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That's not quite right. The argument about widening highways leading to more traffic is called "induced demand" and is an accepted concept in traffic engineerin

That's not quite right. The argument about widening highways leading to more traffic is called "induced demand" and is an accepted concept in traffic engineering and city planning; when you make driving easier or cheaper, people will do more of it because they can. The same person with the same car will use it more of the time, because why not? That's not quite how housing works. Yes, I suppose there's a broad supply-demand dynamic inasmuch as areas with more affordable house prices tend to see bigger houses and land parcels bought, but still, people don't just use more units of housing stock in response to a slightly less onerous housing crunch. If housing in the SF Bay area suddenly became more attainable, I wouldn't buy 3 apartments just 'cause.

rm_-rf_slash 9y ago
But to be fair, more housing stock in San Francisco could also lead to wealthier tech workers buying crash pads in the city for work during the week while they spend their weekends out at their houses in Silicon Valley, Berkeley, etc.
- abalashov 9y ago
  All of that is certainly true, but given the supply and the pricing, it seems very unlikely that the needle is going to move anywhere near that much? In what other major metropolis in the world do you see people doing that on a mass scale — the kind of mass scale at which it is meaningful to speak of induced demand? The very wealthy will do it, of course, as they always have, and always will.
xienze 9y ago
> If housing in the SF Bay area suddenly became more attainable, I wouldn't buy 3 apartments just 'cause. No, but you'd have all those people waiting on the sidelines jumping in immediately. Net result, housing is still expensive (sorta like the highway analogy, we still have tons of traffic after building these lanes).
maxsilver 9y ago
> If housing in the SF Bay area suddenly became more attainable, I wouldn't buy 3 apartments just 'cause. But that's equally true of the highways too. If you widen a freeway, I'm not going suddenly commute to and from work an extra 3 times each day just 'cause. > when you make driving easier or cheaper, people will do more of it because they can. Not really, not anywhere near the amount people claim. This is a common misconception made by miscounting traffic on freeways past capacity. They mistake failed trips as non-existent ones, and then mistakingly claim "new traffic" was created when failed trips stop failing. It's like saying "if you make hospitals easier or cheaper, people will get more sick because they can". You could even support that false claim, by measuring patients in hospitals. "We had a 100 bed hospital last year, and it was full. We built a second 100 bed hospital this year, and now it's full too. Clearly building hospitals is a bad idea, because it just makes more sick people". This obviously isn't true, people were still sick before, they were miscounted because they weren't in the hospital (it was full). Just like how new freeways don't create new traffic, they serve existing traffic that was miscounted before because it wasn't on the freeway (it was full).

rm_-rf_slash 9y ago

But to be fair, more housing stock in San Francisco could also lead to wealthier tech workers buying crash pads in the city for work during the week while they spend their weekends out at their houses in Silicon Valley, Berkeley, etc.

abalashov 9y ago
All of that is certainly true, but given the supply and the pricing, it seems very unlikely that the needle is going to move anywhere near that much? In what other major metropolis in the world do you see people doing that on a mass scale — the kind of mass scale at which it is meaningful to speak of induced demand? The very wealthy will do it, of course, as they always have, and always will.

xienze 9y ago

> If housing in the SF Bay area suddenly became more attainable, I wouldn't buy 3 apartments just 'cause. No, but you'd have all those people waiting on the sidelines jumping in immediately. Net result, housing is still expensive (sorta like the highway analogy, we still have tons of traffic after building these lanes).

maxsilver 9y ago

> If housing in the SF Bay area suddenly became more attainable, I wouldn't buy 3 apartments just 'cause. But that's equally true of the highways too. If you widen a freeway, I'm not going suddenly commute to and from work an extra 3 times each day just 'cause. > when you make driving easier or cheaper, people will do more of it because they can. Not really, not anywhere near the amount people claim. This is a common misconception made by miscounting traffic on freeways past capacity. They mistake failed trips as non-existent ones, and then mistakingly claim "new traffic" was created when failed trips stop failing. It's like saying "if you make hospitals easier or cheaper, people will get more sick because they can". You could even support that false claim, by measuring patients in hospitals. "We had a 100 bed hospital last year, and it was full. We built a second 100 bed hospital this year, and now it's full too. Clearly building hospitals is a bad idea, because it just makes more sick people". This obviously isn't true, people were still sick before, they were miscounted because they weren't in the hospital (it was full). Just like how new freeways don't create new traffic, they serve existing traffic that was miscounted before because it wasn't on the freeway (it was full).