and animal diversity if we renautralise it. Not to mention, native landscaping is gorgeous and cheap to maintain. The only downside I see is that there will still be traffic and freeways but this can be tackled by promoting autonomous vehicles that can be shared instead of each house having one taking up space and resources. Also, implement new urbanist principles of mixed use so that an individuals doesn't have to drive more than a few miles to get basic things, and if we are lucky, they may even choose to walk, or take a light impact vehicles such as a golf cart or bicycle. Also, allow homeowners to subdivide their homes into more than one unit so they can sell half of the property or turn it into a rental. We are not going to get ride of suburbia but we can make it much better.

The thing you should have emphasized is that, even though high density housing is not for everyone, there should be freedom and availability to choose where you would want to live, you want a house with a front/backyard; you're welcome to it but don't prohibit people to build different in the neighborhood, if there is demand. Also, you can't expect the utilities offered would be the same in an exurb environment than inside a city.

Unfortunately there's a big problem from the city planning departments, they're geared to the use of cars for allowing smaller housing units to be built. For some strange reason the plans MUST include parking space. It's ludicrous, but trying to get the bylaws, planning changes is extremely hard, equally important. Not everyone wants to pay for the upkeep of a vehicle, not everyone even has a vehicle. Building such things as triplexes with good sound barriers is entirely possible. It could be for 2 small families, and a couple, with garden space (no lawns) and fruit trees. The older "apartment blocks" are often horrendous, no sound barriers, no odour controls, and too frequently people who really have no interest in keeping the building livable. That's partially because of absentee landlords or multinational corporations with management companies that refuse to maintain the building.

1:17 all of those so called fantasy homes are actually cheaply made wooden structures (even though they can be coated with stone or brick afterwards), that are slightly sturdier than cardboards. They also suck in terms of heat isolation.

I think there is a factor you aren't calculating regarding Croatia and anywhere in the Balkans. For us in this side of the world it is a lot about surviving, to live in one family homes. We live above a ground geologically active where powerful earthquakes happen. We saw what happened in Turkey with badly built buildings, we saw in Italy with old buildings. Even if we build well, how many quakes can they withstand. After a 6.4 we were super scared to get on our apartment on the seventh floor. We live terrified always waiting for the next shake. Useless to say that i will buy a small one family house as soon as I'm done paying the loan. I guess a journalist in Germany cannot comprehend what is like to live above unstable ground.

theres a bus stop 10 meters down the road from my house and a big supermarket 900 meters away and a school almost in my front yard and i live in denmark and this is pretty common around here

Banks need to ease lending on condo purchases, it’s pretty ridiculous the current guidelines in the U.S. for condo purchases. They are discriminating against lower income people

The UK has a lot of the mixed housing in terraced homes and townhouses, but it's almost completely missing the high density apartments in city centres. It's another horrible extreme, which makes city commuting almost unmanageable, just look at the sprawl of London, it's an absolute nightmare to go from one end to the other even using the tube. It's all because of poor planning and keeping antiquated feudal laws about leaseholding apartments, making it undesirable to build or buy leaseholds due to astronomical costs. Basically those laws mean that almost no one who buys an apartment fully owns it, instead buys a lease from the building owner to use that apartment as their own, but must pay ground rent and exorbitant extensions to the lease. The whole system is a major scam, plus the UK is desperately short of housing. It's all down to big property owner politicians making the rules to favour themselves and their mates screwing everyone else over. Policy changes are desperately needed here for housing as well!

Similar zoning issues exist in Australian suburbs around major city centres. The older suburbs have evolved and most have mixed use with nearby shops and transport. I live in a detached single family house that is close to amenities, schools, child care and public transport. It's the new suburbs that are being built now that suffer from urban sprawl.

A single family home is the only type of housing I am interested in. I don't want to live in a high-density nightmare surrounded by people. I don't want to share walls with neighbors whom I have no choice in selecting. To each their own, of course, but no thanks... I'll stick to my single family home and car in a rural area with my nearest neighbor many miles away.

Zoning laws in Brazil are very different... if it is not a gated comunity, you can build any type of building in your lot (the only restrictions are height and industries)... my neighborhood, for example, it was a suburb built in 1982-85, and in the begining only had single family houses, a middle/high public school, and a pedestrian mall at the center, but in the 90's you could find all kinds of shops, low apartment buildings (four floors maximum), doctors offices etc etc... in the 2000's the zoning law was changed and tall apartment buildings started to appear... nowadays you almost don't need to leave the neighborhood... groceries, drugstores, bakeries, banks, schools, reastaurants all in walking distance or a short biking (it's a big neighborhood)

I like DW production as always. However, the low level mistake shouldn't be done for a such big team. At 9:23 that place is not in Singapore. It is Malaysia which also a British colony before gaining Independent with Singapore. That place is known by "Dataran Merdeka" which can be translate into "Independent Square", you would know how big a mistake you make.

This is one of the biggest benefits of historic structures. Even in nations like the US and Canada, neighborhoods were designed to be walkable before the advent of cars. Preserving the historic buildings that comprise these neighborhoods not only preserves walkable spaces, but also reduces the carbon emissions needed to gather materials for a new building. Historic structures can also be renovated into affordable housing units as well.

Nobody wants to live in a shoebox apartment paying $4000 a month in rent…..

Here in Brazil the contemporary houses is with a big wall and gate that excludes all the connection of the yard with the street, creating dead sidewalks without eyes on the street. I live in a 80s single family home near by the downtown. Condominiums with single family homes is very popular here, and very far from commerces

I love living in an apartment in an European city. Freedom and car independence for us and our children. We used to live in the US for 1,5 years in a house and I hated it - so isolated, have to drive everywhere, really lonely and boring although I had some friends, but I really missed living in a city and couldn't wait to go back to my homeland. In my childhood back home we lived in a 9-storey apartment building and the only sound I can remember from neighbours is some far away piano. Really calming memories. I loved living in a city as a child - total freedom- going by foot to school , then walks with friends, buying groceries on your way home. And I love living in an apartment in an European city now - again total freedom, everything reachable by foot. And we don't hear any neighbours except again for someone playing piano sometimes - beautiful! ❤

"How does zoning work in ths USA?" "It doesn't."

The banks in New Zealand make it harder to obtain a mortgage for an apartment, and easier to obtain a mortgage for a single house dwelling.

Apartments are great for the environment so I guess that makes me feel better about having little privacy, lots of noise from neighbours, running into neighbors in the shared back patio when I just want to drink some tea and let my mind unwind, and the difficulty of getting anything done through the HOA. I bought in 2009 when I was single and saw it as a place to live for 5-6 years. The mortgage is so budget friendly I can't see moving into a million dollar single family home in the same neighborhood and tripling or quadrupling my housing expense, though a wife, child and 2 dogs later it is tempting! A few of my friends have moved to Sacramento for their dream house but STILL commute daily to the SF Bay Area, but as this video says there is the phenomenon of the missing middle so if you want desirable middle income housing good luck finding it!

The problem is that apartment living comes with lots of frustration with loud, messy neighbors that can interfere with sleep or hygiene in the building. Then there is the never ending rent increases. So many greedy corporations and investors push for the highest rent increases each year. Renting used to more more affordable than owning, now that’s usually not the case. If you have your own house it’s a known payment into the future, and eventually you will have it paid off. Rent is FOREVER!

FYI for future pieces, scene from 9:22 is from Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) and not Singapore. I would love the missing middle format. But every region is different and here many homes are multigenerational living.

On a personal level I hate living and raising kids in a concrete high rise in Korea. Especially with toddlers during the first few covid years. Even though sometimes it feels like hell to me at least it's an objectively good way to live? 🥺

One very big problem is zoning commercial and residencial areas as separate when there would be very big benefits to zoning them together. Including a labor force that lives close to work which can help eliminate traffic and pollution. Building that house a lot of families rather than just one family are far more cost effective for people so making only single family homes aloud creates a housing shortage and higher housing prices.

I am pretty happy in my apartment. Those isolated houses are so expensive and utilities like heating in winters would be crazy

I actually never lived in a single house (other than our summer place.) But I don’t think it is a wrong concept but rather how we construct the houses and build infrastructure is the problem. We going going towards a crazy mobility age (home-office, home-schooling, drone deliveries, etc.) It is impossible reverse that trend. So I think this beautiful piece has to be re recorded with a slightly adjusted message. On the other-side, I think living on 19th floor(as we used to live) is actually against human nature. Covid really gave us a good lesson there.

The fact that so many people in the comments think that the only two options for housing are high rise apartment blocks and single family homes is kind of part of the problem, isn‘t it?

I’ve been fortunate to live in several areas of my home country (US). I’ve lived in large cities, the suburbs, and rural areas…and enjoyed them all, at different points of my life. Today I am a remote worker, and prefer to live in a quiet area…far from large amounts of people. I don’t mind things being a little less convenient, and appreciate the mental health benefits of a ‘slower’ paced lifestyle. That could change in my next phase of life…certainly happy now.

5000 sq feet? Bro, me and my partner were looking for 1600 sq condo let me tell you, in the northeast that is HARD

Hey just a heads up: 9:22 this is Dataran Merdeka in Kuala Lumpur, not Singapore 😅

Honestly, just for the price, a townhouse sounds great to me.

In our area there's SO MUCH R1 (single family dwelling zoning). Building up gets expensive because of the earthquake hazard and engineering required, but there's no reason to limit the number of dwellings on these (often quite large) lots. We need to keep the parts of building code and zoning that keeps buildings from falling down but eliminate the parts that are just about creating scarcity and avoiding density.

Come on, Singapore? Would you like to live in an anthill? Natural town or city tissue are low rise (up to 5 stories) multi-family buildings with stores or services groundfloores along main streets. It had always been like that up to early 20th century when cars and elevators cancered cities' genotype. The cure: garage certificate required while registering a car and extra property taxes for uninhabited or overspaced houses/flats.

it doesnt exist anymore. I bought and sold twice in the early 2000s. interest for me was around 3 percent. I wont see interest rates that low again in my lifetime...

Zoning? Urban planning? Being from the Philippines, it is an unfamiliar of these terms. I thought everyone can build houses wherever they want. Informal settlers exists. The roads feels like endless maze of traffic jams.

in Sydney, we called it a war between who have and who have not. Politicians and rich people will always go against the development of high rises in their areas. Less supplies mean higher prices. Simple.

A lot of talk about many theories of living together as a solution, but no one ever mentions the sacrifice needed for the most important factor and that is the idea of "living in harmony" with your neighbors and community. You have to give up on the idea of "personal space" wherever you go and learn to be considerate towards others and tolerant (and patient) to those who are not. Sounds like utopia but it's practiced in some cities like here in Vienna. It's not completely perfect but most people follow this idea and allow for a reasonable amount of discomfort to live together harmoniously.

I live in a small township in Quebec, Canada. Historically, the village and surrounding areas are all single family homes. Many of these were farm houses. Later, other houses were built. We have a shortage of housing and prices have risen greatly. There is a problem of affordability of housing for the young and less wealthy families. We now have the idea of converting some single family homes to shared housing (co-housing). We have a population that is old and getting older. There is the idea of converting a large single family home to a co-housing building for single elderly people to live together to support each other and avoid loneliness. This would free some housing for families to grow in right in the village or near to it. We also have the idea, and now the by-laws to support it, to add tiny homes to the yards of some single family homes to increase population density in our village. We also have developed housing within easy walking distance of the village centre, where there is plenty of shopping and work opportunities for our small population. However, these developments - done in the last fifteen to twenty years - are all single family homes. This is a missed opportunity, in my view. In the last five years, apartment buildings have been built within walking distance of the village centre. It seems we are learning to increase housing stock without wasting precious land which could be used to produce food and to enjoy nature. I love the idea of increasing density in urban areas by creating co-housing, tiny house living and other more dense living situations than the usual North American ideal. I also love the idea of bringing food production into cities, towns and villages. Here in Canada, we can use greenhouses and urban food gardens to produce much of our fresh produce. This would be wonderful, in my view. We all can learn to live more simply, take up less space and love this Earth through all of our choices, values and lifestyle. My village centre is full of people walking about. This makes it a precious place out of the ordinary of North American living spaces.

My take on it is revert single family zoning laws to from single to mixed. Build Singapore styled apartment complexes next to train stations, expand the public rail and bus system. All of this requires money which nobody wants to spend.

The problem isnt the single family home we have had single family homew way longer than we have had cars and there was never an issue, the problem is that car dependent infrastructure, cul de sacs and building these neighborhoods in a loopy fashion and having no public transportation

Show me a single instance of redlining law on the books today. It’s a civil rights violation.

Even before the pandemic I have been looking into getting a house in Indiana I personally do not want a detached single family home because many of the ones I have seen in the US are generally made of wood I personally do not like wood houses and I also don't want to have to worry too much about repairs or a lawn so Im leaning more towards a condo or townhouse the other option I have considered too since housing prices are soo high is just buying a used RV or trailer and living in it!

I would never want a home. I have no reason to have one. Those who settle yes but so many live purposefully single. I am one of them. I can’t take care of a home alone and if I could why🤷🏽‍♀️ I don’t want to be stuck anywhere unless kids are involved.

Just starting to watch this but just want to say I love my single-home suburb.

I wish there were more townhouses (aka terraced houses) in the US

Does vertical building would need more energy than horizontal settlement?

I'm a single person, who wants to buy home for seemingly superficial reason. Where I live most apartments don't allow pets if they do it's a extra fee in the hundreds. It snows here and I'd love somewhere to put my car when it snows, also I really want access to a yard to grow some vegetables and fruits, we don't have public gardening spaces really in America unless you own the land. I can also barely even decorate anything, can't paint walls, I currently can't even put a nail in the wall to hold a clock, just command strips and thanks to this high gloss paint it falls off the wall periodically. I just want my own little space and would be content with a tiny home, but thanks to building restrictions, and forced utilities for some land plots I can't do that unless I know someone who would let me put it on their land

Its the huge direct and indirect subsidies to vehicle drivers (& fossil fuel companies) that allowed and continue to allow suburban sprawl.

Illl be crazy if I choose a crowded trashed downtown Instead of quite suburb

I'm a bike-dependent person who owns a house but no car.

I live in a two bedroom flat near a train station. Five years I've been living here and never had a car. I use the train to commute and walk everywhere I need to. If I need to go a bit further, I get a taxi which are usually available fast enough.

Living in Singapore. I don't own a car and travels mainly using the train and buses. You can practically get to anywhere in Singapore with train and buses. Having a car in Singapore is the main reason Singaporean complains about being poor.

It is very complicated. For example, in CA, we complain the PG&E rate is much higher than SMUD and some people said it is expensive for PG&E to support the less-populated areas; some of them are quite remote/isolated and high-risk wildfire areas. Whose responsibility it is? State? County? those customers? All customers under PG&E? (I guess PG&E wants someone to pay for it). I think this issue should be simpler than the issue with single-family homes, but we still don't have a good solution for it.

What discourages in these kind of documentaries is that human beings are treated just as statistical units, without taking into account that individuals are different in their needs and goals

The problem of single-family home is its long-term sustainability. A city would not be able to keep a healthy enough income for such a low-density suburb to maintain the roads and infrastructure. The problems will show after a few decades and are seen in many cities in America. You lose the economy of scale with single-family homes. No public utility, transportation or investment would make any sense with it. You need a well-designed block of self-sufficient walkable neighborhood without relying on cars for a neighborhood to last a long time.

And if I don't want to live in the city?

Living in an apartment sucks. I have very little outside personal area, neighbors can suck and cause a lot of stress, and I'm limited on the changes I can make to my living space (I hate the color if my walls)

Me in Manila watching this in our single family suburban home 😳

Thanks for sharing!

Nobody involved in the production of this video except for maybe a couple of interns would settle for the cramped living conditions in Hong Kong.

1. Relax zoning laws to allow mixed housing in different locations including closer to the urban center 2. Vastly improve mass transit and decrease spaces taken up by car focused infrastructure like massive parking lots 3. Increase work from home opportunities to bring down cost of living in cities and therefore decrease the number of overall commuters to work

I think we should also look at the differences between single-family neighborhoods. Old suburbs built around rail stations before WW2 often have a main street, good walkability, varied architecture, small setbacks, small yards, many local parks, and some semi-detached homes. Smaller lot sizes and small setbacks make a massive difference. That being said, all SF homes should pay their fair share of taxes.

After living in an apartment next to heroin addicts who the landlord did nothing about I will never live in an apartment again. They broke into my house and poisoned my cat and threw my other cat off a 3 story balcony and stole my stuff. Landlord did nothing. Police did nothing. They then attacked me while I was taking out my trash and tried to break into my apartment again n threatened to kill us. Stole my moms car as well. Gloated about all of it outside our door n windows. It was hell. I never want to have to be trapped in a lease and have no right to safety in my apartment building. Landlord did nothing and police finally slapped them with a charge so I could get a restraining order but to people that crazy it meant nothing. I had to flee and break the lease and my credit took a huge hit. And the landlord came after me for 3 months of the broken lease after I vacated. Which stunted my ability to get a mortage and finance a car for many years. The whole experience gave me horrible ptsd and anxiety. I dont want neighbors I don't want people coming to my door. Ever. That's why I own my own home away from others. People can be bat shit insane.

One big deterent to town homes and condos are the HOAs (Home Owner Association), and the maintenance fees. This is something you own and you don't want rules and regulations to interfere with certain things you decide to do with your property. We do need laws and building regulations to help create and keep respect for neighbourhoods. The HOAs I have heard about, can be a nightmare of rules and God forbid you take a stand and NOTpay fees, etcetera....you could find the Association owning your home from winning in court over unpaid fees and fines accumulation and your 'anti social' behavior. You would be evicted from your home

I like beautiful family houses in USA & Canada & i care much about nature. so, i wish we can find a compromise.

I have no problem living in a condo, but I would like to buy a tiny garden plot nearby, or rent it. That's not available yet, though, and urban gardens have wait lists.

Good video! Another problem that wasn't really touched upon, is the long-term financial infeasibility of pure single family zoning. The costs for building and maintaining infrastructure (roads, utilities) per unit is much, much higher for single family homes while tax revenues generated by those units is much, much lower, not covering these costs. The dense centers are subsidizing the suburbs.

I wish you talked a little about developers and their choice of what to build based on profits

I would love to see a more in-depth video on this from this channel. I live in a family home, which was built 10 years ago in a way that was able to be divided and now 2 families live here. I imagine the same story in Croatia with its notoriously unofficial way of living. Our house is an 8-minute walk from a train station, so I would really advise not mixing the US and EU data into one story. Yes, there are many bad examples of neighborhoods here around Bratislava with bad access to public transportation, but not to the extent of North America. Our home has only 2 meters of garden on 3 sides and is semi-detached. The problem you are describing is I think in the transportation which will soon have to be low carbon. Secondly, in the code - Slovakia has a good code in terms of using enough insulation. And thirdly, many people nowadays grow just lawns, but if you compare established neighborhoods over time biodiversity will be much bigger in the developed areas than in the surrounding monoculture fields. So, I really thank you for the video, but I think it is just about implementation, which means I am looking forward to your new video on how to make these desolate ugly places that are being built more functional from the standpoint of a small municipality, or a local activist!

I'm ok with townhouses, but I've spent too much of my life in low and middle income high rise apartments to view it as anything other than a temporary compromise. There are way to many drawbacks for it to be something I consider actualizing and fulfilling.

Did You know houses were made for banks? Why would you give banks all your money? So banks created houses (a product) so you felt you were getting some thing for your money. In the meantime the banks use your money. And the value of the house goes up over the years and if you sell or default the bank gets more money and the cycle continues.