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Well written and researched. Its not about how many houses are available but how many are available where people want to be ... theres plenty of empty houses in

Well written and researched. Its not about how many houses are available but how many are available where people want to be ... theres plenty of empty houses in Detroit, etc. I appreciate how this points out that areas that cant support more housing, or are already very desirable, fall into the group of 'they must need more houses'.

onionisafruit 4y ago
It’s because people are no longer content with living where they are from. We all prefer to live in the very best city until it isn’t the very best city anymore because everybody moved there.
- majormajor 4y ago
  I've seen various reports that the reverse is true, people are moving away from their family less than in the past, although I'm struggling to find the right search terms ("migration" is flooded with immigration results; "mobility" is turning up economic stuff...). Compare today with a century ago: how many places went from "barely on the map" to "huge metropolis" in the USA since then? How many look poised to do the same over the next century? And I think when they are moving, they're similarly not moving to as "new" or "small" destinations - e.g. tons of sunbelt towns saw very rapid growth from young adults moving there in the 60s-90s. But many of those towns are still the ones seeing a lot of growth; anecdotally, my parents moved to Dallas after college. Where's the "new Dallas"? The cheaper towns with jobs that are being promoted are still the same ones as fifty years ago, and they're not nearly as cheap as they were then anymore. Combine that with rising population from immigration + the kids who grew up there and didn't move away, and you see a lot of cost inflation.
  - onionisafruit 4y ago
    You make a good point. I have no data to back up the comment you replied to. It’s just how I feel being from Austin and watching it grow way too fast. I wish I had another home town to move back to. I should have thought through my comment a bit more. Today I did some genealogy research and was amazed at how often my relatives moved in the 1700s and 1800s. It wasn’t uncommon for them to move cities three or four times during their life in a time when you couldn’t just rent a uhaul and head down the road.
    - majormajor 4y ago
      Yeah, I don't know how to get out of that dilemna. It's a behavioral change for the whole society with big impact: if your parents moved from LA to Dallas to escape rising costs (as a friend of mine's did in middle school), where do you move when the rising costs come for you? Why aren't there new destinations in the same way? Or is it that now that the prices are up in so many places, the behaviors will revert back? Is it gonna be places like Boise post-Covid? Will anyone do that same level of massive development? Would they be allowed to?
      - onionisafruit 4y ago
        Maybe we just need to emulate my ancestors and move on to the next opportunity every 20 years. All I want at this point is to be near my grandkids. I don’t care where that is.
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        > Why aren't there new destinations in the same way A few possible reasons that spring to mind are population growth, high quality information quickly traveling around the world rapidly removing arbitrage opportunities, automation and outsourcing obviating certain businesses in certain areas, technology and automation allowing economies of scale such that big only get bigger and suck the air out of the room for small players.
    - bsder 4y ago
      > It wasn’t uncommon for them to move cities three or four times during their life in a time when you couldn’t just rent a uhaul and head down the road. Except that you only needed one person to find a better job back then. The problem with now is that you need two people two find better jobs simultaneously. This was blocking people from moving when better opportunities pop up. I suspect this is more responsible for the Great Resignation than anything else. Once one person of a couple loses their job and has to start a job search, there's no longer anything slowing down the other from taking a better offer even if you have to move.
      - 4y ago
  - nerfhammer 4y ago
    key word = "labor mobility"
- Johnny555 4y ago
  We all prefer to live in the very best city until it isn’t the very best city anymore because everybody moved there. Well, it was the best city until just after I moved there, then it became untenable and people should stop moving there.
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  A good city should be able to withstand people moving there. Otherwise it was probably only good for reasons that aren't actually inherently city qualities, such as culture or access to nature or cheap land.
  - tjr225 4y ago
    Well by that measure “good” cities are very rare, and thousands of years of societies of dredged on building cities without a single thought towards what a “good” city should be. Maybe you should start a lecture or something?
  - refurb 4y ago
    A good city can't withstand people moving there and maintaining the same standard of living at the same cost as earlier inhabitants. And I'm not sure we'd want it to anyways? When prices get too high for later folks to move, then that's a great signal to actually go elsewhere. I'm not sure why we'd want a system where everyone just migrated to one or two cities in the entire US. I've seen those cities in Asia that have populations of 15M or 20M and yeah, seems super inefficient once you get to a certain size.
    - bigDinosaur 4y ago
      Fair point. My ideal model for cities is what Germany does, lots of cities with a population of ~600k, medium density, lots of choice and good connections between cities.
- brigade 4y ago
  If by "best" you mean "more job opportunities." That's always been true, and earlier migrants always hate the later migrants. At most, you could say that the preference of living in the city vs. its suburbs flipped compared to 20 years ago, which had previously flipped when cars made suburbs commutable.
- Ericson2314 4y ago
  > until it isn’t the very best city anymore because everybody moved there. Wat. Cities are not parties that get diluted with lame people. London and Paris grew large and rich in comparison to their respective countries. To the extent there is an equilibrium at play, it is a power law. There is no rotating most popular city, not withstanding what people think about San Francisco. Density wins, and the winners keep on winning absent some sort of disaster. I'm sorry, but this seems like a classic example of pulling out some Hobbesian cynicism as a calling card for classy sober thinking...but in this case it's dead wrong.
  - teakettle42 4y ago
    > Wat. Cities are not parties that get diluted with lame people. If you fill a party past it’s optimal capacity, is the same kind of party? Are you still likely to enjoy being there? Why is a city any different? There are absolutely problems that only emerge with scale, and scale non-linearly with population and density. > London and Paris grew large and rich in comparison to their respective countries. “Large and rich” aren’t the values that most/many people want their communities to optimize for.
    - pm90 4y ago
      > “Large and rich” aren’t the values that most/many people want their communities to optimize for. Maybe. But for the high growth job generating urban centers in todays US that’s certainly the case.
    - Ericson2314 4y ago
      > optimal capacity Cities to do not have fixed capacity. > There are absolutely problems that only emerge with scale, and scale non-linearly with population and density. The biggest thing that doesn't scale is private car usage. But private car usage is terrible. I have not heard of extant cities hitting fundamental scaling constraints in and other way. > “Large and rich” aren’t the values that most/many people want their communities to optimize for. Then why aren't rents lower?
      - 4y ago
- nerfhammer 4y ago
  On the contrary, labor mobility has declined precipitously since WWII, and this is a bad thing because it means people can't move to where there is a better job for them
- paxys 4y ago
  "This city used to be perfect but now there are too many people here ruining it" – said by every resident of every city in every civilization in the world at any given point in their history.
asdff 4y ago
IMO looking at it as want to be somewhere is a bit simplistic. Ultimately there are that many people in pricey places because they are working jobs that can support them there. Sure half of boston can go to detroit and find lower prices, but will there be jobs available to them in detroit? and once there are jobs available to them at this talent level (given the high professional degrees per capita in boston), who is to say prices don't also rise in response if detroit fails to build housing in response to the increase in population driven by this job growth? Building housing in desirable areas is not to just keep piling people there, its to house labor where the growing economic activity is in demand for housing for labor.

onionisafruit 4y ago

It’s because people are no longer content with living where they are from. We all prefer to live in the very best city until it isn’t the very best city anymore because everybody moved there.

majormajor 4y ago
I've seen various reports that the reverse is true, people are moving away from their family less than in the past, although I'm struggling to find the right search terms ("migration" is flooded with immigration results; "mobility" is turning up economic stuff...). Compare today with a century ago: how many places went from "barely on the map" to "huge metropolis" in the USA since then? How many look poised to do the same over the next century? And I think when they are moving, they're similarly not moving to as "new" or "small" destinations - e.g. tons of sunbelt towns saw very rapid growth from young adults moving there in the 60s-90s. But many of those towns are still the ones seeing a lot of growth; anecdotally, my parents moved to Dallas after college. Where's the "new Dallas"? The cheaper towns with jobs that are being promoted are still the same ones as fifty years ago, and they're not nearly as cheap as they were then anymore. Combine that with rising population from immigration + the kids who grew up there and didn't move away, and you see a lot of cost inflation.
- onionisafruit 4y ago
  You make a good point. I have no data to back up the comment you replied to. It’s just how I feel being from Austin and watching it grow way too fast. I wish I had another home town to move back to. I should have thought through my comment a bit more. Today I did some genealogy research and was amazed at how often my relatives moved in the 1700s and 1800s. It wasn’t uncommon for them to move cities three or four times during their life in a time when you couldn’t just rent a uhaul and head down the road.
  - majormajor 4y ago
    Yeah, I don't know how to get out of that dilemna. It's a behavioral change for the whole society with big impact: if your parents moved from LA to Dallas to escape rising costs (as a friend of mine's did in middle school), where do you move when the rising costs come for you? Why aren't there new destinations in the same way? Or is it that now that the prices are up in so many places, the behaviors will revert back? Is it gonna be places like Boise post-Covid? Will anyone do that same level of massive development? Would they be allowed to?
    - onionisafruit 4y ago
      Maybe we just need to emulate my ancestors and move on to the next opportunity every 20 years. All I want at this point is to be near my grandkids. I don’t care where that is.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      > Why aren't there new destinations in the same way A few possible reasons that spring to mind are population growth, high quality information quickly traveling around the world rapidly removing arbitrage opportunities, automation and outsourcing obviating certain businesses in certain areas, technology and automation allowing economies of scale such that big only get bigger and suck the air out of the room for small players.
  - bsder 4y ago
    > It wasn’t uncommon for them to move cities three or four times during their life in a time when you couldn’t just rent a uhaul and head down the road. Except that you only needed one person to find a better job back then. The problem with now is that you need two people two find better jobs simultaneously. This was blocking people from moving when better opportunities pop up. I suspect this is more responsible for the Great Resignation than anything else. Once one person of a couple loses their job and has to start a job search, there's no longer anything slowing down the other from taking a better offer even if you have to move.
    - 4y ago
- nerfhammer 4y ago
  key word = "labor mobility"
Johnny555 4y ago
We all prefer to live in the very best city until it isn’t the very best city anymore because everybody moved there. Well, it was the best city until just after I moved there, then it became untenable and people should stop moving there.
bigDinosaur 4y ago
A good city should be able to withstand people moving there. Otherwise it was probably only good for reasons that aren't actually inherently city qualities, such as culture or access to nature or cheap land.
- tjr225 4y ago
  Well by that measure “good” cities are very rare, and thousands of years of societies of dredged on building cities without a single thought towards what a “good” city should be. Maybe you should start a lecture or something?
- refurb 4y ago
  A good city can't withstand people moving there and maintaining the same standard of living at the same cost as earlier inhabitants. And I'm not sure we'd want it to anyways? When prices get too high for later folks to move, then that's a great signal to actually go elsewhere. I'm not sure why we'd want a system where everyone just migrated to one or two cities in the entire US. I've seen those cities in Asia that have populations of 15M or 20M and yeah, seems super inefficient once you get to a certain size.
  - bigDinosaur 4y ago
    Fair point. My ideal model for cities is what Germany does, lots of cities with a population of ~600k, medium density, lots of choice and good connections between cities.
brigade 4y ago
If by "best" you mean "more job opportunities." That's always been true, and earlier migrants always hate the later migrants. At most, you could say that the preference of living in the city vs. its suburbs flipped compared to 20 years ago, which had previously flipped when cars made suburbs commutable.
Ericson2314 4y ago
> until it isn’t the very best city anymore because everybody moved there. Wat. Cities are not parties that get diluted with lame people. London and Paris grew large and rich in comparison to their respective countries. To the extent there is an equilibrium at play, it is a power law. There is no rotating most popular city, not withstanding what people think about San Francisco. Density wins, and the winners keep on winning absent some sort of disaster. I'm sorry, but this seems like a classic example of pulling out some Hobbesian cynicism as a calling card for classy sober thinking...but in this case it's dead wrong.
- teakettle42 4y ago
  > Wat. Cities are not parties that get diluted with lame people. If you fill a party past it’s optimal capacity, is the same kind of party? Are you still likely to enjoy being there? Why is a city any different? There are absolutely problems that only emerge with scale, and scale non-linearly with population and density. > London and Paris grew large and rich in comparison to their respective countries. “Large and rich” aren’t the values that most/many people want their communities to optimize for.
  - pm90 4y ago
    > “Large and rich” aren’t the values that most/many people want their communities to optimize for. Maybe. But for the high growth job generating urban centers in todays US that’s certainly the case.
  - Ericson2314 4y ago
    > optimal capacity Cities to do not have fixed capacity. > There are absolutely problems that only emerge with scale, and scale non-linearly with population and density. The biggest thing that doesn't scale is private car usage. But private car usage is terrible. I have not heard of extant cities hitting fundamental scaling constraints in and other way. > “Large and rich” aren’t the values that most/many people want their communities to optimize for. Then why aren't rents lower?
    - 4y ago
nerfhammer 4y ago
On the contrary, labor mobility has declined precipitously since WWII, and this is a bad thing because it means people can't move to where there is a better job for them
paxys 4y ago
"This city used to be perfect but now there are too many people here ruining it" – said by every resident of every city in every civilization in the world at any given point in their history.

asdff 4y ago

IMO looking at it as want to be somewhere is a bit simplistic. Ultimately there are that many people in pricey places because they are working jobs that can support them there. Sure half of boston can go to detroit and find lower prices, but will there be jobs available to them in detroit? and once there are jobs available to them at this talent level (given the high professional degrees per capita in boston), who is to say prices don't also rise in response if detroit fails to build housing in response to the increase in population driven by this job growth? Building housing in desirable areas is not to just keep piling people there, its to house labor where the growing economic activity is in demand for housing for labor.