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> What it takes is a gutsy mayor to implement policies such as requiring at least 1m side setback on houses and 3m for apartments, having caps on the floor-spac

> What it takes is a gutsy mayor to implement policies such as requiring at least 1m side setback on houses and 3m for apartments, having caps on the floor-space ratio to 50% instead of 98%, not allowing subdivisions on lands that have less than 15m frontage or 600m2 total area etc. This would basically see the housing market crash - lots of people will lose lots of money. But its a necessary evil. What you propose is a giant subsidy to middle class life at the expense of poor people. This would take land that currently houses poor people and make that illegal. It also bans building a house with a courtyard on a lot below a certain size. This wouldn’t help poor people. It would just force them to commute to their work from further away. The housing support system described is particularly stupid but housing support doesn’t generally help anyway. The money just ends up in property holder’s or landowners’ pockets, whether in increased land prices or higher rental prices. The only way to decrease prices is by increasing supply, whether of land or housing.

stevenjohns 7y ago
> What you propose is a giant subsidy to middle class life at the expense of poor people. The "poor" people are extremely poor to the point that you cannot comprehend. And they have to stay there and live there for their entire lives because the current system forces them to. It is impossible for them to move out because of how unaffordable the cities are and how heavily the system is rigged against them. They have nothing. These people are already commuting long distances and already live in unregulated, unmarked ghettos. Here[0] is a photo of one of those places I took back in March so you understand the extent of it. The only people who "lose" here are the current land owners of legal properties. Renters will end up with lower rent because housing will rapidly devalue to a tenth of its original value - every single house will stop being the foreign investment opportunity that it currently is. > This would take land that currently houses poor people and make that illegal. Clearly it's not retroactively applied. Town planning and zoning almost never is. > It also bans building a house with a courtyard on a lot below a certain size. I mean, I guess? But it also forces properties to have back and front yards, as well as side access, instead of being 100% concrete built wall-to-wall through to the footpath. > This wouldn’t help poor people. It would just force them to commute to their work from further away. I'm not sure how it would do anything else other than help poor(er) people and allow them to start living inside expanding cities rather than living on the extreme outskirts. [0] https://i.imgur.com/b2AKhfJ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/b2AKhfJ.jpg
- jacobolus 7y ago
  Your photo shows a natural stage of development of most rapidly industrializing places. (Actually, this is the second stage of development for most neighborhoods, after a first stage consisting of all temporary structures with no infrastructure or services whatsoever.) Shanty towns looked just like this in quickly growing American and European cities 100–150 years ago. And look like this today throughout Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, ... People living in those conditions are not permanently poor and hopeless. They are upwardly mobile (albeit from a very low baseline, often as rural peasants forced off their land by lack of rural economic opportunity), with neighborhoods improving rapidly, and generally quite a dynamic economy. Come back and take another photo of precisely the same spot in 25 years and you will see something dramatically different: decently constructed permanent structures; proper plumbing, electricity, sanitation, roads; real city services; and in general an integrated normal city neighborhood as the city keeps pushing outward. Many of the kids growing up in those shanty-towns today will be small-business owners, and plenty of their kids will be highly educated white-collar professionals. Observers who try to interpret poor neighborhoods with middle class standards end up so focused on the apparent discomfort involved that they can’t see the parts that are ingenious, fascinating, hopeful, and rapidly improving.
  - molmalo 7y ago
    Maybe it worked that way in some other countries, but in a lot of places in Latin America, that is not how it works. Most slums just get more crowded, larger, and managed by thugs (lately, drug dealing foreign cartels are taking over) over time. For example, take a look at Villa 31, a slum near Buenos Aires's downtown, in 1935 [1], around the time it first appeared, and now [2]. After almost a century, the precarious buildings are just getting higher, and more densely populated. Several attempts where made to relocate the people along the years, but having a high percentage of the population being illegal immigrants, it becomes highly unpopular to just give those people a new apartment, while there's a housing deficit. Lately, there's been more efforts in providing them a housing solution, because a judicial ruling forced the government to do it. But even then, there's no sign of the population in the slum being reduced (probably because they are replaced by newcomers, mostly illegal immigrants, that need a "first place to live" close to the downtown). [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Villa_Desocupaci%C3%B3n_%28Villa_31%29%2C_Buenos_Aires%2C_1935.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Villa_De... [2] https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_31#/media/Archivo:Villamiseria5.JPG https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_31#/media/Archivo:Villam...

stevenjohns 7y ago

> What you propose is a giant subsidy to middle class life at the expense of poor people. The "poor" people are extremely poor to the point that you cannot comprehend. And they have to stay there and live there for their entire lives because the current system forces them to. It is impossible for them to move out because of how unaffordable the cities are and how heavily the system is rigged against them. They have nothing. These people are already commuting long distances and already live in unregulated, unmarked ghettos. Here[0] is a photo of one of those places I took back in March so you understand the extent of it. The only people who "lose" here are the current land owners of legal properties. Renters will end up with lower rent because housing will rapidly devalue to a tenth of its original value - every single house will stop being the foreign investment opportunity that it currently is. > This would take land that currently houses poor people and make that illegal. Clearly it's not retroactively applied. Town planning and zoning almost never is. > It also bans building a house with a courtyard on a lot below a certain size. I mean, I guess? But it also forces properties to have back and front yards, as well as side access, instead of being 100% concrete built wall-to-wall through to the footpath. > This wouldn’t help poor people. It would just force them to commute to their work from further away. I'm not sure how it would do anything else other than help poor(er) people and allow them to start living inside expanding cities rather than living on the extreme outskirts. [0] https://i.imgur.com/b2AKhfJ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/b2AKhfJ.jpg

jacobolus 7y ago
Your photo shows a natural stage of development of most rapidly industrializing places. (Actually, this is the second stage of development for most neighborhoods, after a first stage consisting of all temporary structures with no infrastructure or services whatsoever.) Shanty towns looked just like this in quickly growing American and European cities 100–150 years ago. And look like this today throughout Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, ... People living in those conditions are not permanently poor and hopeless. They are upwardly mobile (albeit from a very low baseline, often as rural peasants forced off their land by lack of rural economic opportunity), with neighborhoods improving rapidly, and generally quite a dynamic economy. Come back and take another photo of precisely the same spot in 25 years and you will see something dramatically different: decently constructed permanent structures; proper plumbing, electricity, sanitation, roads; real city services; and in general an integrated normal city neighborhood as the city keeps pushing outward. Many of the kids growing up in those shanty-towns today will be small-business owners, and plenty of their kids will be highly educated white-collar professionals. Observers who try to interpret poor neighborhoods with middle class standards end up so focused on the apparent discomfort involved that they can’t see the parts that are ingenious, fascinating, hopeful, and rapidly improving.
- molmalo 7y ago
  Maybe it worked that way in some other countries, but in a lot of places in Latin America, that is not how it works. Most slums just get more crowded, larger, and managed by thugs (lately, drug dealing foreign cartels are taking over) over time. For example, take a look at Villa 31, a slum near Buenos Aires's downtown, in 1935 [1], around the time it first appeared, and now [2]. After almost a century, the precarious buildings are just getting higher, and more densely populated. Several attempts where made to relocate the people along the years, but having a high percentage of the population being illegal immigrants, it becomes highly unpopular to just give those people a new apartment, while there's a housing deficit. Lately, there's been more efforts in providing them a housing solution, because a judicial ruling forced the government to do it. But even then, there's no sign of the population in the slum being reduced (probably because they are replaced by newcomers, mostly illegal immigrants, that need a "first place to live" close to the downtown). [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Villa_Desocupaci%C3%B3n_%28Villa_31%29%2C_Buenos_Aires%2C_1935.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Villa_De... [2] https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_31#/media/Archivo:Villamiseria5.JPG https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_31#/media/Archivo:Villam...