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The first article mentioned that Honolulu is the most expensive city to build underground parking. Each parking space costs $48,000.
There are not many underground parking in Honolulu. I guess the principal reason is weather. There is no brutal winter, so there is no need to go underground to retrieve your car without confronting minus 10 degree temperature.
But there are two municipal parking lots which are built underground. One is located in Chinatown, which is 4 levels deep. The other is also in Chinatown but at the periphery of downtown which is only one level deep. But the 4 level deep underground parking lot does not have elevator while the one level deep does have.
Both underground parking lots are not free but charge very reasonable rate. $1.50/hour day time and $1/hour after 5 pm and on weekend.
I have been to the Chinatowns of NYC, Philly, Boston, San Francisco,....Yokohama and even London. I would say the parking rate in Honolulu is the lowest. In London, they already charged 4 pounds/hr for on street parking meters 12 years ago.
Seems like the German examples discussed on the thread managed to build them for relatively cheap housing back in a less prosperous (60s) time.
Yes, back than such housing estates were planned and financed by the city or the state. It's called "Sozialer Wohnungsbau" (subsidized housing construction). That was quite common. The apartments and row houses in Garath weren't fancy but the construction was state-of-the-art for this time. The partition of the apartments was modern and the living space was quite generous. And most important it was affordable for average and low income families.
But today? "Sozialer Wohnungsbau" is almost non-existent in Düsseldorf anymore. These days, almost all new housing estates in Düsseldorf that were built in the last couple of years or are currently under construction looks like this:
That's now state of the art, it's nice and beautiful, but it isn't affordable anymore for average people. It would be affordable if such housing estates would be planned and financed by the city. But it's financed by investors that demand outrageous yields. It's even more absurd, considering the low interest rates. At the moment the government can borrow money for free. It would be so easy to build fancy, state-of-the-art housing, that is affordable, even for low income earners.
As far as I know, the last housing estate in Düsseldorf, that was (at least partly) financed by the program "Sozialer Wohnungsbau" was the "Solarsiedlung" (solar housing estate) in Garath:
It's not fancy, but it's surely much better than the old housing from the 60s.
For this housing estate they knock down some outdated apartment buuildings from 1961. About half of the apartments there have an upper limit of rent.
I'm really concerned about the current development in Düsseldorf. It's surely the same in all major German cities. No surprise that more and more people get the impression that the society falls into pieces.
I'm really concerned about the current development in Düsseldorf. It's surely the same in all major German cities. No surprise that more and more people get the impression that the society falls into pieces.
Since Schröder and 2010 Germany has had soaring inequality. Germany nowadays is more like a US or UK then like a Denmark or Switzerland.
Yes, the economy has done very well since 2010, but, as in other Western countries, neoliberal reforms benefit the upper classes moreso than the rest.
Since Schröder and 2010 Germany has had soaring inequality. Germany nowadays is more like a US or UK then like a Denmark or Switzerland.
Yes, the economy has done very well since 2010, but, as in other Western countries, neoliberal reforms benefit the upper classes moreso than the rest.
We are getting off-topic.
The income distribution in Germany is in no way more similar to the ones in the U.S. or in the UK than it is to the ones in Sweden, Denmark or Switzerland. The Hartz4 benefits heave the recipients in Germany above the poverty threshold in the U.S. On the other side the salaries in very well paid professions is much lower in Germany, compared to the U.S.
The problem in major German citiis is not that low income earners don't earn enough, the problem is, that all new state-of-the-art housing estates are super fancy. Practically unreachable for low income earners. Why everything has to be super fancy these days? And why is so many reat estate in larger cities owned by greedy financial investors? Everyone in Düsseldorf can find a fairly decent housing. But the differences in housing standards are these days so much wider then they were 30, 40 or 50 years ago. This development will lead to ghettoization.
New state-of-the-art housing are for lower income groups in major German cities still surely more easily in reach than in major U.S. cities. The rent for a state-of-the-art 3 bedroom apartment in Boston starts somewhere north of $6,000. The rent for such an apartment in Düsseldorf starts at about €1,500.
Soaring inequality is surely a problem in all countries around the world. I wouldn't say that neoliberal reforms are the main reason for that. I would say it's more a result of more and more jobs with extremely high salaries. More and more people are able to get insanely wealthy, that makes the situation really depressing for low income earners.
Last edited by lukas1973; 07-27-2016 at 03:43 PM..
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