3 ms·

Your daily reminder that urbanism leads only to more misery. Dense cities will never have cheaper housing. And it will only get worse and worse as the density c

by cyberax 11mo ago

Your daily reminder that urbanism leads only to more misery. Dense cities will never have cheaper housing. And it will only get worse and worse as the density continues to grow. And we know that the misery won out when people pose it like this: > If you can't afford a home up to our standards, better that you should be homeless? The third option is to LIVE IN CHEAPER PLACES. The US has 1.1 housing units per household. We literally have more homes than families! And this doesn't change much if we assume that illegal immigrants are undercounted. The whole housing policy must focus on making MORE locations feasible, not trying to strangle the democracy with bike lanes.

bccdee 11mo ago
I live in a big city with decent transit. I'm in my late 20s. Neither I nor any of my (white-collar professional) peers own cars. Do you have any idea how much money we save? And yeah, bike lanes are part of it too. They make it easy to get around quickly & cheaply. Our bike lanes are packed with bicycle couriers and the impact on traffic is practically zero. Bike lanes are popular because they work. High rent is caused by low supply of high-density housing. Apartment blocks are cheap. It's bad zoning, NIMBYs, and a slow pace of construction due to disproportionate focus on luxury units that cause housing supply issues. > The third option is to LIVE IN CHEAPER PLACES. The US has 1.1 housing units per household. Yeah, you know why people don't live in those places? They're in exurbs of Arizona, a thousand miles from anything. During the housing bubble, we built a bunch of homes in unlivable areas and now we're dealing with the fact that they're functionally useless.
- cyberax 11mo ago
  > I live in a big city with decent transit. I'm in my late 20s. Neither I nor any of my (white-collar professional) peers own cars. Do you have any idea how much money we save? None. You're losing money by not living in a cheaper place and overpaying for transit. Transit is FREAKISHLY expensive in time and money, it's not even funny how inefficient it is. > Our bike lanes are packed with bicycle couriers and the impact on traffic is practically zero. So you're in Manhattan? Figures > High rent is caused by low supply of high-density housing. Wrong. Hint: Manhattan is one of the most expensive places in the US. And recently elected a socialist who was promising state-run grocery stores. > Yeah, you know why people don't live in those places? Because toxic urbanism strangled the democracy with bike lanes. There are no jobs because it's cheaper for companies to build offices in Downtowns of large cities, offloading the externalities. This in turn makes housing near Downtowns more expensive because workers have to live there in order to get a job. This further increases the talent pool nearby, incentivizing more companies to open offices there. Rinse, wash, repeat, and you get a misery-density housing spiral.
  - bccdee 11mo ago
    > None. You're losing money by not living in a cheaper place and overpaying for transit. Oo, totally wrong! Fun guess though. The average monthly cost of car ownership is $1,300. The cost of a one-month transit pass is $150. I'm not gonna save $1,150 on rent by moving to a shitty suburb. > So you're in Manhattan? Nope. > Wrong. Hint: Manhattan is one of the most expensive places in the US. Yeah, because there's a shortage of apartments—that's what I said. Manhattan Island (being a rather small island) has physically run out of room for buildings, but that's not true of other areas. > And recently elected a socialist who was promising state-run grocery stores. Ok? So what? Maybe they'll expose private-sector price fixing & maybe they'll just be grocery stores. > Because toxic urbanism strangled the democracy with bike lanes. I'm honestly baffled. What makes you think bike lanes are undemocratic? Bikes are super cheap and take up very little space. Bike lanes really cut down on traffic. > This in turn makes housing near Downtowns more expensive because workers have to live there in order to get a job. Have you heard of industrial parks? It's pretty common for offices in big cities to be outside the city centre—far more common on the whole than downtown offices are. The big advantage of downtown offices is that a city's downtown is the nexus of its public transit: If you work downtown, you can easily live a ways outside the city on cheaper land and then come in by train. So no, the point of a downtown is that you don't need to live there to work there. Do you actually live in a city? I feel like you don't have a very strong understanding of how they're structured.
    - cyberax 11mo ago
      > Oo, totally wrong! Fun guess though. The average monthly cost of car ownership is $1,300. The cost of a one-month transit pass is $150. I'm not gonna save $1,150 on rent by moving to a shitty suburb. The TRUE cost of one month's pass is about $3000 (with capital cost). The pure "just-keep-the-lights-on" cost is around $750. It's that you're paying it from your taxes and rent. > Yeah, because there's a shortage of apartments—that's what I said. Manhattan Island (being a rather small island) has physically run out of room for buildings, but that's not true of other areas. Yes, and it is metastasizing into other neighborhoods. > Ok? So what? Maybe they'll expose private-sector price fixing & maybe they'll just be grocery stores. Think about it again. If density works so well, why is there a significant number of people too poor to buy groceries? > Have you heard of industrial parks? It's pretty common for offices in big cities to be outside the city centre—far more common on the whole than downtown offices are. Not anymore.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
pixelatedindex 11mo ago
> Dense cities will never have cheaper housing. Yeah there’s a correlation but I doubt it’s causation. There are underlying aspects like zoning (and other regulations as mentioned in article) that can make an impact on housing prices. Other reasons are because employment and career prospects are higher so that attracts more people, which creates more demand.
- cyberax 11mo ago
  > Yeah there’s a correlation but I doubt it’s causation. There is. Density-misery death spiral. You can usually check for correlation vs. causation by looking for counterexamples. Do you know a city that increased density and that resulted in cheaper housing? I don't. And I checked the stats for all of the US, Western Europe, and Japan. So far, it looks like the only way to decrease the cost is to reduce the city population.

by cyberax 11mo ago

bccdee 11mo ago

I live in a big city with decent transit. I'm in my late 20s. Neither I nor any of my (white-collar professional) peers own cars. Do you have any idea how much money we save? And yeah, bike lanes are part of it too. They make it easy to get around quickly & cheaply. Our bike lanes are packed with bicycle couriers and the impact on traffic is practically zero. Bike lanes are popular because they work. High rent is caused by low supply of high-density housing. Apartment blocks are cheap. It's bad zoning, NIMBYs, and a slow pace of construction due to disproportionate focus on luxury units that cause housing supply issues. > The third option is to LIVE IN CHEAPER PLACES. The US has 1.1 housing units per household. Yeah, you know why people don't live in those places? They're in exurbs of Arizona, a thousand miles from anything. During the housing bubble, we built a bunch of homes in unlivable areas and now we're dealing with the fact that they're functionally useless.

cyberax 11mo ago
> I live in a big city with decent transit. I'm in my late 20s. Neither I nor any of my (white-collar professional) peers own cars. Do you have any idea how much money we save? None. You're losing money by not living in a cheaper place and overpaying for transit. Transit is FREAKISHLY expensive in time and money, it's not even funny how inefficient it is. > Our bike lanes are packed with bicycle couriers and the impact on traffic is practically zero. So you're in Manhattan? Figures > High rent is caused by low supply of high-density housing. Wrong. Hint: Manhattan is one of the most expensive places in the US. And recently elected a socialist who was promising state-run grocery stores. > Yeah, you know why people don't live in those places? Because toxic urbanism strangled the democracy with bike lanes. There are no jobs because it's cheaper for companies to build offices in Downtowns of large cities, offloading the externalities. This in turn makes housing near Downtowns more expensive because workers have to live there in order to get a job. This further increases the talent pool nearby, incentivizing more companies to open offices there. Rinse, wash, repeat, and you get a misery-density housing spiral.
- bccdee 11mo ago
  > None. You're losing money by not living in a cheaper place and overpaying for transit. Oo, totally wrong! Fun guess though. The average monthly cost of car ownership is $1,300. The cost of a one-month transit pass is $150. I'm not gonna save $1,150 on rent by moving to a shitty suburb. > So you're in Manhattan? Nope. > Wrong. Hint: Manhattan is one of the most expensive places in the US. Yeah, because there's a shortage of apartments—that's what I said. Manhattan Island (being a rather small island) has physically run out of room for buildings, but that's not true of other areas. > And recently elected a socialist who was promising state-run grocery stores. Ok? So what? Maybe they'll expose private-sector price fixing & maybe they'll just be grocery stores. > Because toxic urbanism strangled the democracy with bike lanes. I'm honestly baffled. What makes you think bike lanes are undemocratic? Bikes are super cheap and take up very little space. Bike lanes really cut down on traffic. > This in turn makes housing near Downtowns more expensive because workers have to live there in order to get a job. Have you heard of industrial parks? It's pretty common for offices in big cities to be outside the city centre—far more common on the whole than downtown offices are. The big advantage of downtown offices is that a city's downtown is the nexus of its public transit: If you work downtown, you can easily live a ways outside the city on cheaper land and then come in by train. So no, the point of a downtown is that you don't need to live there to work there. Do you actually live in a city? I feel like you don't have a very strong understanding of how they're structured.
  - cyberax 11mo ago
    > Oo, totally wrong! Fun guess though. The average monthly cost of car ownership is $1,300. The cost of a one-month transit pass is $150. I'm not gonna save $1,150 on rent by moving to a shitty suburb. The TRUE cost of one month's pass is about $3000 (with capital cost). The pure "just-keep-the-lights-on" cost is around $750. It's that you're paying it from your taxes and rent. > Yeah, because there's a shortage of apartments—that's what I said. Manhattan Island (being a rather small island) has physically run out of room for buildings, but that's not true of other areas. Yes, and it is metastasizing into other neighborhoods. > Ok? So what? Maybe they'll expose private-sector price fixing & maybe they'll just be grocery stores. Think about it again. If density works so well, why is there a significant number of people too poor to buy groceries? > Have you heard of industrial parks? It's pretty common for offices in big cities to be outside the city centre—far more common on the whole than downtown offices are. Not anymore.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

pixelatedindex 11mo ago

> Dense cities will never have cheaper housing. Yeah there’s a correlation but I doubt it’s causation. There are underlying aspects like zoning (and other regulations as mentioned in article) that can make an impact on housing prices. Other reasons are because employment and career prospects are higher so that attracts more people, which creates more demand.

cyberax 11mo ago
> Yeah there’s a correlation but I doubt it’s causation. There is. Density-misery death spiral. You can usually check for correlation vs. causation by looking for counterexamples. Do you know a city that increased density and that resulted in cheaper housing? I don't. And I checked the stats for all of the US, Western Europe, and Japan. So far, it looks like the only way to decrease the cost is to reduce the city population.