4 ms·
There's a common complaint I see across many local housing discussions, which goes something like: "We need affordable housing, but we shouldn't build to become
by cschneid 3y ago
There's a common complaint I see across many local housing discussions, which goes something like: "We need affordable housing, but we shouldn't build to become <nearest metro>!" and of course the shorter "We're full!". But that then ignores the fact that the United States doesn't have internal movement controls. If somebody wants to move to a city, they can. The richest / most motivated group of those people will purchase housing until the housing is gone. In extremes this means knocking down old housing stock and rebuilding new (but not new density), or massive gut & remodels.
Assuming the city is desirable enough (ie. a mountain town). You get this, and you must choose two:
* Allow people to move into your city (Must choose this one).
* More units / Affordable Units
* Keep city 'character' by avoiding density.
Some places choose character. Much of the Bay Area for instance, with 1.5 million dollar single family homes, and not one apartment as far as the eye can see. And others choose to build lots of units, although it's hard to find examples in the US. Tokyo is the one that comes to mind. Many people in Japan wants to move to Tokyo, and they build tons and tons of apartments to support that. The character of course was already big city, but it's grown into mega-mega city.
- dghlsakjg 3y agoThe unstated assumption is that we aren't going to build new towns. Vail is a post WWII development. It used to be nothing. Colorado still has A LOT of undeveloped land. Water is an issue, but residential use is pretty small, and it doesn't matter if my residence is in Vail or a new town, I still am going to need water. The problem is that opportunity is, for some reason, being geographically limited to fewer and fewer places.
- gottorf 3y ago> Colorado still has A LOT of undeveloped land. Not just Colorado! I live in a state that's pretty much middle of the pack for size and density, and there's no shortage of open land around here. No water concerns, either, with plenty of rainfall. > opportunity is, for some reason, being geographically limited to fewer and fewer places. I think the economic history of the past few decades (at least) has been one of trading away resilience for higher efficiency; bigger and more geographically centralized economic engines that are more efficient, but are more vulnerable to shocks, as the recent supply-chain issues have shown. Covid and its aftereffects may reverse that trend.
- Pet_Ant 3y agoJust because there is open land, doesn't mean we should pave it over. I really feel like we should cap the percentage of the earth's surface that is developed to something like 2010 levels and just infill. Otherwise the Amazon doesn't stand a chance or biodiversity.
- allturtles 3y agoVail boomed because of the ski resort. People won't be nearly as attracted to a mountain town that's far from existing ski resort, and starting a new, viable ski resort is hard. Another constraining factor on development in Colorado is road access. Almost all traffic between the mountains and the highly populated Denver metro area (including the only major airport in the region) is along the I-70 corridor. Absent the construction of a new major tunnel across the continental divide, if you are far from that corridor, your site will be much less attractive.