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It is not actually possible to increase the supply of good suburbia. The virtue of a suburban home is to be on a large plot of land with low-intensity neighbors

It is not actually possible to increase the supply of good suburbia. The virtue of a suburban home is to be on a large plot of land with low-intensity neighbors and convenient vehicle access to places, and this genuinely can’t scale very far. Even if you have infinitely much land, you will never build enough roads or lanes. We can increase the supply of other things which are also called “housing” but are fundamentally different products, and not what most people in North America are talking about when they talk about wanting to buy or own homes.

biomcgary 5y ago
One large reason for high priced real estate in some places is the geographically uneven distribution of disposable income. Historically, people moved to cities because the jobs were there (i.e., physical factories that had to exchange physical goods). No commuting for work = much less need for roads. If commuting and working in a centralized location is viewed as exceptional rather than normal, society could easily switch to lower density living, which is highly beneficial to most mammalian species (reduced stress, reduced aggression). If the most lucrative information-age jobs (tech, finance) become remote-first (or better, remote-only) and dominated by shape rotators, people will be able to move away from cities (and take the money with them). Only wordcels, who grift on social interactions, really need high density humanity to thrive.
dionidium 5y ago
In other words, people will be forced to weigh options and tradeoffs, just like they have to do with everything else. If you want a SFH very near to an urban core, then you'll have to pay what that's actually worth relative to alternative uses for that land.
rootusrootus 5y ago
> It is not actually possible to increase the supply of good suburbia. Dallas seems to be doing it by organically creating a multi-core urban metropolis. Infinite suburbia only fails if you assume that each metropolitan area can only have a single urban core.
bombcar 5y ago
You actually could, basically, if you really wanted to do it. If there was an efficient high-speed corridor into the major metro area, suburbs could be much further out along it and it'd still work out well.

biomcgary 5y ago

One large reason for high priced real estate in some places is the geographically uneven distribution of disposable income. Historically, people moved to cities because the jobs were there (i.e., physical factories that had to exchange physical goods). No commuting for work = much less need for roads. If commuting and working in a centralized location is viewed as exceptional rather than normal, society could easily switch to lower density living, which is highly beneficial to most mammalian species (reduced stress, reduced aggression). If the most lucrative information-age jobs (tech, finance) become remote-first (or better, remote-only) and dominated by shape rotators, people will be able to move away from cities (and take the money with them). Only wordcels, who grift on social interactions, really need high density humanity to thrive.

dionidium 5y ago

In other words, people will be forced to weigh options and tradeoffs, just like they have to do with everything else. If you want a SFH very near to an urban core, then you'll have to pay what that's actually worth relative to alternative uses for that land.

rootusrootus 5y ago

> It is not actually possible to increase the supply of good suburbia. Dallas seems to be doing it by organically creating a multi-core urban metropolis. Infinite suburbia only fails if you assume that each metropolitan area can only have a single urban core.

bombcar 5y ago

You actually could, basically, if you really wanted to do it. If there was an efficient high-speed corridor into the major metro area, suburbs could be much further out along it and it'd still work out well.