4 ms·

Canada has less people, even with a 10% increase in the last 4 years through imigration, some of which is from Indonesea presumably including a significant numb

by metalman 11mo ago

Canada has less people, even with a 10% increase in the last 4 years through imigration, some of which is from Indonesea presumably including a significant number from Jakarta, where the civil infrastructure must be epic

skx001 11mo ago
The West just refuses to build anything. Whereas in Asia its not uncommon to build entire cites from scratch.
- b112 11mo ago
  Yes, it's easy to build entire cities from scratch in a centrally managed society, such as a dictatorship or communist nations. It's also easy to have cities grow fast, if you're primarily a rural/agrarian nation, and suddenly have a transition to become urban. This was (for example) Canada in the 1900s. Mostly rural, yet now it's mostly urban. Canada saw fast growth of cities back then. It's maintaining large cities once the fast growth is over, that is a different story. How will, for example, China look in 50+ years? 100+ years? When all its newly built mega-city projects are crumbling.
  - gucci-on-fleek 11mo ago
    > Canada saw fast growth of cities back then. It still does—Vancouver and Calgary have both almost doubled in population over the past 30 years [0] [1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Vancouver#Demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Vancouver#Demographics [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Calgary#Civic_census https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Calgary#Civic_...
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
  - catlover76 11mo ago
    > Yes, it's easy to build entire cities from scratch in a centrally managed society, such as a dictatorship or communist nations. This is generally true, but Indonesia is neither
  - skx001 11mo ago
    > Yes, it's easy to build entire cities from scratch in a centrally managed society, such as a dictatorship or communist nations. I would like to pushback on this assumption. I made that point because you mentioned Canada and its rapid immigration rise in the last 5 years. Western countries, namely Canada can do a lot to build more to ease the pressures on its housing demand. Vast amounts of land is available to build amazing cities. There are specialist architect firms that can plan the most beautiful, walkable, livable, affordable cities very close to major hubs and metros currently. In the 50s/60s/70s these very Western countries, spent a lot and built all kinds of infrastructure which led to meaningful increases in quality of life and perhaps created the most prosperous generation in these countries. Even now when any government in the West wants to really do something, they don't really care about anything and it gets done, the money magically appears, the votes are found no matter how unpopular it may be. But for some reason building infrastructure, housing, mass transit has been completely forgotten. The real bottlenecks are governance, bureaucracy, and NIMBYism. Like a few comments above pointed out, its keeping boomers happy with their high property values at the expense of the young. Some things just don't make sense to me as an outsider. A few examples I read recently. [1] It will take three decades to turn an 18-mile stretch of the A66 road in northern England into a dual carriageway. [2] It will take 20+ years just to add another runway at Heathrow London and cost $64 Billion Dollars! [3] While Dubai is building a brand new whole airport for $35 Billion, I think the worlds largest when its finished. Nearly all of the political problems in Canada, UK, Australia and much of the US (NYC,SF, etc.) will completely go away if they had the "Build, Baby Build" attitude. Just build housing like there is no tomorrow. There is no such thing as an "oversupply" of a basic human need, livable shelter. I can assure you, knowing how Asian countries like China approach governance, Chinese cities will have no major issues in 50+ years. Any outstanding issues will will resolved well before they start to become a problem with various 5-10 year plans. The same for Malaysia, Singapore etc. [1] https://archive.md/PcOZV https://archive.md/PcOZV [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-chooses-heathrow-airports-64-billion-plan-basis-expansion-2025-11-25/ https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-chooses-heathrow-airport... [3] https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/4/29/dubais-ruler-announces-construction-of-worlds-largest-airport-terminal https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/4/29/dubais-ruler-ann...
    - b112 11mo ago
- bryanlarsen 11mo ago
  Canada has been building housing at a much higher rate than the US in the last 2 decades. Not enough, but more.
  - jeffbee 11mo ago
    Hrmm. What data source can I see to demonstrate this? I looked at a chart I have referenced before that shows nationwide USA housing starts over the last 20 years ranging from 2 to 8 per 1000 people. Then I searched for one for Canada and found one suggesting 1-2 per 1000 since 2005. And, evidently, the situation in Canada as developed/deteriorated to the extent there's a whole subreddit for the canadian housing crisis?
    - bryanlarsen 11mo ago
      Looks to be averaging around 250,000 per year over the last decade. That'd be over 12 per 1000. https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/housing-starts https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/housing-starts
      - jeffbee 11mo ago
        Yes so it looks like the Reddit people are committing major chart-crimes, showing quarterly data as such, rather than annualized rates, and not mentioning it. It looks like this is a source of truth: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3410013501&pickMembers%5B0%5D=1.1&pickMembers%5B1%5D=4.1&cubeTimeFrame.startMonth=07&cubeTimeFrame.startYear=2005&cubeTimeFrame.endMonth=07&cubeTimeFrame.endYear=2025&referencePeriods=20050701%2C20250701 https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=341001...
        mh- 11mo ago
        I have watched reddit become useless for any kind of nuanced debate over the last 5 years. It's rather sad to me, because once upon a time I learned a lot about others views - especially ones I disagree with. Even HN is much less welcoming of the "I think I agree with you, but walk me through your thinking" replies than it used to be. I presume this is reflective of a few broader societal trends, and it's.. not good.
- Sohcahtoa82 11mo ago
  Why spend billions building when you can just keep raising rents on existing infrastructure?
- parpfish 11mo ago
  I don't even know what it would it even look like to "build a city" from scratch in the US. who does the building and puts together the central plan? does the government build a bunch of public housing and a publicly owned commercial district? i guess they kind of have experience doing this with military bases, but at some point you need to encourage a bunch of private development and ownership, right? or would the government just incentivize private developers to start building in the middle of nowhere and hope that a city arises as an emergent phenomenon? that approach seems like it would be rife with abuse and waste. seems like this would be a lot easier to do with an authoritarian regime that could just decree "we're building a city here. the following industries will move their headquarters"
  - abdullahkhalids 11mo ago
    It's not particularly difficult to start a new city. The government simply asks large companies to open offices/factories in the new city in exchange for tax breaks/subsidies. Or give funding to a university to open a satellite campus. All you need is a promise for like 20k people to initially move. Then the government builds roads and utility networks. Private developers will also build housing if given the right financial incentive. The 20k people will automatically lead to the same number moving in due to cheap housing, or for creating every day businesses, hospitals, schools etc. Within a couple of years you can setup up a feedback loop where the population is growing at 5-10% every year. There is no need to force anyone to do anything. Financial incentives are enough.
  - mikepurvis 11mo ago
    The western approach would almost certainly be a public-private partnership; we do that with all meaningful infra projects, where multiple industry consortia put together proposals and then one is selected to move forward. For example, for the ION Light Rail in Waterloo Region (~$1B), the winning consortium was composed of engineering and construction firms/consultants, a operations company that would run the system, plus a financier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GrandLinq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GrandLinq That said, for a project the scale of building a city, I can imagine it might actually be faster and more efficient for the government to just plan and build everything itself and then sell it off to private entities later.
Squealer2642 11mo ago
The civil infrastructure in Jakarta is horrible, especially compared to other Asian cities.

skx001 11mo ago

The West just refuses to build anything. Whereas in Asia its not uncommon to build entire cites from scratch.

b112 11mo ago
Yes, it's easy to build entire cities from scratch in a centrally managed society, such as a dictatorship or communist nations. It's also easy to have cities grow fast, if you're primarily a rural/agrarian nation, and suddenly have a transition to become urban. This was (for example) Canada in the 1900s. Mostly rural, yet now it's mostly urban. Canada saw fast growth of cities back then. It's maintaining large cities once the fast growth is over, that is a different story. How will, for example, China look in 50+ years? 100+ years? When all its newly built mega-city projects are crumbling.
- gucci-on-fleek 11mo ago
  > Canada saw fast growth of cities back then. It still does—Vancouver and Calgary have both almost doubled in population over the past 30 years [0] [1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Vancouver#Demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Vancouver#Demographics [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Calgary#Civic_census https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Calgary#Civic_...
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
- catlover76 11mo ago
  > Yes, it's easy to build entire cities from scratch in a centrally managed society, such as a dictatorship or communist nations. This is generally true, but Indonesia is neither
- skx001 11mo ago
  > Yes, it's easy to build entire cities from scratch in a centrally managed society, such as a dictatorship or communist nations. I would like to pushback on this assumption. I made that point because you mentioned Canada and its rapid immigration rise in the last 5 years. Western countries, namely Canada can do a lot to build more to ease the pressures on its housing demand. Vast amounts of land is available to build amazing cities. There are specialist architect firms that can plan the most beautiful, walkable, livable, affordable cities very close to major hubs and metros currently. In the 50s/60s/70s these very Western countries, spent a lot and built all kinds of infrastructure which led to meaningful increases in quality of life and perhaps created the most prosperous generation in these countries. Even now when any government in the West wants to really do something, they don't really care about anything and it gets done, the money magically appears, the votes are found no matter how unpopular it may be. But for some reason building infrastructure, housing, mass transit has been completely forgotten. The real bottlenecks are governance, bureaucracy, and NIMBYism. Like a few comments above pointed out, its keeping boomers happy with their high property values at the expense of the young. Some things just don't make sense to me as an outsider. A few examples I read recently. [1] It will take three decades to turn an 18-mile stretch of the A66 road in northern England into a dual carriageway. [2] It will take 20+ years just to add another runway at Heathrow London and cost $64 Billion Dollars! [3] While Dubai is building a brand new whole airport for $35 Billion, I think the worlds largest when its finished. Nearly all of the political problems in Canada, UK, Australia and much of the US (NYC,SF, etc.) will completely go away if they had the "Build, Baby Build" attitude. Just build housing like there is no tomorrow. There is no such thing as an "oversupply" of a basic human need, livable shelter. I can assure you, knowing how Asian countries like China approach governance, Chinese cities will have no major issues in 50+ years. Any outstanding issues will will resolved well before they start to become a problem with various 5-10 year plans. The same for Malaysia, Singapore etc. [1] https://archive.md/PcOZV https://archive.md/PcOZV [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-chooses-heathrow-airports-64-billion-plan-basis-expansion-2025-11-25/ https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-chooses-heathrow-airport... [3] https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/4/29/dubais-ruler-announces-construction-of-worlds-largest-airport-terminal https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/4/29/dubais-ruler-ann...
  - b112 11mo ago
bryanlarsen 11mo ago
Canada has been building housing at a much higher rate than the US in the last 2 decades. Not enough, but more.
- jeffbee 11mo ago
  Hrmm. What data source can I see to demonstrate this? I looked at a chart I have referenced before that shows nationwide USA housing starts over the last 20 years ranging from 2 to 8 per 1000 people. Then I searched for one for Canada and found one suggesting 1-2 per 1000 since 2005. And, evidently, the situation in Canada as developed/deteriorated to the extent there's a whole subreddit for the canadian housing crisis?
  - bryanlarsen 11mo ago
    Looks to be averaging around 250,000 per year over the last decade. That'd be over 12 per 1000. https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/housing-starts https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/housing-starts
    - jeffbee 11mo ago
      Yes so it looks like the Reddit people are committing major chart-crimes, showing quarterly data as such, rather than annualized rates, and not mentioning it. It looks like this is a source of truth: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3410013501&pickMembers%5B0%5D=1.1&pickMembers%5B1%5D=4.1&cubeTimeFrame.startMonth=07&cubeTimeFrame.startYear=2005&cubeTimeFrame.endMonth=07&cubeTimeFrame.endYear=2025&referencePeriods=20050701%2C20250701 https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=341001...
      - mh- 11mo ago
        I have watched reddit become useless for any kind of nuanced debate over the last 5 years. It's rather sad to me, because once upon a time I learned a lot about others views - especially ones I disagree with. Even HN is much less welcoming of the "I think I agree with you, but walk me through your thinking" replies than it used to be. I presume this is reflective of a few broader societal trends, and it's.. not good.
Sohcahtoa82 11mo ago
Why spend billions building when you can just keep raising rents on existing infrastructure?
parpfish 11mo ago
I don't even know what it would it even look like to "build a city" from scratch in the US. who does the building and puts together the central plan? does the government build a bunch of public housing and a publicly owned commercial district? i guess they kind of have experience doing this with military bases, but at some point you need to encourage a bunch of private development and ownership, right? or would the government just incentivize private developers to start building in the middle of nowhere and hope that a city arises as an emergent phenomenon? that approach seems like it would be rife with abuse and waste. seems like this would be a lot easier to do with an authoritarian regime that could just decree "we're building a city here. the following industries will move their headquarters"
- abdullahkhalids 11mo ago
  It's not particularly difficult to start a new city. The government simply asks large companies to open offices/factories in the new city in exchange for tax breaks/subsidies. Or give funding to a university to open a satellite campus. All you need is a promise for like 20k people to initially move. Then the government builds roads and utility networks. Private developers will also build housing if given the right financial incentive. The 20k people will automatically lead to the same number moving in due to cheap housing, or for creating every day businesses, hospitals, schools etc. Within a couple of years you can setup up a feedback loop where the population is growing at 5-10% every year. There is no need to force anyone to do anything. Financial incentives are enough.
- mikepurvis 11mo ago
  The western approach would almost certainly be a public-private partnership; we do that with all meaningful infra projects, where multiple industry consortia put together proposals and then one is selected to move forward. For example, for the ION Light Rail in Waterloo Region (~$1B), the winning consortium was composed of engineering and construction firms/consultants, a operations company that would run the system, plus a financier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GrandLinq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GrandLinq That said, for a project the scale of building a city, I can imagine it might actually be faster and more efficient for the government to just plan and build everything itself and then sell it off to private entities later.

Squealer2642 11mo ago

The civil infrastructure in Jakarta is horrible, especially compared to other Asian cities.