01-18-2026, 12:19 PM
Speaking for myself, I've lived in government-furnished apartment (quarters), mortgaged mobile home on rented ground, mortgaged house, owned mobile home on rented ground, and (now) owned house. There's something to be said for each, other than government-furnished quarters. Mobile homes can be very dense, and very cheap compared to the same area with single-family houses. Owned house sounds like it would be cheap after the initial investment, but property taxes and homeowner association (HOA) fees can be substantial. On the other hand, ground rent for mobile homes can rise very rapidly if property taxes do - the landlord passes them through, and the land is assessed for its (high) value if it were built up with single-family houses instead of mobile homes.
Big however: what, exactly, is wrong "sprawl?" Traffic, mainly, since as single-family housing expands, the trunk highways will always become inadequate unless they were built crazy-wide at the very beginning... which early, low average population didn't provide the tax base to support. What made that situation temporarily viable at the beginning in the US was construction of the Interstates (a military project, something we forget) and "urban renewal" which project-ized (or Pruitt-Igoed) near-downtown inexpensive apartments and small/multi-family houses into government-run high-rises so near-downtown beltways could connect up the Interstates.
The thing is, the late highly-lamented Pandemic gave a boot to one potential solution to sprawl: telecommuting. The trouble with that is, it only works for what can be phoned in and the AIs - crude as they are now - are going to handle a lot of that. The Japanese have a system: home or near-home light industry, where a family makes parts for assembly elsewhere in a shed or with a few others in a local small plant. 3d printing hadn't been invented yet when they came up with that system. Unless you're building bridges, tanks, or jet planes it's not a bad way to go.
In my opinion (supported by some evidence) most of the arguments against dispersed housing (aka sprawl) are at least somewhat specious. Plentiful energy from clean, reliable sources (nuclear - especially micro-nuclear - and natural gas) overcomes most of the objections if they were sincere. I believe a lot of objections to "sprawl" are analogous to forceful anti-smoking partisans: the worst of those were envious ex-smokers, just as "sprawl" haters envy their countrymen who can still live and work in the country, in affordable single-family houses. The environmental and other collective objections can all be handled with a modicum of forethought and friendly negotiation (rather than anti-house negation as seen in California). Sure, smokers endanger their own health, but "secondhand smoke" was always a stretch by people who just hated smokers; same with overpopulation haters who just don't like children around.
One answer to "sprawl" is to actually address its problems (car to outer-ring lots, then train to downtown if there's any reason to go downtown, for example). The US (and, I think, Canada, Australia, even China) have adequate land for living - though not always enough for food production; in the Chinese "ghost cities" we have an experiment with "new cities" that really did arise, though the effort was nullified by corruption at all levels. Also triggered by said corruption in the first place, but that's another matter.
Big however: what, exactly, is wrong "sprawl?" Traffic, mainly, since as single-family housing expands, the trunk highways will always become inadequate unless they were built crazy-wide at the very beginning... which early, low average population didn't provide the tax base to support. What made that situation temporarily viable at the beginning in the US was construction of the Interstates (a military project, something we forget) and "urban renewal" which project-ized (or Pruitt-Igoed) near-downtown inexpensive apartments and small/multi-family houses into government-run high-rises so near-downtown beltways could connect up the Interstates.
The thing is, the late highly-lamented Pandemic gave a boot to one potential solution to sprawl: telecommuting. The trouble with that is, it only works for what can be phoned in and the AIs - crude as they are now - are going to handle a lot of that. The Japanese have a system: home or near-home light industry, where a family makes parts for assembly elsewhere in a shed or with a few others in a local small plant. 3d printing hadn't been invented yet when they came up with that system. Unless you're building bridges, tanks, or jet planes it's not a bad way to go.
In my opinion (supported by some evidence) most of the arguments against dispersed housing (aka sprawl) are at least somewhat specious. Plentiful energy from clean, reliable sources (nuclear - especially micro-nuclear - and natural gas) overcomes most of the objections if they were sincere. I believe a lot of objections to "sprawl" are analogous to forceful anti-smoking partisans: the worst of those were envious ex-smokers, just as "sprawl" haters envy their countrymen who can still live and work in the country, in affordable single-family houses. The environmental and other collective objections can all be handled with a modicum of forethought and friendly negotiation (rather than anti-house negation as seen in California). Sure, smokers endanger their own health, but "secondhand smoke" was always a stretch by people who just hated smokers; same with overpopulation haters who just don't like children around.
One answer to "sprawl" is to actually address its problems (car to outer-ring lots, then train to downtown if there's any reason to go downtown, for example). The US (and, I think, Canada, Australia, even China) have adequate land for living - though not always enough for food production; in the Chinese "ghost cities" we have an experiment with "new cities" that really did arise, though the effort was nullified by corruption at all levels. Also triggered by said corruption in the first place, but that's another matter.
Non-practicing atheist