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> the same crowd that argues that building additional highway capacity won't accomplish anything because it'll just get filled with more cars It will allow mor

> the same crowd that argues that building additional highway capacity won't accomplish anything because it'll just get filled with more cars It will allow more people to commute into the city, which is the goal, right? > seems to think that additional housing capacity won't similarly be filled up immediately. And more people will be able to live there... Isn't that the goal?

Spooky23 9y ago
In both cases there are tradeoffs and diminishing returns. We discovered in 1930s New York with the Triborough bridge that highways will always reach a level of equilibrium (i.e. Max peak capacity) and will drive sprawl -- the new trio generation doesn't necessarily improve efficiency. In the case of NYC, it created inefficiency as it pushed the metro area up 75 miles up the Hudson River and at least 50 into Long Island and Jersey. Housing is boom/bust. Housing booms always attract dumb money and always bust.
- closeparen 9y ago
  >it pushed the metro area up 75 miles up the Hudson River and at least 50 into Long Island and Jersey. So... it unlocked a whole bunch of housing supply? Sounds like a great policy!
xienze 9y ago
> And more people will be able to live there... Isn't that the goal? The goal is "I want to be able to afford to live here." The only way to really affect prices is to absolutely flood the market with new housing. You can't just do it with a couple hundred units here, a couple hundred units there. Everyone in the world wants to live in SF, remember? They're just going to get snapped up and housing will still be expensive, the only real difference is that there's some more people living there now.
- astrange 9y ago
  I doubt everyone in the world wants to live in a city with bad transit, unusable public schools and feces everywhere, but if you want to reduce demand you could try and prop up some competitor cities instead.

Spooky23 9y ago

In both cases there are tradeoffs and diminishing returns. We discovered in 1930s New York with the Triborough bridge that highways will always reach a level of equilibrium (i.e. Max peak capacity) and will drive sprawl -- the new trio generation doesn't necessarily improve efficiency. In the case of NYC, it created inefficiency as it pushed the metro area up 75 miles up the Hudson River and at least 50 into Long Island and Jersey. Housing is boom/bust. Housing booms always attract dumb money and always bust.

closeparen 9y ago
>it pushed the metro area up 75 miles up the Hudson River and at least 50 into Long Island and Jersey. So... it unlocked a whole bunch of housing supply? Sounds like a great policy!

xienze 9y ago

> And more people will be able to live there... Isn't that the goal? The goal is "I want to be able to afford to live here." The only way to really affect prices is to absolutely flood the market with new housing. You can't just do it with a couple hundred units here, a couple hundred units there. Everyone in the world wants to live in SF, remember? They're just going to get snapped up and housing will still be expensive, the only real difference is that there's some more people living there now.

astrange 9y ago
I doubt everyone in the world wants to live in a city with bad transit, unusable public schools and feces everywhere, but if you want to reduce demand you could try and prop up some competitor cities instead.