Learn to Stop Worrying and Love The High-Rise

I love how you guys never take a hard-line stance on things. Outrage sells, but it doesn't educate. You are educating.

The key to high rises is MIXED USE. For some reason even people who are into urbanism and similar forget this when talking about high rises, it is very possible to have highly livable and nice high rise areas if they also have the shops and restauraunts and cafes and so on that we always expect when talking about other types of high quality city living. That is why i have always thought the "Tower in the park" concept to be abit misguided since it's basically suburbanizing high rises. Don't get me wrong easy access to a park is fine but developers first priority should be providing tenants with easy access to shops, restaurants and so on. Give people somewhere to get a snack they can nibble on while enjoying that park.

This is aimed at a North American viewership mostly, whereas I'm from a mid-sized to small Swiss city. But, I too ended up in a 70s high rise due to having to find a cheap enough place, on a par with my limited finances. And I have to say: I actually really, really like it up here. I'm on the 9th floor, with unusually big windows, providing me with lots of daylight and far views, yet there's zero lack of privacy. It's great. I even have a well-sized balcony. Other parts may not be as great, like the state of the laundry rooms we all share here (five washing machines for plus minus 60 apartments, you maybe can imagine how not everyone takes care of shared spaces as much as one could... But that's rather high-level lamenting, I'd say. Overall it's definitely a good deal for me - and if I'm ever forced to leave, due to renovations or so, I'll definitely miss this perfect mixture of being in a pretty central spot, yet feeling far away from things, too. And let's not forget the views. It's like... "visual breathing"!

The type of housing inside the tall building matters too! If it’s all bachelor and 1 bedrooms, then most people won’t see high rise living as something that could be for them or people like them. We need a healthy mix of multi-bedroom units in towers.

As a Hongkonger, I like skyscraper but our city is too claustrophobic. With 40 storey buildings surrounding 7-metre wide streets, it really feels like the sun never reaches the ground sometimes.

We should build high-rise with spacious flats, thick walls and garden. That would be truly livable.

Anyone that hates on tower housing has never lived in one. Cause I'd 100% take tower housing over an old house with roommates. Also not to mention the views, THE VIEWS!

My problem with the whole "tower in a park" concept is that the much-vaunted "green space" is almost always useless, dead space. It would be much better to have larger towers and to concentrate that green space into a large park so that it is large enough to be useful. This is the Manhattan approach, and it works well.

I loved living in a high rise in Chicago and I want to do it again. I love how the city sounds from more than 10 stories up, and high-floor views of Lake Michigan are breathtaking. I'm open to considering any real, practical downsides, but people who find them unliveable should speak for themselves.

I've spent the last fifty years thinking about this issue. I've lived in a variety of urban housing. I presently live in a low-rise, very old apartment building. I like it. But I also spent years in a high-rise with a wonderful balcony view, which I enjoyed tremendously, and now miss. They are both in the same neighbourhood, and when it comes down to it, what matters is the street-level environment. The high-rise was in a dense neighbourhood with a tremendous variety of stores and institutions (libraries, churches, offices, etc.) available at street level. So I had the fabulous view and the anonymous privacy, and at the same time could step outside and be in a sidewalk cafe or a public library within minutes. A short walk brings me to lovely parks and wooded ravines. That's what makes life so pleasant in the St. Jamestown/Cabbagetown/Gay Village neighbourhoods. If I had been living in an anonymous tower surrounded by miles of parking lots out in Scarborough or North York, then tower life would have turned into an alienated nightmare. It's what happens at street level that counts. Tower life has its own pleasures and pluses, especially when there are balconies. A dense, walkable, colourful and lively downtown neighbourhood with a variety of housing is NOT harmed by a sprinkling of tall towers. They bring in the population that can support the atmospheric coffee shop or the delightful bakery or the odd-ball shop that specializes in vinyl records. And you can still have plenty of tree-lined streets and refreshing outdoor life. There is probably an ideal ratio, but that would probably vary depending on the physical layout and landforms.

Personally, high-rises being greater than human scale is why I like them. They inspire a sense of awe.

Funny to see you used my complex as an example of surface parking. It must've been built (late 70s) at a time with parking minimums, because there is probably 2 spots for every household. Needless to say, 2/3 of the parking lot is empty. A lot of people here commute by public transportation, since it's so close to a major LRT station, so most of those spots go unused. They could easily fit a fourth tower in those empty lots!

I like high rises and medium rise buildings as a concept but I hate thin walls. If there is some way they can guarantee that I can live in an apartment and never EVER have to hear my neighbors, then sign me up. However, in my experience, even expensive apartments are no guarantee that I won't be up at 1AM hearing my neighbors going at it to the sound of bass-heavy music.

What's maddening about talking about housing is people take their own preferences, and counter discussion topics with those. It's like they can't imagine that housing isn't built for only them.

I like both in a visual, urban sense. For my personal preference I prefer to live in a walkup where I can walk up and down the stairs every day (on the second to fourth stories). I don’t like elevators, I have lived in highrises but I live on the 3rd or 4th floor and take the stairs.

One thing I almost never see mentioned is 10-15 story height flats, they're much denser than 3-6 story flats, yet they don't require as much free space around them. My mother owns a fairly affordable flat that she bought because of her work back when she was young. The building is 13 stories high, with 3 2-bedroom units on every floor. There are three of this flats on the lot (one has 4 1-bedroom and another has 2 3-bedroom units on each floor), yet they are all roughly the same size and take up around 65% of the land they sit on. The remaining 35% is mostly reserved for a pleasent park in between, since all the parking can be fit on either the ground floor (that is excluding the street front, which has stores), or the level underneath. I think this is also something for many cities to think about. The reason I went into so much detail is because I want to demonstrate the achievableness and versatility of such a model.

I'd love a cheap tower rental with a south-facing balcony, as long as I can take the stairs every day and get quads the size of a pumpkin. I love the look of tall apartment buildings all around, and if it means more continuous green space in the city, that's a huge win. Reducing traffic is much more of an issue for me

« That’s a trade off that should be their decision » - is a great summary and the video’s strongest point!

I went from living in a very low-density suburb to the 6th floor of a seven-story dorm building when I went to college, and I loved it. Not that it was "high-rise" per-se, but the view was spectacular to me and it gave me a similar feeling to the comfy seclusion of being high-up in a tree like a treehouse. I could see how it might get a bit dizzying at true high-rise levels but I don't really understand people's seeming obsession with being close to the ground. We should allow development for all preferences and budgets.

As you guys mentioned, so much of the criticism of towers seems to come from the subjective aesthetic preference for "traditional" architecture. Many people just hate the ~look~ of "glass boxes" (as I so often see it phrased). But what so many people overlook, and what you guys get at, is that the "aesthetics" of traditional architecture often (and increasingly) do not produce the spaces people actually want to ~live~ in. Traditional architecture is nice to look at, but often provides significantly less natural light and significantly less usable floor space for a given footprint. As someone who has lived in traditional, "picturesque" mid-rise buildings ~and~ in "high"-rises in both DC and Manhattan (with DC being roughly 14 stories), I can say, definitively, that the high-rises were significantly more enjoyable living spaces. More light, more space, cheaper, and—what this video overlooks—more amenities (doorman, package/mail service, gym, ground-floor retail, trash service, etc.). So, even beyond the cost element, when cities block the construction of towers, they're also forcing residents to accept worse material living conditions purely to satisfy the aesthetic concerns of individuals who won't even live in those buildings in the first place. It's completely selfish and counterproductive toward the goal of making your city more livable.