6 ms·

Not housing per-se, but concentrating too many jobs in few locations. Which causes issues with housing.

by mantas 4y ago

switch007 4y ago
Even that probably has a root cause. Capitalism, efficiencies gained from concentrating resources in a single location, network effects etc? In the UK, jobs used to be at local factories and offices. It was rare for people to move for university then move to another city for work. My Grandad worked at a local electronics factory. My Dad worked at a local auto parts refurbishment factory. My mother in her early 20s worked as a secretary for the emergency services. Moving away for university and then again to another city for work was almost unheard of. You worked and lived close to your family. Of course the 80s came along and everything changed.
- PaywallBuster 4y ago
  + specialization most of those jobs in the 80s require only basic education but when you have thousands of graduates coming out of universities, they'll be looking at very specific job positions, not any office job near home
  - mantas 4y ago
    + job hopping. Moving to factory town is fine if you can see yourself working here for decades. But nowadays when people are expected to switch jobs frequently... Both sides could win a lot by agreeing to loyalty.
mschuster91 4y ago
> Not housing per-se, but concentrating too many jobs in few locations. Jobs weren't "concentrated" per se by any form of planning or centralized action, employers simply shifted to urban centers because the amount of skilled workers and other necessities (such as high speed Internet, universities, road and rail infrastructure) was vastly higher there than in dilapidated flyover-state villages. Additionally, rural areas got devastated by mechanization of agriculture following WW2 and later-on the closure of manufacturing plants and the mining industries [1], which led to a massive rural flight movement as everyone who could fled to the only place where employment was available - urban areas. The fix to the housing crisis would be to invest in rural areas again - there is no limitation in the nature of the work at all that stuff like a callcenter or a bunch of programmers can't work from some rural town, but as long as there is no actual high speed Internet or no amenities (healthcare, education institutions for children, entertainment) worth their name employers won't establish shop there and employees won't move there. Would you, even for free rent, move to some small town where your children have no perspective? [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/where-did-all-the-workers-go-60-years-of-economic-change-in-1-graph/252018/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/where-d...
- seper8 4y ago
  I read this kind of thinking a lot lately, people trying very hard to come up with solutions that don't address the main issue. Just guessing, you already own a house? The fix is to enable builders to build enough housing, and not just single family detached housing, by removing regulations which allow NIMBY-ism. At the same time, prevent investors from hoarding houses and jacking up the prices. I find it similar to scalping GPU's and reselling them for more money, which was a common practice in the past few years during the chip shortage and crypto mining boom. This kind of investment provides very little value to consumers, and in my view only serves to extract money from the poor to the rich.
  - zhdc1 4y ago
    > The fix is to enable builders to build enough housing, and not just single family detached housing, by removing regulations which allow NIMBY-ism. This is the short term fix, and I completely agree with you. The long term fix is, aside from letting local governments make minor regulatory changes to facilitate denser urban construction, to simply do nothing. Cities are expensive. People will (and are) moving away from HCOL areas because of this. Businesses are adapting (e.g., with remote work) to hire people living in MCOL and LCOL areas. At the same time, new economic agglomerations are springing up in these areas to support growing populations. Given enough time, two things will happen. Many of these MCOL and LCOL areas will become more expensive. Some will urbanize. Some wont. Second, eventually, people living in the areas that don't urbanize will realize that they actually would enjoy living in a HCOL area. And the cycle will continue.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    > Just guessing, you already own a house? LOL, I wish. Renting in Munich for enough money that I'll never be able to save enough for a downpayment. If I ever want to own my home, I'll have to move to the German equivalent of Alabama, with all the issues that come with that. > The fix is to enable builders to build enough housing, and not just single family detached housing, by removing regulations which allow NIMBY-ism. Where? Seriously, where?! Urban areas literally don't have enough space left any more to build any kind of building at affordable prices (plot values have sometimes doubled over four years here [1]), not to mention the associated followup costs of high-density populations (you need expensive subways as public transport at some point, denser / more anonymous populations leading to lower societal cohesion and rising crime as a result) or the fact that most urban areas simply are unsustainable regarding climate change in the long term (no trees to provide shade = lots of heat). [1] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/muenchen-grundstueckspreis-immobilien-bodenrichtwert-1.4580410 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/muenchen-grundstueckspr...
helge9210 4y ago
This looks like a positive feedback loop. People move to locations where there are many jobs available, so end of employment would not require moving to another location. More jobs are created, where there is higher availability of candidates.
pochekailov 4y ago
It is very good for productivity when many jobs are concentrated in one location. This unlocks the possibility for serendipitous connections. It is awesome when you can meet a founder, a leading engineer, an investor, a designer and a PR person in a coffee line, forming a new company before finishing your morning coffee. Talents concentrated in one place gives significant boost to their productivity. This is called a "proximity bonus" in video games; building dependent factories in the nearby slots gives them the productivity boost. This is what US is missing by being nimbyistic. I think we should return to the 1950s ideas of a futuristic cities and invest in building giant arcologies, where entire Earth population can move if they want to, and where the least paid McFastFood worker would afford to buy a minimum apartment.
- plankers 4y ago
  Seems humanity is headed towards Asimov's Caves of Steel anyway due to climate collapse, so you'll get your wish.
  - pochekailov 4y ago
    Have more futuristic optimism. We are doing quite well on the climate. We will prevent it once we get fully to solar and then build CO2 scrubbers using solar energy. Energy percentage that come from renewables is more than 10x higher than anticipated 10 years ago. And don't call it a "collapse": a change is not necessary to the worse, sometimes it is to the better.
    - Workaccount2 4y ago
      I'm a bit less optimistic than that. I think we will be forced to start atmospheric spraying, and hopefully use that bandaid to fix the underlying wound. In theory it will stop warming, which may cause many people to take that as "Well, looks like we can go back to burning fossil fuels!".
    - plankers 4y ago
      i don't know what to call uncontrollable positive feedback loops in the global temperature if not a "collapse"
chadash 4y ago
Is this really true though? Sure a tech worker can move to rural Arkansas and live very easily, but in general, housing prices often correlate with local wages and most people can’t work remotely.

Not housing per-se, but concentrating too many jobs in few locations. Which causes issues with housing.

by mantas 4y ago

Not housing per-se, but concentrating too many jobs in few locations. Which causes issues with housing.

Even that probably has a root cause. Capitalism, efficiencies gained from concentrating resources in a single location, network effects etc? In the UK, jobs used to be at local factories and offices. It was rare for people to move for university then move to another city for work. My Grandad worked at a local electronics factory. My Dad worked at a local auto parts refurbishment factory. My mother in her early 20s worked as a secretary for the emergency services. Moving away for university and then again to another city for work was almost unheard of. You worked and lived close to your family. Of course the 80s came along and everything changed.

PaywallBuster 4y ago
+ specialization most of those jobs in the 80s require only basic education but when you have thousands of graduates coming out of universities, they'll be looking at very specific job positions, not any office job near home
- mantas 4y ago
  + job hopping. Moving to factory town is fine if you can see yourself working here for decades. But nowadays when people are expected to switch jobs frequently... Both sides could win a lot by agreeing to loyalty.

mschuster91 4y ago

> Not housing per-se, but concentrating too many jobs in few locations. Jobs weren't "concentrated" per se by any form of planning or centralized action, employers simply shifted to urban centers because the amount of skilled workers and other necessities (such as high speed Internet, universities, road and rail infrastructure) was vastly higher there than in dilapidated flyover-state villages. Additionally, rural areas got devastated by mechanization of agriculture following WW2 and later-on the closure of manufacturing plants and the mining industries [1], which led to a massive rural flight movement as everyone who could fled to the only place where employment was available - urban areas. The fix to the housing crisis would be to invest in rural areas again - there is no limitation in the nature of the work at all that stuff like a callcenter or a bunch of programmers can't work from some rural town, but as long as there is no actual high speed Internet or no amenities (healthcare, education institutions for children, entertainment) worth their name employers won't establish shop there and employees won't move there. Would you, even for free rent, move to some small town where your children have no perspective? [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/where-did-all-the-workers-go-60-years-of-economic-change-in-1-graph/252018/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/where-d...

seper8 4y ago
I read this kind of thinking a lot lately, people trying very hard to come up with solutions that don't address the main issue. Just guessing, you already own a house? The fix is to enable builders to build enough housing, and not just single family detached housing, by removing regulations which allow NIMBY-ism. At the same time, prevent investors from hoarding houses and jacking up the prices. I find it similar to scalping GPU's and reselling them for more money, which was a common practice in the past few years during the chip shortage and crypto mining boom. This kind of investment provides very little value to consumers, and in my view only serves to extract money from the poor to the rich.
- zhdc1 4y ago
  > The fix is to enable builders to build enough housing, and not just single family detached housing, by removing regulations which allow NIMBY-ism. This is the short term fix, and I completely agree with you. The long term fix is, aside from letting local governments make minor regulatory changes to facilitate denser urban construction, to simply do nothing. Cities are expensive. People will (and are) moving away from HCOL areas because of this. Businesses are adapting (e.g., with remote work) to hire people living in MCOL and LCOL areas. At the same time, new economic agglomerations are springing up in these areas to support growing populations. Given enough time, two things will happen. Many of these MCOL and LCOL areas will become more expensive. Some will urbanize. Some wont. Second, eventually, people living in the areas that don't urbanize will realize that they actually would enjoy living in a HCOL area. And the cycle will continue.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > Just guessing, you already own a house? LOL, I wish. Renting in Munich for enough money that I'll never be able to save enough for a downpayment. If I ever want to own my home, I'll have to move to the German equivalent of Alabama, with all the issues that come with that. > The fix is to enable builders to build enough housing, and not just single family detached housing, by removing regulations which allow NIMBY-ism. Where? Seriously, where?! Urban areas literally don't have enough space left any more to build any kind of building at affordable prices (plot values have sometimes doubled over four years here [1]), not to mention the associated followup costs of high-density populations (you need expensive subways as public transport at some point, denser / more anonymous populations leading to lower societal cohesion and rising crime as a result) or the fact that most urban areas simply are unsustainable regarding climate change in the long term (no trees to provide shade = lots of heat). [1] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/muenchen-grundstueckspreis-immobilien-bodenrichtwert-1.4580410 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/muenchen-grundstueckspr...

helge9210 4y ago

This looks like a positive feedback loop. People move to locations where there are many jobs available, so end of employment would not require moving to another location. More jobs are created, where there is higher availability of candidates.

pochekailov 4y ago

It is very good for productivity when many jobs are concentrated in one location. This unlocks the possibility for serendipitous connections. It is awesome when you can meet a founder, a leading engineer, an investor, a designer and a PR person in a coffee line, forming a new company before finishing your morning coffee. Talents concentrated in one place gives significant boost to their productivity. This is called a "proximity bonus" in video games; building dependent factories in the nearby slots gives them the productivity boost. This is what US is missing by being nimbyistic. I think we should return to the 1950s ideas of a futuristic cities and invest in building giant arcologies, where entire Earth population can move if they want to, and where the least paid McFastFood worker would afford to buy a minimum apartment.

plankers 4y ago
Seems humanity is headed towards Asimov's Caves of Steel anyway due to climate collapse, so you'll get your wish.
- pochekailov 4y ago
  Have more futuristic optimism. We are doing quite well on the climate. We will prevent it once we get fully to solar and then build CO2 scrubbers using solar energy. Energy percentage that come from renewables is more than 10x higher than anticipated 10 years ago. And don't call it a "collapse": a change is not necessary to the worse, sometimes it is to the better.
  - Workaccount2 4y ago
    I'm a bit less optimistic than that. I think we will be forced to start atmospheric spraying, and hopefully use that bandaid to fix the underlying wound. In theory it will stop warming, which may cause many people to take that as "Well, looks like we can go back to burning fossil fuels!".
  - plankers 4y ago
    i don't know what to call uncontrollable positive feedback loops in the global temperature if not a "collapse"

chadash 4y ago

Is this really true though? Sure a tech worker can move to rural Arkansas and live very easily, but in general, housing prices often correlate with local wages and most people can’t work remotely.