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It has zero to do with steel, concrete or anything material. The cost of making the building is not the issues. It's the property price that is the issue, alw

• cauterized 10y ago
  In places that are already dense and have no room for further sprawl, the cost of building in ways that add capacity can be quite high. It's not just about the raw materials. It's also about labor, safety, regulations (many of which are there for good reasons like preventing people from dying in fires due to cheap construction or lack of escape routes). Even the cost of trucking in the materials and paying for parking tickets/getting permits to inconvenience the neighbors for months on end can be a major expense.
• spoonie 10y ago
  It's the property price that is the issue And a Land Value Tax instead of traditional property tax would go a long way to solving this problem. (Basically, tax the value of the raw land, not the man-made property on top.) It would prevent speculative ownership of land and encourage development of underused land in high-value areas. It would also capture a lot of the value of urban development, so that the urban area gets the money rather than private owners who simply got lucky enough to buy the property.