> pinning the problems on nimbyism is admitting that market solutions are the best we've got, which I think is wrong. I'm all for public housing too (more comp

> pinning the problems on nimbyism is admitting that market solutions are the best we've got, which I think is wrong. I'm all for public housing too (more competently executed than last time, please), but Tokyo is a good example of prices being fairly reasonable relative to the size/prosperity of a metro area, and that's been done with the market. Besides, you'd need to upzone for public housing complexes anyway. There's no conflict here between the socialized solution and the market one, really. The government can make what public housing it can do, and the market can handle the rest. > why shouldn't people have a say in what happens to their neighborhood? Because it turns them into reactionary assholes? Because land is in fixed quantity and quality, so letting people with a monopoly on it command even their neighbors to not let people in is a terrible idea? Because mandatory single-family home zoning is classist bullshit that is designed to keep out the poor and working class? It's economic segregation, pure and simple, and you can't be economically progressive while supporting it. One of the starkest changes going from the US to live in Munich was that suddenly, I didn't notice neighborhoods being obviously rich or poor or middle-class most of the time. Nearly all of them are sort of middling, and have people with an obvious variety of incomes. Even if I focus on it, it's hard to slot neighborhoods into a particular income bucket. And the most obvious cause of this is that SFH-only zoning does not exist here, not in Munich and not anywhere in Germany. Thus, would-be rich neighborhoods cannot keep out the working class by making sure that nobody can build fourplexes or apartments that might be more affordable. edit: to be clear, I'm not categorically opposed to community input on neighborhood design. But letting specific neighborhoods and cities decide on zoning density has been an unmitigated disaster. So yeah, let's maybe not do that.