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Cities like Houston, Dallas, and Indianapolis have low prices because there are no geographic constraints, so building restrictions can't screw it up too much.
by pchristensen 16y ago
Cities like Houston, Dallas, and Indianapolis have low prices because there are no geographic constraints, so building restrictions can't screw it up too much. Houston's minimum street widths and parking requirements serve restrict building almost as much as zoning.
- hga 16y agoYeah, I've wondered about that while living in the Boston area for a dozen years. It would also seem to apply strongly to the SF Bay area and a bit less so to NYC. But what about, say, the D.C. area? Chesapeake Bay isn't so big, then again there are limited number of bridges in certain critical areas (e.g. north of Chain Bridge). What about other cities less constrained by large lakes, bays or the sea? Rivers are frequently going to be an issue since in olden times they were a major asset for a city.
- pchristensen 16y agoDC: has strong growth controls in MD+VA, it's big enough that traffic becomes a meaningful constraint (Atlanta has this problem now as well), and it has one of the strongest most recession-proof economics in the country, so prices are still high. I'm having trouble finding the list, but I can't think of a single expensive metro area (in the US) that isn't constrained by water, mountains, growth control laws, or all of the above. Rivers are generally not a problem because federal road funding and near-universal car ownership make it easy to distribute growth on both sides of a river. It is a problem when that river is a state boundary as well (which is often).