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>>The seemingly prevalent distaste for old things continues to frustrate me Sigh, I need to say this about old buildings... Sweden kept out of both world wars

by berntb 15y ago

>>The seemingly prevalent distaste for old things continues to frustrate me Sigh, I need to say this about old buildings... Sweden kept out of both world wars and that was an economic miracle for a previously very poor country. But despite not getting the cities destroyed by bombing (or street-to-street fighting), lots of old building and whole city centers were torn down in the 1950s and 1960s, to build new buildings. The whole country has sorely regretted it since then. Surviving old stone houses are generally really expensive. Please learn from other's stupidity, instead of repeating it; that is partly why our brains evolved to be big. Edit: Ah, that mansion wasn't even in China. Sorry for bothering.. :-)

deleted 15y ago
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jseliger 15y ago
If you want to preserve old buildings, buy them and hold on to them. Prices depends on supply and demand: if you reduce the supply of something and hold demand constant or increase it, that thing becomes valuable. The problem with preserving "old" buildings through legal means it that doing so prevents new supply (which usually means "more units for an acre of land") from coming online, thus increasing housing costs altogether. See: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/a-tale-of-two-town-houses/6334/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/a-tale-o... and http://www.amazon.com/Gated-City-Kindle-Single-ebook/dp/B005KGATLO?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957 http://www.amazon.com/Gated-City-Kindle-Single-ebook/dp/B005... for more. I regret not being able to live in places like Boston and L.A. because poorly conceived preservation laws remove building rights from owners and prevent them from constructing dwellings I and many others might actually be able to afford.
- berntb 15y ago
  The point was, it is a bit late to preserve old buildings in Sweden... :-) Re Boston/LA -- that is not relevant for Sweden either, since the biggest city is quite small (ca a million people), so there is space to be used, if it was handled well. (It isn't, but that is another story.)

by berntb 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

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jseliger 15y ago

If you want to preserve old buildings, buy them and hold on to them. Prices depends on supply and demand: if you reduce the supply of something and hold demand constant or increase it, that thing becomes valuable. The problem with preserving "old" buildings through legal means it that doing so prevents new supply (which usually means "more units for an acre of land") from coming online, thus increasing housing costs altogether. See: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/a-tale-of-two-town-houses/6334/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/a-tale-o... and http://www.amazon.com/Gated-City-Kindle-Single-ebook/dp/B005KGATLO?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957 http://www.amazon.com/Gated-City-Kindle-Single-ebook/dp/B005... for more. I regret not being able to live in places like Boston and L.A. because poorly conceived preservation laws remove building rights from owners and prevent them from constructing dwellings I and many others might actually be able to afford.

berntb 15y ago
The point was, it is a bit late to preserve old buildings in Sweden... :-) Re Boston/LA -- that is not relevant for Sweden either, since the biggest city is quite small (ca a million people), so there is space to be used, if it was handled well. (It isn't, but that is another story.)