That’s only true if the apartment is a shitty American 5 over 1 stick building. In a modern concrete apartment with concrete internal walls you wouldn’t hear the neighbors.
You don’t even need concrete. I’m in a modern building made from mass timber construction, and it’s dead quiet inside my apartment – except for the hum of my AC and the sounds of my cat meowing whenever he wants attention.
Well, I live in a America and can’t wait to get out of apartments. I’ve moved a lot in my life and have a lower middle class income. I’ve never found an apartment or condo where I didn’t have to deal with hearing neighbors yelling, stomping, talking outside my front door in the hallway, opening sliding doors, listening to music, etc. Only twice, when I lived with a friend in their house, did I feel like I had any peace or privacy.
Sure, there would be lawns mowed and all that, but I’d take that over the things I’ve heard and worried about my neighbors having heard.
If I could have real privacy in an apartment I could afford I’d continue to rent, assuming I don’t get priced out of the market completely at this rate.
Exactly! We’ve gotten into this weird feedback loop where NIMBY policies like restrictive zoning and parking minimums and setback requirements have made there be a systemic shortage of housing in total, but particularly a shortage of dense, walkable housing near transit. This has warped the market such that large houses on large plots of land – which are objectively the luxury housing option – are cheaper than apartments or condos in a dense, walkable community near transit. This makes people think density = expensive, which makes people think we need to get rid of density for the sake of affordability, which just makes the shortage even more severe!
Can you elaborate? What about stating that I do not have the choice for noise isolated apartments demonstrates that I object to good, affordable apartments near me ?
There’s nothing that differentiates “affordable” apartments those at that aren’t except the amount that are available. Maybe you aren’t a NIMBY but a lot do use similar arguments and then start on about heritage protection.
So what should I do in my current situation so that my choices about where to live help to improve the overall situation regarding housing and land use?
Note, my point isn’t Apartments Bad. My point is that my only choice is overpriced shitty apartments.
We lived in a concrete apartment, couldn’t hear the neighbors in their apartments but could in the hallways, and smell everything too, could hear the cars revving outside, and had to put up with the weekly (if not more often) fire alarm at 2am which meant evacuating the building.
And no space for anything, no hobbies that might generate noise.
Also have to deal with STRATA, hope you didnt want to put anything on your balcony cause they didn’t want that, hope you can wait 12 months for the leaking ceiling to be fixed thats dripping and growing mould.
Also it cost a fortune to heat or cool the place, we’re in a bigger place now that costs 1/2 as much to heat/cool
Take it from someone who is autistic, highly introverted and has only lived in apartments in my adult life: you do not ever need to see or interact with your neighbors. It’s as optional as with a house. The most I see of my neighbors is that once every few weeks I might stand in the elevator with one of them for 15 seconds.
Yep, it’s a crapshoot depending on your neighbors. Back in my dense living days, things were pretty good, except when the drug dealer moved in next door…
Same applies to some extend to suburban density, but even crappy neighbors are harder to notice… Except the house that does car tuning all the time with a priority on loud revving engines… Ugh…
Yup. My prior experience with apartments - even single height apartments - is that either you’re going to annoy someone with sounds (had a neighbor that worked nights and hated every thing I did when I was home) or you’ll be annoyed with someone not being quiet when you personally need it.
Hell I had a house with a neighbor who rented that liked to leave their dog tied up outside at 5pm barking incessantly. Not fun to come home from a day of work with a stressful commute to try to unwind.
Ownership. You will not own your apartment, it will be owned by your landlord and you will pay him whatever he demands. You will not own the forest, either. The state will, or some private entity will. No trespassing.
You can still own and buy appartements in most places in the world. Then there are many forms of social housing.
Rent to own is also a possibility but not seen in most countries.
Seems your problem is not ownership but landlords.
Some countries in Europe have the right to roam on any land. State owned and private owned. (Maybe more countries somewhere else have it to but I don’t know)
It does not need to be so terrible. In some places it just is because of profits
Oh, you planted zoysia grass and maintain it well? That’s “inharmonious” , you need to tear that out and plant fescue.
You don’t have a maple tree of at least 8 feet in height in a particular spot in your yard? Inharmonious again, you need to buy a tree, can’t wait for a sapling to grow.
Your driveway has dirt on it? You must get it pressure washed.
You want to park your vehicle in your driveway? It better not have any branding from a company on it, or it better not be an older car or any pickup truck, those are too ugly for our precious neighborhood.
Regulations tend to be “don’t make fire hazards”, or “don’t block streets”, generally you can’t get a regulation on the books without an actual rationale behind it.
Yeah that’s my main concern. Also less space to store things like my bike.
Then there’s the upstairs neighbors. Like I get that the kids are loud. But also could the kids stop throwing stuff at my bird feeder. And their upstairs neighbors flooded the dang place
There is no such thing as universal right to roam in the US. Likewise, apartment ownership (we call them “condos” when you can own one rather than rent) exists here, but by far is the minority option in multi-family housing. You can claim you want to buy a condo or apartment as much as you want, but that doesn’t do you any good when no one is selling. Units are built to be rented which is a recurring revenue stream, which big capital likes a lot more.
The significant problem is not that nobody is whacking out slabs of apartment housing fast enough. The issue is that our underlying capitalist system is fucked, and a simple anti-car attitude is not going to fix that.
This isn’t a particularly convincing analogy. Islands have limited space. The suburbs where I live border tons of open space and parks. Meanwhile, our school district is already overwhelmed with children, so converting commercial spaces into apartments will merely add to congestion and sprawl. NIMBY’s make a convincing argument against denser residential construction.
A better focus would be the ability to simplify public transit and walkability. Town centers and public spaces could be more accessible with denser residential construction, and the additional green space can be closer to where you live without everyone needing their own half-acre yard to mow and water.
Yep, Toll Bros buys a horse farm and makes half acre mcmansions. There are some big properties that have covenants that prevent it, and the zoning in my township won’t allow new subdivisions less than 2 acres, and we have some great municipal parks which will never be developed. But that means everything is spread out to make public transit untenable. You need a car to get to the nearest train station, and then you need a car when you get off the train at any stop outside of the city.
There’s no one-size solution to combat sprawl. High density housing makes a lot of sense some places, and not so much in others.
God I hate living in high density housing. Dogs yapping, bass and loud music booming, smelly, loud, animal poop and pee on every green/natural area, higher crime, more traffic, etc.
I live in an apartment with actual good sound-proofing. It’s almost dead silent inside except for the quiet hum of my AC. It’s legitimately so much quieter than my gf’s family’s house, where you constantly hear the rush of cars driving by on the street. Not to mention leafblowers and lawnmowers.
You realize you are speaking from a very lucky position right? Everyone here agrees quiet apartments with clean facilities are pretty nice, but a large majority of apartment dwellers live in older, very noisy, very poorly managed facilities.
It’s very fair to want the conversation on improving apartments, it is super important. But you.have to acknowledge that people’s response about their apartment history is informed from lived experience.
It’s not luck. Things are built for a reason, the regulations and structures of society are designed, and it artificially dictate s what is built. Perhaps they live in a place where the regulations mean that sensible livable apartments are fairly abundant. Perhaps you don’t. That’s not luck, those places were designed that way.
I think the phrase “lived experience” should automatically disqualify someone from speaking about any topic. They’re just anecdotes, usually in contradiction to actual data.
So for example the “lived experience” of black folks in the southern US in the 60s isn’t valuable I’m the discussion of racism in America? Of course it is. Their first hand experience (indeed anecdotal as you say) is meaningful.
In the context of apartments, especially in America, millions of units are no where near the soundproofing or quality OP was describing. You could determine that by age of the buildings alone.
Do you have sound dampening data for apartments across the country?
Anecdotes are only problematic when they are purported as data. By definition someone relaying their lives experience suggests they are describing their individual life to you. It’s fine to want to move from anecdote to data, but when you talk about “disqualification” from discussion you’re just being a gatekeeper. There is no data rigor here, this is a message board about a meme.
Lastly the person I responded to described THEIR lived experience (the quiet apartment they have) so that further insulates myself and others from any objective requirements to comment.
So for example the “lived experience” of black folks in the southern US in the 60s isn’t valuable I’m the discussion of racism in America?
When their “lived experience” is “no, I’ve never seen any racism!” then no, it’s not really valuable, and it’s incredibly suspect to boot.
It’s fine to want to move from anecdote to data
Let’s just start with data. Anecdotes are supplementary. The way “lived experience” is usually used (and is used here) is to provide the primary support to an argument.
Again you’re expecting a rigor beyond the venue of discussion, especially given that the person I replied to started with an anecdote as well.
If you have data on the soundproofedness of apartments across the US to contextualize the common consensus to the level you expect I would be happy to browse it.
Until then I’m comfortable believing anyone (as in the many commenters here) who say their apartment was loud. The several I lived in were as well so I have no reason to question it
you’re expecting a rigor beyond the venue of discussion
Maybe, but I’m trying to change that. I think we can all be smarter than just trading anecdotes.
And your post emphasizes my point. We’re talking about a preferred hypothetical society, while the point he was trying to make with his anecdote is that apartments are and always will be poorly soundproofed, world without end. Obviously it sounds absurd when you extrapolate it out to the societal level, but when you couch it in anecdotal terms it makes the argument seem worth discussing on the face of it. It’s not.
We can talk about how currently apartments are shoddy in the US, that’s a worthwhile discussion. But to be against the idea of apartments in general because apartments right now are poorly regulated is silly.
![[meme] How would you rather see this land developed?](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f6ec67a5-2636-4875-8dd4-fa5241a3083c.jpeg){kind=link}
Noise. Neighbours being closer.
That’s only true if the apartment is a shitty American 5 over 1 stick building. In a modern concrete apartment with concrete internal walls you wouldn’t hear the neighbors.
Exactly. Here in Sweden if you live into a newly built apartement you are basically guranteed grade A sound isolation.
Even older ones usually hold high quality because of renovations.
deleted by creator
You don’t even need concrete. I’m in a modern building made from mass timber construction, and it’s dead quiet inside my apartment – except for the hum of my AC and the sounds of my cat meowing whenever he wants attention.
You’d think living in a building that was built in 2020 would be good enough. But here I am every night cursing my neighbors who stomp around at 11pm
Blame shitty government regulations and capitalism for shitty apartments.
The minimum standard we should expect is that you can pound a punching bag at 3am without your neighbours hearing anything.
100% we need better regulation
Well, I live in a America and can’t wait to get out of apartments. I’ve moved a lot in my life and have a lower middle class income. I’ve never found an apartment or condo where I didn’t have to deal with hearing neighbors yelling, stomping, talking outside my front door in the hallway, opening sliding doors, listening to music, etc. Only twice, when I lived with a friend in their house, did I feel like I had any peace or privacy.
Sure, there would be lawns mowed and all that, but I’d take that over the things I’ve heard and worried about my neighbors having heard.
If I could have real privacy in an apartment I could afford I’d continue to rent, assuming I don’t get priced out of the market completely at this rate.
The entire reason your prices out is that there aren’t enough apartments though.
This is the shit that exhausts me about NIMBYs. They have cause and effect totally reversed and I don’t know how that myth got so ingrained.
Exactly! We’ve gotten into this weird feedback loop where NIMBY policies like restrictive zoning and parking minimums and setback requirements have made there be a systemic shortage of housing in total, but particularly a shortage of dense, walkable housing near transit. This has warped the market such that large houses on large plots of land – which are objectively the luxury housing option – are cheaper than apartments or condos in a dense, walkable community near transit. This makes people think density = expensive, which makes people think we need to get rid of density for the sake of affordability, which just makes the shortage even more severe!
Utter insanity
I’m sorry, did you just actually call me a NIMBY?
Yeah, by proxy
Can you elaborate? What about stating that I do not have the choice for noise isolated apartments demonstrates that I object to good, affordable apartments near me ?
There’s nothing that differentiates “affordable” apartments those at that aren’t except the amount that are available. Maybe you aren’t a NIMBY but a lot do use similar arguments and then start on about heritage protection.
Do you? Object?
So what should I do in my current situation so that my choices about where to live help to improve the overall situation regarding housing and land use?
Note, my point isn’t Apartments Bad. My point is that my only choice is overpriced shitty apartments.
Voting locally is the single most important thing anyone can do to fix the housing crisis. End single-family zoning in your area.
Oh so you’re also going to rebuild all apartment buildings in the US now? Lol
I wish you were right
We lived in a concrete apartment, couldn’t hear the neighbors in their apartments but could in the hallways, and smell everything too, could hear the cars revving outside, and had to put up with the weekly (if not more often) fire alarm at 2am which meant evacuating the building. And no space for anything, no hobbies that might generate noise. Also have to deal with STRATA, hope you didnt want to put anything on your balcony cause they didn’t want that, hope you can wait 12 months for the leaking ceiling to be fixed thats dripping and growing mould.
Also it cost a fortune to heat or cool the place, we’re in a bigger place now that costs 1/2 as much to heat/cool
Neighbours will still be closer in apartments.
Take it from someone who is autistic, highly introverted and has only lived in apartments in my adult life: you do not ever need to see or interact with your neighbors. It’s as optional as with a house. The most I see of my neighbors is that once every few weeks I might stand in the elevator with one of them for 15 seconds.
I’m not sure why you’re trying to tell me this. I’ve got my own experience living in apartments and having neighbours.
Yep, it’s a crapshoot depending on your neighbors. Back in my dense living days, things were pretty good, except when the drug dealer moved in next door…
Same applies to some extend to suburban density, but even crappy neighbors are harder to notice… Except the house that does car tuning all the time with a priority on loud revving engines… Ugh…
Yup. My prior experience with apartments - even single height apartments - is that either you’re going to annoy someone with sounds (had a neighbor that worked nights and hated every thing I did when I was home) or you’ll be annoyed with someone not being quiet when you personally need it.
Hell I had a house with a neighbor who rented that liked to leave their dog tied up outside at 5pm barking incessantly. Not fun to come home from a day of work with a stressful commute to try to unwind.
I love my quiet.
The instant I step out my door I’m surrounded by people in an apartment. Sorry but nothing you said is true. I’ll never live in an apartment again.
Are they just hanging out in the hallway? Are you sure you are in an apartment?
Ownership. You will not own your apartment, it will be owned by your landlord and you will pay him whatever he demands. You will not own the forest, either. The state will, or some private entity will. No trespassing.
You can still own and buy appartements in most places in the world. Then there are many forms of social housing.
Rent to own is also a possibility but not seen in most countries.
Seems your problem is not ownership but landlords.
Some countries in Europe have the right to roam on any land. State owned and private owned. (Maybe more countries somewhere else have it to but I don’t know)
It does not need to be so terrible. In some places it just is because of profits
Owning an apartment and owning land are wildly different. The housing structure alone is not the entirety of home ownership.
Since we’re just talking hypotheticals anyway, let’s say in the second image the land is actually owned by the owners of the apartments, like a co-op.
That’s still not ownership. That’s co-ownership. I’m not free to do what I want with it, when I want.
Same reason I hate HOAs
I own my house and don’t have an HOA. Guess what?
Still can’t do whatever I want with it when I want. Still need to get permits and follow local/state regulations.
But those regulations tend to be more sane.
Oh, you planted zoysia grass and maintain it well? That’s “inharmonious” , you need to tear that out and plant fescue.
You don’t have a maple tree of at least 8 feet in height in a particular spot in your yard? Inharmonious again, you need to buy a tree, can’t wait for a sapling to grow.
Your driveway has dirt on it? You must get it pressure washed.
You want to park your vehicle in your driveway? It better not have any branding from a company on it, or it better not be an older car or any pickup truck, those are too ugly for our precious neighborhood.
Regulations tend to be “don’t make fire hazards”, or “don’t block streets”, generally you can’t get a regulation on the books without an actual rationale behind it.
The vast majority of places where you own a house, you still can’t do whatever you want.
Whatever reasonable thing you want will tend to fly though. Versus HOA which often dictate crazy restrictions.
Which would be less of a problem if there were more housing stock.
But also, we need regulations on HOAs.
It’s called a condo
Condo financing is not available everywhere.
But it should be, that’s the point.
While you are wishing for things, wish for me to win the lottery
Way to miss the entire point of the thread
what no right to roam does to a mfer
Have you heard of a national or state park?
deleted by creator
Yeah that’s my main concern. Also less space to store things like my bike.
Then there’s the upstairs neighbors. Like I get that the kids are loud. But also could the kids stop throwing stuff at my bird feeder. And their upstairs neighbors flooded the dang place
You can own and apartment. And there’s right to roam.
There is no such thing as universal right to roam in the US. Likewise, apartment ownership (we call them “condos” when you can own one rather than rent) exists here, but by far is the minority option in multi-family housing. You can claim you want to buy a condo or apartment as much as you want, but that doesn’t do you any good when no one is selling. Units are built to be rented which is a recurring revenue stream, which big capital likes a lot more.
The significant problem is not that nobody is whacking out slabs of apartment housing fast enough. The issue is that our underlying capitalist system is fucked, and a simple anti-car attitude is not going to fix that.
This isn’t a particularly convincing analogy. Islands have limited space. The suburbs where I live border tons of open space and parks. Meanwhile, our school district is already overwhelmed with children, so converting commercial spaces into apartments will merely add to congestion and sprawl. NIMBY’s make a convincing argument against denser residential construction.
A better focus would be the ability to simplify public transit and walkability. Town centers and public spaces could be more accessible with denser residential construction, and the additional green space can be closer to where you live without everyone needing their own half-acre yard to mow and water.
I think you replied in the wrong place? I didn’t give an analogy.
You’re right, I meant to reply to the OP. I agree with you. Still figuring out Lemmy, sorry.
Yeah but then they build more houses and destroy more of those open spaces to make room for more suburban sprawl
Yep, Toll Bros buys a horse farm and makes half acre mcmansions. There are some big properties that have covenants that prevent it, and the zoning in my township won’t allow new subdivisions less than 2 acres, and we have some great municipal parks which will never be developed. But that means everything is spread out to make public transit untenable. You need a car to get to the nearest train station, and then you need a car when you get off the train at any stop outside of the city.
There’s no one-size solution to combat sprawl. High density housing makes a lot of sense some places, and not so much in others.
God I hate living in high density housing. Dogs yapping, bass and loud music booming, smelly, loud, animal poop and pee on every green/natural area, higher crime, more traffic, etc.
Uh yes, the suburban tranquility of non-stop leaf blowing, lawn mowing, and pickup humming.
Musics to my ears.
It’d take it over the sound of the upstairs neighbor fucking his microwave while bowling at the same time
I live in an apartment with actual good sound-proofing. It’s almost dead silent inside except for the quiet hum of my AC. It’s legitimately so much quieter than my gf’s family’s house, where you constantly hear the rush of cars driving by on the street. Not to mention leafblowers and lawnmowers.
You realize you are speaking from a very lucky position right? Everyone here agrees quiet apartments with clean facilities are pretty nice, but a large majority of apartment dwellers live in older, very noisy, very poorly managed facilities.
It’s very fair to want the conversation on improving apartments, it is super important. But you.have to acknowledge that people’s response about their apartment history is informed from lived experience.
It’s not luck. Things are built for a reason, the regulations and structures of society are designed, and it artificially dictate s what is built. Perhaps they live in a place where the regulations mean that sensible livable apartments are fairly abundant. Perhaps you don’t. That’s not luck, those places were designed that way.
The homie was pooped out in a place where it was possible, and that was luck.
I think the phrase “lived experience” should automatically disqualify someone from speaking about any topic. They’re just anecdotes, usually in contradiction to actual data.
Ok?
So for example the “lived experience” of black folks in the southern US in the 60s isn’t valuable I’m the discussion of racism in America? Of course it is. Their first hand experience (indeed anecdotal as you say) is meaningful.
In the context of apartments, especially in America, millions of units are no where near the soundproofing or quality OP was describing. You could determine that by age of the buildings alone.
Do you have sound dampening data for apartments across the country?
Anecdotes are only problematic when they are purported as data. By definition someone relaying their lives experience suggests they are describing their individual life to you. It’s fine to want to move from anecdote to data, but when you talk about “disqualification” from discussion you’re just being a gatekeeper. There is no data rigor here, this is a message board about a meme.
Lastly the person I responded to described THEIR lived experience (the quiet apartment they have) so that further insulates myself and others from any objective requirements to comment.
When their “lived experience” is “no, I’ve never seen any racism!” then no, it’s not really valuable, and it’s incredibly suspect to boot.
Let’s just start with data. Anecdotes are supplementary. The way “lived experience” is usually used (and is used here) is to provide the primary support to an argument.
Again you’re expecting a rigor beyond the venue of discussion, especially given that the person I replied to started with an anecdote as well.
If you have data on the soundproofedness of apartments across the US to contextualize the common consensus to the level you expect I would be happy to browse it.
Until then I’m comfortable believing anyone (as in the many commenters here) who say their apartment was loud. The several I lived in were as well so I have no reason to question it
Maybe, but I’m trying to change that. I think we can all be smarter than just trading anecdotes.
And your post emphasizes my point. We’re talking about a preferred hypothetical society, while the point he was trying to make with his anecdote is that apartments are and always will be poorly soundproofed, world without end. Obviously it sounds absurd when you extrapolate it out to the societal level, but when you couch it in anecdotal terms it makes the argument seem worth discussing on the face of it. It’s not.
We can talk about how currently apartments are shoddy in the US, that’s a worthwhile discussion. But to be against the idea of apartments in general because apartments right now are poorly regulated is silly.