
Why America's New Apartment Buildings All Look the Same - hyperrail
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-13/why-america-s-new-apartment-buildings-all-look-the-same
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ethagknight
Almost every example photo provided in the article are a) reasonably good
looking buildings and b) distinct looking in some ways. Not every building
needs to be a landmark icon. Most properties, like most homes, are just a part
of a much larger fabric, and the 4-6 story 'stick and concrete' structures are
extremely effective. I am building one of these now, and it is an absolute
sweet spot for most of America for construction cost, building codes, density,
and schedule. Any taller and we get into high rise building codes and costs
sky rocket. Lower density is hard to make a real estate play due to land costs
in areas you want to place apartments. Wood is super cheap, renewable, and
easy as a building material. Most urbanizing US cities could use another
10,000 apartment units like this to support revitalization of the urban cores
across America.

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dwd
What you see a lot of low-rise apartments in Australia using is prefabricated
frames and trusses and either autoclaved aerated concrete or polystyrene
cladding.

Because of the light weight you see all sorts of modern designs using
colourful sunhoods and blades to make the buildings more distinctive.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
> A four-story Texas doughnut can get 50 or 60 apartments onto an acre of
> land, while the most aggressively engineered West Coast stick-and-concrete
> hybrid (two-story podiums are allowed now, along with other variations) can
> get almost 200.

Sounds like we should be building more of these in our cities to increase the
housing supply.

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ido
I wish they’d build them here (Berlin)!

Germany is noutriously slow to build, and as a result there are stark housing
shortages in the big cities. Partially it’s due to the German affinity to
bureaucracy but otherwise the local quality of construction is actually high
(and therefor buildings take a long time to build).

However with rapidly growing urban areas that already experience housing
shortages and soaring rents & purchase prices there is no other solution than
to dramatically and swiftly increase supply.

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magduf
From my little bit of investigation into rents in German cities, it seems like
they're downright cheap compared to American cities now.

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ido
That's just because they started from a much lower base 10 years ago, there
has been massive relative increases.

Also rents are controlled[1] so it can be a bit deceptive - they are cheap but
if you go to a viewing for one of those units you will find yourself as one of
50-100 applicants. And if you want to buy your own flat _those_ prices are not
controlled.

Additionally, remember that salaries are a lot lower than in the US, and that
at least in Berlin there have been ~10% YoY rise in real estate prices for 10
years now & even those (mostly-controlled) rents have increased 6-7% YoY every
year for a decade.

[1] [https://www.thelocal.de/20180214/controversial-rent-
control-...](https://www.thelocal.de/20180214/controversial-rent-control-law-
does-work-after-all)

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mc32
Sure, many have similar look and feel and interior appointment, but I fail to
see how this is worse than apartment and condo buildings in Japan, SKorea,
China, Taiwan, etc with their penchant for exterior decorative tiles of
different kinds but generally quite interchangeable. Also they look better
than the low to mid rise abominations from the 60s and 70s.

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jdhn
Figures that New Jersey (home of the perpetual NIMBY and corresponding high
housing prices) would be leading the charge against these buildings.

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ranrotx
Looking at the photos, it appears that Texas is well represented (and not in a
good way). My fear is that in 20 years, these buildings will be a stain on the
landscape, as many owners will not spend a dime on aesthetic upgrades.

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wenc
The article says the method traces to 1830s Chicago, but interestingly modern
day Chicago doesn't look like that.

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8bitsrule
Farther down, it mentions that the 1871 Chicago Fire resulted in a wood-
construction ban "still partly in place".

Britannica notes that "The [1871] slums became kindling for the downtown
conflagration, where even the supposedly fireproof stone and brick buildings
exploded in flames as the destruction swept northward."

[https://www.britannica.com/event/Chicago-fire-
of-1871](https://www.britannica.com/event/Chicago-fire-of-1871)

