7 ms·
Seems to me that we've speed run the story of why suburban sprawl exist in the first place. A car is a machine to provide negotiating leverage in real estate m
by api 3y ago
Seems to me that we've speed run the story of why suburban sprawl exist in the first place.
A car is a machine to provide negotiating leverage in real estate markets.
Dense urban centers, while awesome in many ways, easily lend themselves to the development of grassroots real estate cartels made up of property owners who block new construction to profit from real estate appreciation. As this occurs people are forced further and further out to find affordable places to live. Eventually the jobs start to follow, leading to tax base collapse and urban decay. This leads to a death spiral of urban decay, crime, and population flight.
Then the city gets cheap and people start to move in again. Repeat cycle. Cities get cool -> people move in -> cities get expensive because you can't build -> people move out -> cities collapse.
There are places that seem able to avoid this cycle, such as Tokyo, but AFAIK that relies on a different kind of governance regime that takes zoning away from local bodies and enforces a uniform pro-density zoning code at the city or even larger scale. Basically you have to break the NIMBY cartel. It also involves very proactive transit policies that build out transit to match density.
Of course it could also be due in part to Japan's declining population, which makes it pretty hard to have real estate inflation.
- mlyle 3y agoJapan also has a radically different property ownership structure which has myriad effects.
- bugglebeetle 3y agoThe “NIMBY cartel” here is any and all real estate investors, who have turned both housing and office space in large cities into a speculative asset class from which they expect to receive returns far beyond sanity. I wouldn’t gamble on them being disrupted any time soon. California, where Democrats have the firmest lock on the levers of power, has some of the most regressive, distortionary laws in place to protect them.
- Animats 3y ago> A car is a machine to provide negotiating leverage in real estate markets. Now that's a good insight. It's amusing to read the comments from commercial real estate owners. There's a huge sense of entitlement. If they're losing money, somebody else must do something to make them stop losing money. Immediately. The commercial real estate business did this in 2006-2008, and in 1999-2000 in San Francisco. The mall industry has been shrinking for years. It's not the end of the world.
- api 3y ago> It's amusing to read the comments from commercial real estate owners. There's a huge sense of entitlement. If they're losing money, somebody else must do something to make them stop losing money. Immediately. Many homeowners have the same attitude toward their home value. If their home value is going down, politicians need to do something. It's part of why reform is so hard. It's political suicide to do anything that could reduce home prices for existing home owners. Real estate appreciation is basically an entitlement. I fully expect a bailout for commercial real estate. Maybe this is how we get to the stars. Warp drive will be invented once the final campaign to allow infill development on Mars falls to a NIMBY campaign to preserve the character of the planet. (Actually I think something like this is a plot point in Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars novels...)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- closeparen 3y agoSprawl is also a technology for balancing public order and civil rights. I don’t think there’s any way to square the circle of cities being nice places for middle class families to live while also having a right to camp on the sidewalk and urinate on the train.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jupp0r 3y agoI still have to see any super dense city that is actually a good place for families with small children. This is for the reasons you mentioned but also for others like like lack of living space, nature, transportation for the purpose of travel/vacation, etc.
- closeparen 3y agoHow about any of the cites in The Netherlands?