Regulation are introduced for their intended positive consequences, but they usually also have unintended negative consequences. Here you posit that the global

Regulation are introduced for their intended positive consequences, but they usually also have unintended negative consequences. Here you posit that the global balance will be negative, but your supposition is mostly based on the assumption that regulating the free market has always net bad consequences. Which is a point of view which has been pushed VERY strongly in the last decades, but which only the most idealogical anarcho-capitalists can fully believe: try to have no regulation in, eg, food production, and people start dying. As for this measure: we can all agree that it will depress prices for new homes, and increase prices for older homes. Is this going to be a net positive or negative for the middle class who wants to live in Amsterdam? It depends a lot on the price sensitivity of the construction of new homes. I suppose that planners in the city know more about this than me, and maybe you, and did their own projections. If they go on, we'll see the results.