5 ms·
I was surprised to see the city afforabilty/size chart tracks political parties so closely. Almost all the high growth, affordable cities are Republican leaning
by danielvf 10y ago
I was surprised to see the city afforabilty/size chart tracks political parties so closely. Almost all the high growth, affordable cities are Republican leaning, while the high growth expensive cities are predominately Democrat.
I wonder how close the correlation actualy is.
- HarryHirsch 10y agoFlatland vs the Zoned Zone, at first glance: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/20/the-two-americas http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/20/the-two-americas The real question is why do the cities on the coast prosper, even in a recession, and those in Flatland shrink? Why wasn't the tech labour market in NYC and SF in 2003 and 2007 half as affected as the labour market in Dallas or Austin, even though rents in SF are astronomical?
- dexwiz 10y agoFlatland housing isn't cheap because of the houses. Its cheap because of the land. Since the land is cheap, more factories are built there. The recession hit factories particularly hard, combined with continuous outsourcing efforts, hit Flatland harder than the coasts. The impact of closing a factory isn't limited to the local area. It has a regional impact on support businesses.
- RestlessMind 10y agoI too noticed that. Cities with least price increases: Austin, Raleigh, Atlanta, Vegas, Charlotte, Phoenix...all of them in states leaning Republican. Cities with most price increases: San Jose, Boston, NYC, LA, Seattle, San Diego, DC... all of them in states leaning Democratic. Could it be because of the parties' philosophies about regulations? Conservatives would let you build without much hassle, thus letting supply meet demand. Liberals, on the other hand, would regulate and constrain the supply. Apart from political ideologies, what could be other possible reasons for such disparity?
- ethanjdiamond 10y agoCoastal vs. Noncoastal
- santaclaus 10y agoRaleigh and Charlotte are in a coastal state...
- danielvf 10y agoYeah, but not coastal cities. (We probably also need to specifiy coastal cites with restricted building area as well, since Houston is a major port.)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- graeme 10y agoAren't all the cities in the latter group already dense than the former group? I didn't check all of them, but these are the least dense cities in the second group, in people per sq mile: 1. San Jose: 5000 2. San Diego: 4000 LA is 8000. NYC is 28000. For the former, "build without hassle" group, here are the highest densities 1. Atlanta: 3360 2. Austin: 3358 3. Raleigh: 3158 4. Phoenix: 3025 Las Vegas is 1659, Charlotte is 2720. ------------- I pulled the numbers from Wikipedia. Here's an alternate theory: the cities in the second list are pretty full. So costs go up, despite the fact that the cities are unusually dense. Further, it's impossible to build NYC in modern America. Zoning laws now require more sprawl. The cities in the first list are mostly building low density housing. (Hint: even tall buildings neighborhoods can be low density if built wrong.)
- skybrian 10y agoAnd that's the problem. Supposedly high density in U.S. cities isn't all that high. They're nowhere near "full" (what does that mean when you can build taller buildings) but zoning laws prevent growth.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoThe coasts tend to be more Democrat, and the coasts tend to be MUCH more densely populated.
- charlescearl 10y agoWhile the States that those high growth cities are located in may be Red, the cities themselves are blue bastions. Remember for example that it was Charlotte's progressive LGBT policies that resulted in backlash from NC. Politically the cities are very close in sensibility.
- eloisant 10y agoUrban/densely populated = Democrat. Country side / low density = Republican. You'll find this correlation pretty much everywhere in the world: big cities are progressive and the country side is conservative.