Reply to Soooo, how is high-density looking to everyone now?

Forum Index » Metropolitan DC Local Politics

Reply to "Soooo, how is high-density looking to everyone now?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So the density discussion is effectively over in DC until a few questions can be answered. (I know that the Mayor is hosting her secret hearings, but those are simply pro forma and will die on the vine. The Council is not voting density right now. They don't have the time or the money.)

Density will be on pause until several questions can be answered.

1. Elevators need to be re designed. They need air exchangers and holographic buttons. They need to be contact free.

2. Stair wells need air circulation and non occupancy sterilization where once the door closes and the stairs are empty, UV Light turns on and sterilizes surfaces.

3. Common areas need modern air exchangers. The kinds you find in envelope homes.

4. I think the days of common kitchen spaces are gone in multi family homes. Individual cooking spaces are simply cleaner. This is a bummer because DC has some great apartment buildings with beautiful common kitchen spaces.

5. I HATE to admit this, but parking is going to have to come back for several years. There is just no way WMATA is going to come up with a clean metro system anytime soon. So people are going to drive. Therefore all of these new buildings with no parking spots is simply going to mean cars parked on the streets. We need to go back to old parking spot for units built.

6. Low income housing is going to need to be city wired for internet. If you have seen any of the public school discussion, distance learning is simply not happening with families that cannot afford internet at home. So if the housing is going to be subsidized or otherwise low income, it needs to have city provided internet, not simply access to a new inbound school.

And the excuse of just build it now and we will work out the details is simply not good enough because we won't work out the details. This will pass and we will re learn these lessons when this rolls through again.

Right now the density discussion is being made solely based on economic lines (who can I sell building rights to). Any future discussion needs to include public health implications.
[/quote]

Wait, do you think they're putting holographic buttons in every elevator in the city? They aren't. Why do we need to completely redesign the way we use buildings and land for decades to cope with a virus that will be around for a few years at most? Some of what you're suggesting is good policy that should have been done before regardless of the pandemic, like providing Internet in low-income housing. But why should we force buildings to have underground parking -- which SIGNIFICANTLY increases the cost of the building and, therefore, the cost of the housing in it -- when there will likely be a vaccine distributed before some of the buildings you'd make this change for are even built?[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics