AUSTIN | Misc. Discussions - No Politics

[The ATX]

Originally Posted by Vexal

Is there really any use to building towers this tall if they're still only going to have a couple hundred units? Shouldn't these buildings be able to house 1000+ people? Where does all the space go? Jester has several thousand residents and is significantly shorter than all of these. How is this trend of ultra-tall buildings with only a few hundred units going to help the housing crisis at all?

Good luck trying to sell condos with dorm style living and community kitchens.

[Vexal]

Originally Posted by The ATX

Good luck trying to sell condos with dorm style living and community kitchens.

I feel like there is a middle-ground between dorm and what we have now.

[The ATX]

Originally Posted by Vexal

I feel like there is a middle-ground between dorm and what we have now.

I think some "affordable" rental towers that are more like dormitories could work. But the economics would dictate something like the bland Chinese towers in the photo several posts back.

[Vexal]

Originally Posted by The ATX

I think some "affordable" rental towers that are more like dormitories could work. But the economics would dictate something like the bland Chinese towers in the photo several posts back.

I really don't like those. They don't look great in Vancouver, and they make up the bulk of Hong Kong and the Chinese Ghost Cities.

[AusTex]

Originally Posted by The ATX

Good luck trying to sell condos with dorm style living and community kitchens.

Originally Posted by Vexal

I feel like there is a middle-ground between dorm and what we have now.

I wish there were a way to require large developments, either single family homes or high rises, to include at the same average price per square foot, a certain number of smaller units. This would start to address the lack of "affordable" housing of all price ranges being available in all areas. We allow too much exclusion of size and price in most big developments in my opinion.

[Geographer]

Vinhomes Central Park in Saigon is where the city's rich live. It's considered a model of modern, high class, sophisticated living. It has perhaps a dozen identical 50+ floor residential towers.

[zrx299]

Originally Posted by Geographer

Vinhomes Central Park in Saigon is where the city's rich live. It's considered a model of modern, high class, sophisticated living. It has perhaps a dozen identical 50+ floor residential towers.

Good thing our standards are different than Saigon, because that is an all out assault on the eyeballs. Yikes...

[GoldenBoot]

^^^ You all may also want to check out the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat for more information. The CTBUH created the standards for measuring the height of buildings as well as the organization recognized in crowning designations such as “The World’s Tallest Building.”

[the Genral]

Thank you AusTxD and Goldenboot.

[zrx299]

Originally Posted by Vexal

Is there really any use to building towers this tall if they're still only going to have a couple hundred units? Shouldn't these buildings be able to house 1000+ people? Where does all the space go? Jester has several thousand residents and is significantly shorter than all of these. How is this trend of ultra-tall buildings with only a few hundred units going to help the housing crisis at all?

Would you want to live in a 300 sqft place? Because that's what it would take (or worse) to achieve those numbers. What a miserable existence that would be. Warehousing humans.

Imagine a young couple trying to shoehorn their life into that kind of space.

[chinchaaa]

Originally Posted by zrx299

Would you want to live in a 300 sqft place? Because that's what it would take (or worse) to achieve those numbers. What a miserable existence that would be. Warehousing humans.

Imagine a young couple trying to shoehorn their life into that kind of space.

Many people can and do live in that amount of space all over the country and the world. Many people would live in a place of that size for the right price on Rainey Street.

[urbancore]

Originally Posted by chinchaaa

Many people can and do live in that amount of space all over the country and the world. Many people would live in a place of that size for the right price on Rainey Street.

I would never want to do it, but I think developers should be able to build what they want....if there is a market for it, they will sell. If not, they will go under, and a new owner would buy the building for cheap and combine the units.

The market is the best way to deal with these problems.

[zrx299]

Originally Posted by chinchaaa

Many people can and do live in that amount of space all over the country and the world.

We don't need the lower end of our standard of living spectrum driven any further down to levels of the second and third world than it already has been. (We really need global population control, but that's a separate conversation that no one wants to face up to.) If people want to live in a broom closet in Manhattan or rent a $2000 bunk bed in San Francisco, more power to them but lets keep that nonsense there.

Many people would live in a place of that size for the right price on Rainey Street.

Agree to disagree here. That's anecdotal statement that can't be proven for either way. In my opinion the fake trend of micro units only attracts a transient crowd because after a certain amount of time, you'll value space and sanity over a tiny hotel room with no space and move on to other things.

And that "right price" only gets attractive if it's subsidized. That's a whole other can of worms.

[urbancore]

Originally Posted by zrx299

(We really need global population control, but that's a separate conversation that no one wants to face up to.)

It is estimated that the population will shrink as fertility rates are down worldwide.

https://medium.com/s/story/by-the-en...k-2f606c1ef088

[chinchaaa]

Originally Posted by zrx299

We don't need the lower end of our standard of living spectrum driven any further down to levels of the second and third world than it already has been.

Ok, I'm going to stop you there. Living in smaller spaces doesn't equate to second or third world. It may not be your taste, and that's fine. You can continue to commute in from Buda or wherever you live thanks to the taxes we all pay.

[StoOgE]

Originally Posted by zrx299

We don't need the lower end of our standard of living spectrum driven any further down to levels of the second and third world than it already has been. (We really need global population control, but that's a separate conversation that no one wants to face up to.) If people want to live in a broom closet in Manhattan or rent a $2000 bunk bed in San Francisco, more power to them but lets keep that nonsense there.

I had a lot of friends in NYC that were living in small efficiencies in Manhattan and BK. They weren't massive, but they made them work.

The thing about real cities (which Austin is becoming) is the better they are the less you want to be home.

When I lived in Manhattan I wouldn't be home for more than 2-3 hours a day that I wasn't sleeping. Weekends could trend higher than that, but most of the people I knew were either out in a park or at a bar or restaurant.

It doesn't have to be for everyone (and god knows, plenty of people commute from Long Island, NJ and CT to avoid it) but I really started to like going to a sports bar to watch a game vs. watching at a friends house.

In real urban environments the city itself becomes the space you spend most of your time. You wind up meeting people and having a sense of community, it's great.

Even in Austin with our large-ish house that is central I would say my wife and I "stay in" less than 3 nights a week. If Backbeat was still open it would be less than that

These things don't have to be for everyone, but they provide a way for young junior professionals to afford to live in an expensive city in their 20s and early 30s and then "move up" either to larger digs in the city or out to the burbs. It also allows poorer people to continue to live in the urban core, which is never a bad thing.

[We vs us]

Originally Posted by StoOgE

I had a lot of friends in NYC that were living in small efficiencies in Manhattan and BK. They weren't massive, but they made them work.

The thing about real cities (which Austin is becoming) is the better they are the less you want to be home.

When I lived in Manhattan I wouldn't be home for more than 2-3 hours a day that I wasn't sleeping. Weekends could trend higher than that, but most of the people I knew were either out in a park or at a bar or restaurant.

It doesn't have to be for everyone (and god knows, plenty of people commute from Long Island, NJ and CT to avoid it) but I really started to like going to a sports bar to watch a game vs. watching at a friends house.

In real urban environments the city itself becomes the space you spend most of your time. You wind up meeting people and having a sense of community, it's great.

Even in Austin with our large-ish house that is central I would say my wife and I "stay in" less than 3 nights a week. If Backbeat was still open it would be less than that

These things don't have to be for everyone, but they provide a way for young junior professionals to afford to live in an expensive city in their 20s and early 30s and then "move up" either to larger digs in the city or out to the burbs. It also allows poorer people to continue to live in the urban core, which is never a bad thing.

Great comment. This was very much my experience living in Chicago.

[Vexal]

Originally Posted by zrx299

Would you want to live in a 300 sqft place? Because that's what it would take (or worse) to achieve those numbers. What a miserable existence that would be. Warehousing humans.

Imagine a young couple trying to shoehorn their life into that kind of space.

Not really. I live in a 1400sqft apartment currently. I want the small apartments to exist for other people so the overall price of housing goes down in the city as the housing shortage decreases. The same way I fully support building out public transportation for everyone but me to use. I just want a highly efficient system of urban living for the rest of the city, to make room for my own wasting of resources. I think I would get evicted quickly from any dense apartment or condo anyway, because I often watch movies and play games with a giant surround sound system (with subwoofer) in the middle of the night. And I need room for my beanie baby collection.

I think that these buildings could use more 600 - 800sqft apartments however. Unless that is already the norm, and I am just vastly underestimating the amount of utility space (utilities, hallways, elevators, walls, etc) that is required to build upwards instead of outwards. Does anyone know how much more space per apartment is wasted as the floor count increases?

[the Genral]

I wouldn't say its a trend but having worked in the storage industry for the past 4 years I can say that I am seeing more and more people downsizing, many are selling large houses to live in RVs and much smaller houses or condos. There are micro houses on the market that range in size from 150 to 450 square feet and there is a market for them. We see an uptick in business from those people and especially many people and students downtown that need extra storage for items they just can't part with or may need in the future. There's not a whole lot of storage in dorms, condos, and apartments. There is a market for small units for rent or sale and its not necessarily due to financial reasons. From what I gather from the plethora of people I talk to, it is purely by choice. For some, they are unburdening themselves from accumulated stuff. They are also people who travel a lot and don't spend a ton of time at home but want a home to base out of and provide an address. If there is a demand big enough for a developer to appease these type of folks and they decide to build and offer tiny apartments and condos downtown, I don't think it would become detrimental. One way to perhaps accomplish this would be to construct a shell tower and then build to suit the interior. I'm not even remotely educated enough to say this is even feasible, I'm just saying small habitat is also a life choice, not only a byproduct of over populated huge cities where it IS the only option, except for the extremely wealthy.

[We vs us]

Similarly, one of the big things in hotel world at the moment is the rush into the new tier of reduced-size accommodations, very squarely positioned towards Millenials and Gen Y. Hostels and hostel-adjacent concepts, and all kinds of "micro-hotels, " ranging from smaller studios to closets. There's real world demand for smaller spaces, and just like most else in the world currently, there's a very strong generational break in preference. Micro units definitely won't displace a regular guestroom as the standard, but it's become a legitimate part of any larger market's inventory mix.

And that's what it is in the rental world, too -- a part of a larger inventory mix.

And really, if you're looking for 3rd world accommodations, saunter on down to any I-35 overpass, and check out our less fortunate friends in their tents going to bed every evening. That lower bound is always really just a couple of steps away.