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I really appreciate your perspective. I'm still learning about all of this. My understanding is that most often these setups were started in relatively poor cou

I really appreciate your perspective. I'm still learning about all of this. My understanding is that most often these setups were started in relatively poor countries that didn't have enough housing to start with. That is not the case in the US where many houses remain vacant in the face of homelessness so that speculators can speculate. In China, they are building entire ghost cities and then filling them as fast as they can. In the Soviet Union, my understanding is that the economy was out of wack because of the need to build the military to defend against Western aggression. If those resources were diverted to the civilian sector, perhaps there would have been more and nicer housing? EDIT: Even in a capitalist country I'm still living with roommates, and this is part of a trend for younger people. That kind of takes the bite out of the criticism that capitalism offers more freedom in that regard. Such freedom once existed, but it has been declining. EDIT2: I like my roommates. Not dissing them at all. :)

closeparen 9y ago
The problem in both cases is urbanization. Soviet central planners explicitly set out to industrialize their agrarian society; market forces are moving America's center of gravity from the Midwestern factory to the coastal R&D office. As populations move (or are ordered to move) to follow these changes, it creates blight and abandonment in the places they leave and a housing crunch in the places they head to. The empty houses are in the places that are no longer economically relevant; the housing crises are in the places everyone is moving to. The Soviets responded by building space-efficient housing in cities as fast as they could, which was just not fast enough. American cities are actively refusing to let this happen at any significant scale. We would first need these cities to decide to want enough housing for their ballooning populations. Then we could argue over whether the state or private developers should build it.
- jadedhacker 9y ago
  What you say makes a lot of sense. My understanding of why people moved out of the urban core in the first place was "white flight". People are moving back now, and the people living in the cities, typically the wealthier inhabitants, resist building any tall residential buildings, though they are happy to build upscale homes and businesses that kick out the poor.

closeparen 9y ago

The problem in both cases is urbanization. Soviet central planners explicitly set out to industrialize their agrarian society; market forces are moving America's center of gravity from the Midwestern factory to the coastal R&D office. As populations move (or are ordered to move) to follow these changes, it creates blight and abandonment in the places they leave and a housing crunch in the places they head to. The empty houses are in the places that are no longer economically relevant; the housing crises are in the places everyone is moving to. The Soviets responded by building space-efficient housing in cities as fast as they could, which was just not fast enough. American cities are actively refusing to let this happen at any significant scale. We would first need these cities to decide to want enough housing for their ballooning populations. Then we could argue over whether the state or private developers should build it.

jadedhacker 9y ago
What you say makes a lot of sense. My understanding of why people moved out of the urban core in the first place was "white flight". People are moving back now, and the people living in the cities, typically the wealthier inhabitants, resist building any tall residential buildings, though they are happy to build upscale homes and businesses that kick out the poor.