What are you sick of doing?

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by Sliver

I'm sick of filling my water bottle. Standing at the sink like a chump is so boring that I dread having to fill it up 10 times a day. Don't want to buy one-time use plastic water bottles because of the environment, but I could see myself getting there.

I went to a thrift store and I got a 1.5L glass beer mug that I use to drink water. It cut down going for water like 6-10 times a day to like 2 times. There's tons of them that people were getting from cases of beer or whatever and dumping them there. It cost me less than $5 and I like it as an option far better than the water bottle options.

It's basically this thing:
https://williamsfoodequipment.com/gl...xoCbWsQAvD_BwE

[The Yen Man]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

Yup. Huge land mass, low population density, no scarcity of property available... as much as I love densely populated urban areas, the conditions that necessitated the model of Tokyo and Seoul don’t exist for anywhere in Canada to be what Peter is referring to. Vancouver doesn’t even scratch the surface.

I guess this is preference. Given a choice, I would much rather live in the suburbs over living anywhere urban. Here in Canada, we definitely have this choice. I'll take the convenience of driving over living in a highly dense area. Sure, there's trade offs in dealing with rush hour traffic, and financial costs of owning a car, but I'd still rather do that and live in the suburbs in my own dwelling over living in a highly dense condo complex downtown with no car.

Even simple things like driving out to the mountains, buying groceries, or going for a round of golf / playing rec hockey, sound like a pain in the butt to arrange without having a car at my disposal.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

Yup. Huge land mass, low population density, no scarcity of property available... as much as I love densely populated urban areas, the conditions that necessitated the model of Tokyo and Seoul don’t exist for anywhere in Canada to be what Peter is referring to. Vancouver doesn’t even scratch the surface.

What are you talking about? We are one of the most urbanized countries in the world. 82% of Canadians live in cities, compared to 91% of Japanese and only 81% of South Koreans.

What's more, the vast majority of Canadians live in six cities where property is extremely scarce... You're telling me we shouldn't actively be densifying the Lower Mainland or the GTA?

The fact that we don't densify more is bad policy choices. For god's sake, over 50% of Vancouver is zoned only for single-family homes. It's insane.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

I guess this is preference. Given a choice, I would much rather live in the suburbs over living anywhere urban. Here in Canada, we definitely have this choice. I'll take the convenience of driving over living in a highly dense area. Sure, there's trade offs in dealing with rush hour traffic, and financial costs of owning a car, but I'd still rather do that and live in the suburbs in my own dwelling over living in a highly dense condo complex downtown with no car.

Even simple things like driving out to the mountains, buying groceries, or going for a round of golf / playing rec hockey, sound like a pain in the butt to arrange without having a car at my disposal.

Then you should pay through the nose for that privilege.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by peter12

Then you should pay through the nose for that privilege.

You should pay the variable cost of city building and operation for the size of the lot you occupy

[peter12]

Originally Posted by GGG

You should pay the variable cost of city building and operation for the size of the lot you occupy

A fellow Georgist, I see.

Cities are engines for economic productivity, the advancement of human prosperity, and cultural development. They do not exist to be someone's private suburban country club.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by JohnnyB

This is, unfortunately, true. In North America there's too strong a cultural commitment to single family dwelling in separate houses. I understand the choice, but personally, I feel the outcome is kind of sad. Density, vibrance and convenience are a natural trio.

Every hotel I have stayed in in Italy, in Rome Naples and Venice has been one or two floors of an old apartment building, usually 4 to 8 floors high, the first floor has a small market where everyone gets what they need to make dinner when they get home, a concierge who's front room has a little hatch in the wall looking onto the hall way so he can watch TV eat dinner and still greet you, the rest of the building might have a few offices and mixed with peoples apartments, in Naples there was always a large open space in the middle that the washing was hung out on and the kids played soccer, each building was a self contained community in itself, no one does apartment and city living as well as the Italians, plants pots nailed to every ledge or roof to grow tomatoes.

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by peter12

What are you talking about? We are one of the most urbanized countries in the world. 82% of Canadians live in cities, compared to 91% of Japanese and only 81% of South Koreans.

What's more, the vast majority of Canadians live in six cities where property is extremely scarce... You're telling me we shouldn't actively be densifying the Lower Mainland or the GTA?

The fact that we don't densify more is bad policy choices. For god's sake, over 50% of Vancouver is zoned only for single-family homes. It's insane.

Property within a city being scarce doesn't matter in a place like Canada where personal transportation is relatively affordable. Canada being one of the most urbanized countries doesn't matter when you consider our density. Calgary for example covers 825.56 km2 for only 1.2 million people. Our urban centres aren't dense like Tokyo and Seoul are dense.

I'm a proponent of densification, but I'm saying that the conditions necessitate the densification of Seoul and Tokyo don't exist anywhere in Canada and won't based on sheer land mass, affordability and availability of personal transport, and our culture.

Let's look at this another way, strictly on population and density.
Population of Japan: 125,710,000 (334/km2)
Population of South Korea: 51,709,09 (507/km2)
Population of Canada: 38,008,005 (3.92/km2)

We can narrow it down by city:
Population of Tokyo: 38,050,000 (urban) (8,790/km2)
Population of Seoul: 9,733,509 (16,000/km2)
Population of Vancouver: 2,264,823 (urban) (2,584/km2)
Population of Toronto: 5,429,524 (urban) (3,028/km2)

Look at the difference. What do people do when they want more space in Vancouver, Toronto, or Calgary? They move away from the core and commute. Mississauga is what it is because people wanted more space and couldn't afford it in Toronto, then Mississauga got exorbitantly priced, so people moved further out to Oakville and Brampton. You can do the same exercise to the east, or to the north. Vaughan, Richmond Hill, etc. Vancouver, there's no moving west, but you can move east. Surrey, Langley, Coquitlam. Calgary? Springbank, Airdrie, Chestermere, Okotoks, Cochrane. Only thing that'll stop that is when the commute becomes too long and expensive for people to tolerate, and well, people still commute in the GTA to the tune of 1hr20m each way, so clearly there's a threshold we haven't broken yet.

People living in Tokyo and Seoul largely don't have that option because look at the population density of their cities and countries. That's why they're building up, not out. They have effectively nowhere to go but up. Nowhere in Canada has the conditions they do to require or promote such a scale up in density.

[peter12]

Look at the difference. What do people do when they want more space in Vancouver, Toronto, or Calgary? They move away from the core and commute. Mississauga is what it is because people wanted more space and couldn't afford it in Toronto, then Mississauga got exorbitantly priced, so people moved further out to Oakville and Brampton. You can do the same exercise to the east, or to the north. Vaughan, Richmond Hill, etc. Vancouver, there's no moving west, but you can move east. Surrey, Langley, Coquitlam. Calgary? Springbank, Airdrie, Chestermere, Okotoks, Cochrane. Only thing that'll stop that is when the commute becomes too long and expensive for people to tolerate, and well, people still commute in the GTA to the tune of 1hr20m each way, so clearly there's a threshold we haven't broken yet.

On its surface, sure, this is a convincing argument, and it is pretty commonly trotted out by defenders of the status quo. One thing you've got to ask yourself is "why do cities with large, diverse, and productive urban cores get so damn expensive?"

The answer is, lots and lots of people - especially younger people - want to live in them!

The biggest problem, especially compared to the Japanese, is how we have essentially made multi-family and light commercial zoning for most our land illegal. We also have shifted the property tax burden onto urban taxpayers to subsidize the massive, massive, massive infrastructure costs of the suburbs.

An indirect consequence of both policy choices is a massive increase in home prices, especially near urban cores which are desirable to younger families for both economic productivity and cultural advantages. When most land area, say in Vancouver, is reserved solely for single family homes, you artificially drive up the cost of land, increase the scarcity of housing units (especially for families) and start the flight to the suburbs.

Again, this is a policy choice. People tolerate commutes because they have no choice. They are simply priced out of markets where the landowning class has used its political weight to make the construction of additional supply impossible.

EDIT: Culturally, sure, you are right. In places like Calgary, there is a culture of car-ownership and large suburban homes.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by peter12

A fellow Georgist, I see.

Cities are engines for economic productivity, the advancement of human prosperity, and cultural development. They do not exist to be someone's private suburban country club.

I hadnt heard of Georgism before but reading through the Wikipedia article in lines up quite well with how I think cities should distribute taxation. I’d have to think about how it works outside of the city concept.

[The Yen Man]

Originally Posted by peter12

Then you should pay through the nose for that privilege.

Meh, I pay whatever majority decides I should be paying for in the form of property taxes. Seems to be working so far. Sounds like urbanites sour grapes to me. You pay for my roads, I pay for your bike lanes, public transit, and downtown roads.

I pay more for my 1800 sqft home than I do for my 600 sqft rental unit downtown. Seems fair to me. I also pay more in utilities costs and upkeep costs, for the size of my home, which is also fair.

[Roughneck]

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

Meh, I pay whatever majority decides I should be paying for in the form of property taxes. Seems to be working so far.

But is it, though? It's a painfully inefficient and volatile tax people bitch about every year. If we're going to be taxed, let it be as efficient and consistent as possible, wouldn't you say?

Sounds like urbanites sour grapes to me. You pay for my roads, I pay for your bike lanes, public transit, and downtown roads.

Except it's your public transit, too. Who's commute do you think mass transit helps more? A person driving in from the suburbs, or somebody who lives in the Beltline?

I pay more for my 1800 sqft home than I do for my 600 sqft rental unit downtown. Seems fair to me. I also pay more in utilities costs and upkeep costs, for the size of my home, which is also fair.

But why should you pay more property tax for your house, than an undeveloped empty lot next to it? The roads still need to be maintained. The utilities still needed to be built to support a development on that lot. The costs are there, factored into an area that is completely built, but that isn't how we tax it. If you chose to expand your house to 2,000 square feet, you'll be taxed more. But why? You aren't adding to any burden on the infrastructure to the house. You'll pay for the extra room via utilities. But what justifies the tax difference between a 2,000 square foot single-family home and an 1,800 square foot single family home next to it on equally sized lots? You upgrade your siding, do some landscaping, change your windows. Your assessment goes up and you get taxed more than somebody who did nothing. Why?



How many sprawling developments would be built if the lot was taxed the same from the time a road and utilities was built to it, as a house was built on it?

[peter12]

Really well said. Inefficient taxation is part of what drives suburban development.

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by peter12

Really well said. Inefficient taxation is part of what drives suburban development.

Yes we know you’d love to tax people who want yards.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Weitz

Yes we know you’d love to tax people who want yards.

Curious why you think that? It is certainly not the largest - that belongs to discretionary zoning.

Hell yes, of course. It's a resource like anything else, why shouldn't it be taxed? As Roughneck said though, I'm more concerned with the low tax bill before a house is actually built on a parcel of land, thus contributing more to the wastage of single-family homes. Why not encourage the best and most efficient use for a piece of land and encourage more types of development options?

[Ducay]

I'm sick of: being confined to the house with my kids.

I love them, but not 24/7 for seemingly weeks on end without activities/outings/school/childcare to break up the monotony.

[Ryan Coke]

Originally Posted by Roughneck

But what justifies the tax difference between a 2,000 square foot single-family home and an 1,800 square foot single family home next to it on equally sized lots? You upgrade your siding, do some landscaping, change your windows. Your assessment goes up and you get taxed more than somebody who did nothing. Why?

How many sprawling developments would be built if the lot was taxed the same from the time a road and utilities was built to it, as a house was built on it?

I assumed it was just because it was an excuse for the city to generate more revenue. Like when I finish my basement, and they decide to charge me more tax for no particularly good reason.

They charge a lower property tax on that empty lot to the builder, but then say that whatever you have of value on that land we would like to have more revenue because of that.

I think that will always be the case, regardless of what the base rate for the serviced land will be.

[Ironhorse]

Originally Posted by InglewoodFan

I'm sick of being the only one able to overcome the forcefield that allows dirty dishes to reach 18" from the dishwasher but no further. Teenagers just can't seem to get past it.

My teenagers have some sort of one way force field that starts at their room door. Dishes and cups seem to be able to go in, but can’t come back out.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by DoubleF

I went to a thrift store and I got a 1.5L glass beer mug that I use to drink water. It cut down going for water like 6-10 times a day to like 2 times. There's tons of them that people were getting from cases of beer or whatever and dumping them there. It cost me less than $5 and I like it as an option far better than the water bottle options.

It's basically this thing:
https://williamsfoodequipment.com/gl...xoCbWsQAvD_BwE

If you’re drinking water for the health reasons (though 6-10 glasses in a 9 hour work day seems excessive), then I don’t understand why you’re taking measures to cut down on the number of times you get up to go get water. Sitting at a desk for prolonged durations is really bad for you. You’re supposed to get up and stretch your legs about once every 45 minutes.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by peter12

Curious why you think that? It is certainly not the largest - that belongs to discretionary zoning.

Hell yes, of course. It's a resource like anything else, why shouldn't it be taxed? As Roughneck said though, I'm more concerned with the low tax bill before a house is actually built on a parcel of land, thus contributing more to the wastage of single-family homes. Why not encourage the best and most efficient use for a piece of land and encourage more types of development options?

When you look at residential neighbourhoods built in Calgary today vs ones built in the 60s to 80s, we’re already seeing that. New houses are built much closer together and with much smaller yards. Personally I could never live in a newer neighbourhood - I need my privacy and trees. But developers are already densifying, because buyers of new homes today are willing to sacrifice yard size for house square footage.

As for moving away from single-family dwellings more dramatically, the oversupply of condos in Canadian cities show that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.