Why Can't Walnut Creek Build 3 Bedroom Apartments with a Playground?

qurren

I wonder why 4b apartments are so rarely seen in the US. In Asia they are quite common.

wolvoleo

I thought it was about the CD-ROMs lol. I had no idea it was a town also.

mikelitoris

“Human driven cars are going to be around for about 5 years” is one of the most out of touch quotes I’ve seen this month. Also, all of this is about NIMBYism, which is about house prices being inflated to make up most of households’ wealth, which is not fixable without triggering a massive wealth redistribution. Most western societies are stuck in a very non-ideal Nash equilibrium and it is not going to be solved any time soon.

nilsbunger

This is why we can't have nice things. Huge additional costs and design constraints because of * 2-exit-stairwell requirement * elevator laws * parking laws Article contrasts with an apartment building in Denmark to show what could be possible.

jawns

Definitely a tech entrepreneur's take. It's a juxtaposition of optimistic futurism (in 5-10 years, most people will just rely on robocars and robotaxis) and anti-regulatory sentiment (critical of the requirement that elevators accommodate stretchers). Some of the more difficult problems are hand-waved away as, "We could solve this if we just put our engineering hats on." That said, I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's true that other countries and cultures have very different approaches to residential development. But a big part of that is cultural differences in how people live and what they want. Cultures that are more family-oriented are naturally going to have housing that is more family-oriented.

BrenBarn

To me it's somehow emblematic of the situation that we can have an article that starts off talking seemingly reasonably about indoor corridors and building heights, and then halfway through pivots to arguments based on self-driving cars being an imminent game-changer. They already don't have those parking requirements in Copenhagen, and it sure as heck ain't because they've got cars parking themselves with one inch of clearance.

bluGill

You should be looking places other than California before asking this question. In my suburb of Iowa we have apartments that are very similar to this one as far as sizes but the rent is much cheaper. There are also a number of three bedroom apartments in those new buildings, for much more reasonable rent. These apartments have the large parking lots required in the U.S. They have the large elevators required in the U.S. They have the dual staircase required in the U.S. I guess they don't have windows that provide cross ventilation, but realistically in a modern building, insulation is so good you don't need those, and our climate is enough harsher than most of Europe that you will be using HVAC most of the year. As soon as you look at comparisons like this that are also in the US but somehow managed to be much cheaper, you realize the problem isn't whatever this analysis is about. It's got to be something else.

tobinfricke

This seems like a specious argument: "Most of the apartments have a window on just one side. The interior facing rooms on the lower floors are going to have a lot of trouble getting light in. With a window on only one side, you can't ventilate your apartment by opening windows on multiple sides. This increases the demand for HVAC, which increases the cost of living." I doubt A/C costs are anything but negligible compared to the other design decisions.

taurath

Nowhere can build 3 bedroom apartments, except penthouses. It’s not only a national problem, but an international one - almost the entire west can’t build these.

trhway

Adam Sandler's "Click" has a scene explaining it (though it is about hotel there, the "forget all the niceties and maximize the profit" principle is universal) https://youtu.be/BRl2ZM-YguE?t=61 It takes the explicit will of the government (dare i equal it to the will of the people?) to force developers to build at least half decent stuff i a half decent way. Note that the market - "people would vote with their dollar" - doesn't work here due to highly constrained, in many ways by the government, supply.

TheGRS

I'm sorry but the assumption that robotaxis will make parking spots obsolete in 5 years is the sort of thinking that probably keeps Elon Musk a rich little boy. About 10 years ago we had conversations about autonomous driving coming by 2020 and how it would likely make auto insurance irrelevant. That hasn't materialized yet, and granted we are much further along now, but it seems like we're still a long way away from it being the norm to the point where it disrupts city building codes.

jlhawn

> The global leader in self driving cars has a headquarters thirty miles from here - the city could invite someone from Waymo to give a talk on the future of onsite parking and how our codes should adapt. I agree with pretty much everything in your article, Kevin. But I wonder whether Waymo actually has a holistic vision for how families would use their service? Do they expect people with small children to haul around a carseat or booster seat (possibly multiple) for these trips until all their kids are old enough? And spend the extra couple of minutes double parked while they install/remove it?

turtlebits

Why look at a single building and generalize a whole city? Less bedrooms generally means more units and rent. Kids in units means much higher wear and tear. Design is highly dependent on the goals of the building developer.

yen223

Pretty funny that in an article that's 99% about apartments, the top comment here is about cars

ChrisArchitect

Anyone else expecting this to be about Walnut Creek Software? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walnut_Creek_CDROM