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Perhaps if urban living were even more popular, condos could fetch $10k/sqft instead of $1k. But to the extent that today's cities are harmed by their level of
by closeparen 3y ago
Perhaps if urban living were even more popular, condos could fetch $10k/sqft instead of $1k. But to the extent that today's cities are harmed by their level of desirability, it is still in the direction of being too desired relative to their capacity. $1k/sqft is still ludicrous.
- shortrounddev2 3y agosure they're too desired relative to their capacity, but that's a commentary on their capacity more than their desirability, which is low compared to suburbs or even farms
- closeparen 3y agoI think we plausibly have a genuine glut of offices that no one wants or will ever want again. My argument is that the situation for residences is completely different. Even if urban neighborhoods were only half as popular next year, we would still need to produce quite a bit more of them.
- shortrounddev2 3y agoWe should be building urban housing like fucking crazy, but we also need to fix issues that make cities less desirable to live in. I firmly believe that cities have become undesirable because we have allowed suburbs to dictate their growth trajectory. Rather than building walkable cities for those that live there, some cities have carved interstate highways through their hearts in order to appease suburban commuters. This leads to all kinds of problems with livability that makes people not want to live in cities.
- rayiner 3y agoIf we don’t fix the things that make cities undesirable, we can’t get the political support needed to allow more places to urbanize.
- rayiner 3y agoOrdinarily when prices are high, the market makes more of the high-priced thing. But the problem here is that 80% of the population doesn’t want to live in a city. So by majority vote, they can shut down development of more urban areas (i.e. supply). If cities fixed their problems, they might become more desirable across the population. That might drive up prices in the short term, but ultimately would drive down prices if that creates a critical mass of voters who want to live in an urban area.
- closeparen 3y agoThe fiercest opposition to infill development comes at the local level from people who love their urban areas the way they are. YIMBY successes have been in moving these decisions to state legislatures that include broader geographies and more diverse urbanization levels. I don’t think it’s the 80% who are the problem, it's the 20% who've got theirs already.
- rayiner 3y agoThat’s been of limited success as soon as urban development becomes politicized among the 80%. The NIMBY’s in SF might be the immediate challenge, but the folks in the rest of CA afraid of their little suburb becoming like East Palo Alto maintain the overall legal framework that gives those NIMBY’s power.