4 ms·

That's not true for Tokyo, which has been growing rapidly for 30 years now. Yet Tokyo's prices have remained flat during that time.

timr 8y ago
You can't just cherry pick a single factor: Tokyo sprawls, but it's not especially dense. It has smaller buildings, much smaller apartments, and higher costs per square foot. Japan has better transit than the west, which makes long-distance commutes feasible. Moreover, there's a culture (and a tax system) that treats housing as a depreciating asset. On top of all of that, the Japanese tend to live together in communal units, with children living with parents long past the point where it would be considered okay in the west. And housing is still expensive relative to the local economy (which has been depressed for 30 years, by the way). All of these factors (and more) result in the housing economy you see in Japan. HN people love to fixate on zoning, but it's not even close to the whole story. If we suddenly asked westerners to live the way Japanese people do, there would be open revolt and riots in the streets.
- saosebastiao 8y ago
  Fixation on anything other than housing supply is fixating on irrelevant noise. That includes density...there are plenty of dense cities that nonetheless restrict new supply and are thus unaffordable. Other affordable first world cities have accomplished the same thing as Tokyo via other means, including social housing (Vienna, Singapore), sprawl (Houston, Louisville), and density (Chicago, Montreal). There is one thing they all have in common: they all allow housing supply to meet demand. Anything else is a distraction.
  - timr 8y ago
    "Fixation on anything other than housing supply is fixating on irrelevant noise. That includes density." That's like "fixating" on the money supply. Sure, having more of it lowers prices. The point is: how do you get there? What are the side-effects of your proposal? These are not simple questions. Fixating on zoning, at the exclusion of all other considerations, is a facile answer.
    - saosebastiao 8y ago
      Zoning is the primary means by which supply is restricted in the US. That isn't facile, that is ordinary root cause analysis and reasoning in action. Japan is proof that zoning doesn't have to represent a restriction on housing supply. But don't just dismiss Tokyo because you think other cultural factors are at play: Montreal, Chicago, Dallas, Calgary, and plentiful other US/Canadian cities have confirmed what Tokyo has already taught us.
  - notfromhere 8y ago
    Chicago is cheap because the city lost nearly a million people in the last 60 years. But if you limit it to the places folks moving to the city move, it is not cheap. Chicago city average really hides the fact that the places most people would consider living in Chicago aren't super cheap; still cheap-ish when compared to other coastal cities

timr 8y ago

You can't just cherry pick a single factor: Tokyo sprawls, but it's not especially dense. It has smaller buildings, much smaller apartments, and higher costs per square foot. Japan has better transit than the west, which makes long-distance commutes feasible. Moreover, there's a culture (and a tax system) that treats housing as a depreciating asset. On top of all of that, the Japanese tend to live together in communal units, with children living with parents long past the point where it would be considered okay in the west. And housing is still expensive relative to the local economy (which has been depressed for 30 years, by the way). All of these factors (and more) result in the housing economy you see in Japan. HN people love to fixate on zoning, but it's not even close to the whole story. If we suddenly asked westerners to live the way Japanese people do, there would be open revolt and riots in the streets.

saosebastiao 8y ago
Fixation on anything other than housing supply is fixating on irrelevant noise. That includes density...there are plenty of dense cities that nonetheless restrict new supply and are thus unaffordable. Other affordable first world cities have accomplished the same thing as Tokyo via other means, including social housing (Vienna, Singapore), sprawl (Houston, Louisville), and density (Chicago, Montreal). There is one thing they all have in common: they all allow housing supply to meet demand. Anything else is a distraction.
- timr 8y ago
  "Fixation on anything other than housing supply is fixating on irrelevant noise. That includes density." That's like "fixating" on the money supply. Sure, having more of it lowers prices. The point is: how do you get there? What are the side-effects of your proposal? These are not simple questions. Fixating on zoning, at the exclusion of all other considerations, is a facile answer.
  - saosebastiao 8y ago
    Zoning is the primary means by which supply is restricted in the US. That isn't facile, that is ordinary root cause analysis and reasoning in action. Japan is proof that zoning doesn't have to represent a restriction on housing supply. But don't just dismiss Tokyo because you think other cultural factors are at play: Montreal, Chicago, Dallas, Calgary, and plentiful other US/Canadian cities have confirmed what Tokyo has already taught us.
- notfromhere 8y ago
  Chicago is cheap because the city lost nearly a million people in the last 60 years. But if you limit it to the places folks moving to the city move, it is not cheap. Chicago city average really hides the fact that the places most people would consider living in Chicago aren't super cheap; still cheap-ish when compared to other coastal cities