2 ms·
>You can easily get housing affordability crises even without single family homes, as is plainly evident right now in non-North-American cities. Yes, you can g
by scoofy 3y ago
>You can easily get housing affordability crises even without single family homes, as is plainly evident right now in non-North-American cities.
Yes, you can get an affordability crisis anywhere you make it illegal to build housing. Nobody is arguing that. The point is that you also get an affordability crisis simply by pushing the transportation infrastructure to the point of failure, and then reject density.
>Is "make today's cities larger and denser forever" really the solution? Or can we figure out ways to disperse and decentralize things instead of just feeding more money back into the hands of those who own and control the current cities?
This is literally what's happening in every tech satellite city, the point is that many-if-not-most of our urban centers are already at their transportation capacities, simply because that is the suburban development model: it's extremely cheap until suddenly it's no longer functional. The suburban model has no equilibrium, it's a cascade, once the planned automobile infrastructure reaches capacity, you cannot increase it at a rate that is sustainable. Thus, once that capacity is gone, suddenly the real estate in the core becomes extremely valuable -> which incentivizes density -> which further strains peak infrastructure -> which increases the value of core real estate -> which further incentivizes density -> etc. -> etc. -> etc.
We can't wish this away, beyond wishing other people just didn't exist. It's like wishing that other people would take the bus, but not wanting to take it yourself. Nobody in the bay area wants to move to affordable Red Bluff, CA, without a reason, much less the CEO of a major corporation moving their entire company there out of the kindness of his heart we he or she already has a house and friends in Atherton.