It is largely due to seismic requirements, yes. Platform framed wood construction is very good in an earthquake. Brick sucks for seismic, and concrete or concrete block can be good for seismic loading, but is expensive. Concrete might pencil out if you were building apartments, but that’s usually illegal in most parts of a west coast city.
Thanks for the reply. The older I get the more I wanna live in a dope concrete apartment building, and I don’t even live in an earthquake or fire risk area… (yet, who knows what’s in store)
Poor neighborhoods that are ignored/allowed to grow with zero planning by the city government, eventually become a big enough group of problems that the useless dickheads in charge say “alright, lets fix this”. The quickest thing to do is to paint soulless murals and bright colors on the small poor houses to give the impresion of doing something.
It’s not intrinsically a bad thing nor necesarily counterproductive to attack the aesthetics first, but since the bigger solutions usually never come, it’s infuriating. It’s the kind of shit CIA larvae rearing centres failsons-lead NGOs do.
I lived in Okinawa when I was a kid, pretty much every residential (in the built up southern half of the island at least) is an apartment building between 4 and 8 floors made of concrete. They withstood yearly typhoons and earthquakes so easily that the locals barely even sweated when they happened anymore, and I’ve always wondered why not one capitalist corporation has ever been able to make the calculation that building in a similar way (especially on the hurricane-prone East Coast) wouldn’t make financial sense in the long run.
“Whats the difference? The speed of technological advancement isn’t nearly as important as short term quarterly gains.” - Quark, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine [S4E7].
Yes… severe storms and tornadoes are unfortunately a factor where I live. I’ve seen neighborhoods here that look just as ruined as the one in the photo, sans ashes… and of course most of the new construction is lumber frame. I even saw a 4 story apartment building go up last year, all lumber. Seemed wild to me. One of the many ill effects of housing being considered a commodity instead of essential to human life, I guess.
Genuine question, isn’t that bc of earthquake risk?
It is largely due to seismic requirements, yes. Platform framed wood construction is very good in an earthquake. Brick sucks for seismic, and concrete or concrete block can be good for seismic loading, but is expensive. Concrete might pencil out if you were building apartments, but that’s usually illegal in most parts of a west coast city.
Thanks for the reply. The older I get the more I wanna live in a dope concrete apartment building, and I don’t even live in an earthquake or fire risk area… (yet, who knows what’s in store)
The virgin flammable suburbian mcmansion vs the chad favela
Minus the power lines, give it all a fresh coat of paint/stucco and that would look pretty dope I think.
Spread some public art and plant life around and I’m nearly there
Brightly-coloured bad urbanism is still bad urbanism
Where can I read more about this topic
Poor neighborhoods that are ignored/allowed to grow with zero planning by the city government, eventually become a big enough group of problems that the useless dickheads in charge say “alright, lets fix this”. The quickest thing to do is to paint soulless murals and bright colors on the small poor houses to give the impresion of doing something.
It’s not intrinsically a bad thing nor necesarily counterproductive to attack the aesthetics first, but since the bigger solutions usually never come, it’s infuriating. It’s the kind of shit
CIA larvae rearing centresfailsons-lead NGOs do.https://www.vice.com/es/article/el-problema-de-querer-combatir-la-pobreza-con-pintura-en-bogota/
Thank you. Please forgive, I didn’t intend to imply aesthetics fix everything despite my comment appearing so.
I lived in Okinawa when I was a kid, pretty much every residential (in the built up southern half of the island at least) is an apartment building between 4 and 8 floors made of concrete. They withstood yearly typhoons and earthquakes so easily that the locals barely even sweated when they happened anymore, and I’ve always wondered why not one capitalist corporation has ever been able to make the calculation that building in a similar way (especially on the hurricane-prone East Coast) wouldn’t make financial sense in the long run.
“Whats the difference? The speed of technological advancement isn’t nearly as important as short term quarterly gains.” - Quark, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine [S4E7].
Yes… severe storms and tornadoes are unfortunately a factor where I live. I’ve seen neighborhoods here that look just as ruined as the one in the photo, sans ashes… and of course most of the new construction is lumber frame. I even saw a 4 story apartment building go up last year, all lumber. Seemed wild to me. One of the many ill effects of housing being considered a commodity instead of essential to human life, I guess.