There are a few concerns I’d have if a six story apartment building went up next to my house - loss of privacy in my own back yard, a more complex relationship with more neighbors, possibility of more noise pollution with less fence to dampen it, parking / traffic difficulties, and potentially shading out my house/yard (or contrarily, reflecting additional sun during some hours) thereby radically altering the class of plants that can thrive there -
A lot of which is addressable, to some extent, but who’s going to pay for the mitigation when housing development spends as little as it can get away with? It’s a business venture, and you get the biggest return on investment by building cheap and selling expensive, not by throwing away money placating the people next door.
… but even so, as much as I’d be pissed about it, I’d also understand that neighborhoods change, it’s inevitable, and to some extent intrusion by neighbors is part of the price for living in town. I could live out in the country, in a spot where I can walk out my front door and not see evidence of another human being - but I choose not to, because there are trade offs that come with that too.
So idk. It would be nice if new development were somehow incentivized to cater to the comfort of their new neighbors. But I’m not sure how exactly to enact that.
