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It's not "just supply and demand". Supply can increase to match demand! The production of almost everything in our lives has economies of scale, so it's surpris

It's not "just supply and demand". Supply can increase to match demand! The production of almost everything in our lives has economies of scale, so it's surprising that this isn't the case for cost of living in cities. It also use to be true! The main thing that changed is government policies increasingly restricting supply.

nobodyandproud 5y ago
Real estate isn’t instantly scalable. It takes years of planning and decades of execution to create a truly scalable city. With stores, they’re squeezed on both ends: Pressure from online retailers and then exorbitant rents. It’s not unusual to have monthly rents that go into mid-five figures for a small store at ground level. Few small businesses can sustain that in the long term.
kube-system 5y ago
The amount of land in a given area of a city in largely fixed. You can build upwards to create more usable space, but there are no economies of scale in doing this. The relationship is the opposite —- taller buildings are more expensive per unit of area as you go up. Space is a multi-floor building is not constructed marginally like a widget in a factory. Each floor must support the floor above it.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  While this is true, the expectations of the US have also overshot. The US is an outlier in terms of square footage in new homes, American homes are very large. And personally I don't want some 2000 sq ft McMansion because that means all the cooling, heating, cleaning, and maintenance of such a large space that I've only ever seen really used to accumulate lots of stuff. We don't need to go to extremes (a Parisian studio can go as low as 100 square feet!) but house size in the US has mostly crept up as a function of minimum lot sizes in US zoning.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    Those homes aren’t in cities where space is a concern. They’re in sprawling suburbs where land is highly available. The construction costs of those 2000 square foot homes is cheaper than 1000 square foot on the 25th floor of a building. People in the US have a choice between the two, and they’re largely chosen to put up with a commute from the suburbs in exchange for more space. Those lot sizes aren’t just wasted space. Lower density also translates to more green space, lower noise, fewer shared spaces, etc.
    - Ericson2314 5y ago
      People are choosing suburbs based on costs. The aver person has little ability to choose based on any other reason. This is why it's incredibly important that we fix this stuff. Rich environmentalists' "sacrifices" achieve nothing. It is also why I am incredibly sad the current infrastructure bill is slated to fund so much stupid suburbanization.
      - kube-system 5y ago
        They’re choosing suburbs for value, not cost. There are plenty of apartments available in cities at rents lower than the average suburban mortgage payment. If we want revitalized cities where people want to live, we don’t just need low cost housing, we need high value housing. The middle class didn’t leave cities on cost alone and they’re not going to move back to cities on cost alone.
        throwawayboise 5y ago
        But there are many many things you cannot do living in an apartment that you can do with your own home/property. It's not simply a calculation of value in a $/sq-ft sense that people are making.
        kube-system 5y ago
        Yes, that’s part of what I mean by value as opposed to cost.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  > there are no economies of scale in doing this False. Yes, taller buildings are more expensive per floor. But the benefits they bring in far exceed those costs. You have to account for the whole system, or track your externalities if it's not closed. And if our current economic systems don't do that, they need to be fixed.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    I was responding to the parent comment about the economies of production specifically.
    - Ericson2314 5y ago
      OK, fair enough. I read "production" to not just be about the production of housing in isolation, but it is ambiguous.
perl4ever 5y ago
I think you're (and Ericson2314) confusing/conflating two different ideas. Big cities obviously have economies of scale, so, say, the chicken lo mein is fresher and hotter due to higher volume. Or, the first time I had a cup of plain coffee at a random cafe in NYC, it was stunningly good. Any reasonably successful business has much higher volume than in a less populated area and is pressured by competition more too. They can and must do better. But people make more money on average in a big city, and that means they spend more. If the exact grade of hamburger available everywhere is 20% cheaper, that doesn't in any way prevent your meals from being much more expensive. The whole point of being in a city is so you can get stuff you can't otherwise. If you are living and working in NYC, are you going to just have the same fast food you could get in Albany, that's incrementally better? Don't mix up "city dwellers use less resources for a unit of a given thing" with "city dwellers use less resources period".
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  For green house gas emissions, at least, it is absolute. See https://coolclimate.org/maps https://coolclimate.org/maps. True rural and true urban (with public transit predominating) is good. But the suburbs where most people live are absolute trash.
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    >the suburbs where most people live I'm inclined to think that carbon emissions (or consumption in general) are primarily a product of wealth. It would be possible in principle to normalize that map for household income, and I wonder if it would show the same pattern.

nobodyandproud 5y ago

Real estate isn’t instantly scalable. It takes years of planning and decades of execution to create a truly scalable city. With stores, they’re squeezed on both ends: Pressure from online retailers and then exorbitant rents. It’s not unusual to have monthly rents that go into mid-five figures for a small store at ground level. Few small businesses can sustain that in the long term.

kube-system 5y ago

The amount of land in a given area of a city in largely fixed. You can build upwards to create more usable space, but there are no economies of scale in doing this. The relationship is the opposite —- taller buildings are more expensive per unit of area as you go up. Space is a multi-floor building is not constructed marginally like a widget in a factory. Each floor must support the floor above it.

bobthepanda 5y ago
While this is true, the expectations of the US have also overshot. The US is an outlier in terms of square footage in new homes, American homes are very large. And personally I don't want some 2000 sq ft McMansion because that means all the cooling, heating, cleaning, and maintenance of such a large space that I've only ever seen really used to accumulate lots of stuff. We don't need to go to extremes (a Parisian studio can go as low as 100 square feet!) but house size in the US has mostly crept up as a function of minimum lot sizes in US zoning.
- kube-system 5y ago
  Those homes aren’t in cities where space is a concern. They’re in sprawling suburbs where land is highly available. The construction costs of those 2000 square foot homes is cheaper than 1000 square foot on the 25th floor of a building. People in the US have a choice between the two, and they’re largely chosen to put up with a commute from the suburbs in exchange for more space. Those lot sizes aren’t just wasted space. Lower density also translates to more green space, lower noise, fewer shared spaces, etc.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    People are choosing suburbs based on costs. The aver person has little ability to choose based on any other reason. This is why it's incredibly important that we fix this stuff. Rich environmentalists' "sacrifices" achieve nothing. It is also why I am incredibly sad the current infrastructure bill is slated to fund so much stupid suburbanization.
    - kube-system 5y ago
      They’re choosing suburbs for value, not cost. There are plenty of apartments available in cities at rents lower than the average suburban mortgage payment. If we want revitalized cities where people want to live, we don’t just need low cost housing, we need high value housing. The middle class didn’t leave cities on cost alone and they’re not going to move back to cities on cost alone.
      - throwawayboise 5y ago
        But there are many many things you cannot do living in an apartment that you can do with your own home/property. It's not simply a calculation of value in a $/sq-ft sense that people are making.
        kube-system 5y ago
        Yes, that’s part of what I mean by value as opposed to cost.
Ericson2314 5y ago
> there are no economies of scale in doing this False. Yes, taller buildings are more expensive per floor. But the benefits they bring in far exceed those costs. You have to account for the whole system, or track your externalities if it's not closed. And if our current economic systems don't do that, they need to be fixed.
- kube-system 5y ago
  I was responding to the parent comment about the economies of production specifically.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    OK, fair enough. I read "production" to not just be about the production of housing in isolation, but it is ambiguous.

perl4ever 5y ago

I think you're (and Ericson2314) confusing/conflating two different ideas. Big cities obviously have economies of scale, so, say, the chicken lo mein is fresher and hotter due to higher volume. Or, the first time I had a cup of plain coffee at a random cafe in NYC, it was stunningly good. Any reasonably successful business has much higher volume than in a less populated area and is pressured by competition more too. They can and must do better. But people make more money on average in a big city, and that means they spend more. If the exact grade of hamburger available everywhere is 20% cheaper, that doesn't in any way prevent your meals from being much more expensive. The whole point of being in a city is so you can get stuff you can't otherwise. If you are living and working in NYC, are you going to just have the same fast food you could get in Albany, that's incrementally better? Don't mix up "city dwellers use less resources for a unit of a given thing" with "city dwellers use less resources period".

Ericson2314 5y ago
For green house gas emissions, at least, it is absolute. See https://coolclimate.org/maps https://coolclimate.org/maps. True rural and true urban (with public transit predominating) is good. But the suburbs where most people live are absolute trash.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  >the suburbs where most people live I'm inclined to think that carbon emissions (or consumption in general) are primarily a product of wealth. It would be possible in principle to normalize that map for household income, and I wonder if it would show the same pattern.