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Economies of scale do not exist in the urban housing market, because supply is pretty much fixed. The more demand, the higher the price. This is no
by mafribe 10y ago
Economies of scale do not exist in
the urban housing market, because
supply is pretty much fixed. The
more demand, the higher the price.
This is not the case, and the issue has been discussed many times here on HN with respect to San Francisco.
There is no technical reason that prevent increase of supply. You could flatten the old town and build Dubai-style 100 floor skyscrapers, creating >20k new flats. The only reason why this doesn't happen is legislation, zoning laws, building codes etc, which in turn reflect the will of the majority of the population who don't want radical change of cities.
- timthelion 10y agoIn Prague it would suffice to start walking around throwing paint at tourists and smashing 14th century statues. That would get the demand down enough that normal people could move back to the center. Edit: My point being, that buldozing the center and building high rises would solve the problem, not due to incresed supply, but due to decreased demand. There's a reason why Frankfurt and London are the only cities in Europe with high rise centers and its not the price of steel. There are pleanty of sky scrapers in Europe, but they always end up being some dead part of town that nobody visits for any reason other than work or sleep. I guess that just returns to my point about "real infrustructure". I think that in the US, you can't even really talk about the "center of the city" because people don't "go to the center" as a thing to do. People stay at home, or drive to the gym, or go to the movies. They don't "go to the center, stop to watch a movie, get out, walk around a bit, have dinner in the center." While all the time thinking of their activity as "spending time in the center" rather than "going somewhere".