4 ms·

Dumb question, many cities suffer from extremely high property (i.e. land) prices. I understand the NIMBY barrier. But I don't understand why it isn't more comm

by nomilk 7mo ago

Dumb question, many cities suffer from extremely high property (i.e. land) prices. I understand the NIMBY barrier. But I don't understand why it isn't more common to simply.. start a new city. Especially in countries like Australia where property prices are sky high and alternative places for setting up a new city are abundant. Maybe internet connectivity was previously a barrier, but now.. starlink. I put this question to grok; its response: > Unfortunately, Australia's legal, regulatory, financial, and practical systems make this extremely difficult (bordering on impossible at any meaningful scale). Crazy that the reason we can't have an order-of-magnitude reduction in the cost of the most important thing people need (shelter) is not due to resource constraints, but man-made ones.

1970-01-01 7mo ago
Water. You need clean water to grow a city. There isn't much of that to spread around anymore.
- bluGill 7mo ago
  most people posting here are talking about california or texas - desert or near deserts where there isn't enough water. however there are many places where there is more than enough water. East of the mississippi for example. other continents also have areas where there is plenty.
- aorloff 7mo ago
  Except in the oceans, and near the oceans
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
blesss121q 7mo ago
[dead]
noahbp 7mo ago
Why would you think that the same thing preventing density and new development in cities won’t stop your new city from growing before any building taller than 2 stories is built?
trollbridge 7mo ago
[dead]
bluGill 7mo ago
You can't start a new city. I city exists for all the things you can do. Your new city will have nothing to do because nobody lives there and there are no jobs to attract anyone to move. that is why we build suburbs - they get anound this by being right next to a place with everything you want in a city
- vel0city 7mo ago
  It obviously wouldn't be successful on day one, and it would take some kind of exceptional pressure to jump start it, but these things have been done in the past in the US and have been done recently in China. Not arguing these were good things, but they have happened before. Think back to the old "company towns". Lowell, Massachusetts, built for a textile mill. Hershey Pennsylvania, built around a chocolate factory. Fordlandia, Brazil, a rubber plantation town. All of these were essentially cities and towns planned out around a central industry. Similar things happened with the ghost cities in China with several of the big notable ones eventually actually growing into real, functional cities. Once again, these have all kinds of messy histories and I'm not saying they're all good ideas. But just pointing out, it can be done.
  - bluGill 7mo ago
    And you proved my point why you can't today.
- ryanmerket 7mo ago
  Sure you can. You just need enough land and money to start basic things like a post office, city hall, courthouse, roads, and a way to get power to the whole thing. See Starbase, Texas
  - terminalshort 7mo ago
    Starbase TX isn't a city in any sense other than a legal designation. It's a massive SpaceX industrial facility that has its own municipality similar to the way Disney World has one for its park.
abtinf 7mo ago
You might enjoy the novel A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute.
rcpt 7mo ago
[dead]
jojobas 7mo ago
There is no shortage of cheaper existing cities in Australia, but everyone wants to live in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth. The existing smaller cities just slowly wither. Existing homeowners of the capitals have little interest in real estate prices dramatically dropping - would you?
jfoster 7mo ago
> Crazy that the reason we can't have an order-of-magnitude reduction in the cost of the most important thing people need (shelter) is not due to resource constraints, but man-made ones. You say that as though reduction in cost of housing is a universal desire, but it isn't. Suppose a couple of years ago you took a $500,000 loan to buy a $700,000 house, which you'll be paying off for the next 10 years. Would you like the market value of your house to decline substantially during that time? If there's enough of the population bought into property, it won't be politically feasible to allow the value of homes to decline.
- FireBeyond 7mo ago
  > Suppose a couple of years ago you took a $500,000 loan to buy a $700,000 house, which you'll be paying off for the next 10 years. Would you like the market value of your house to decline substantially during that time? No, but when your city proposes a "missing middle" plan, watch who all comes out of the woodwork to scream murder at their research that shows that the projected effect of doing so will lower property values in my town from an 11.5% YoY average increase to a "mere" 9% YoY increase. You'd have thought the city was suggesting executing grandmothers in the streets. (I cannot personally complain, I put down 10% on my home purchase here in 2021 and was able to get out of PMI due to having 20% equity against appraised value 366 days later, while only making required payments.)
- foltik 7mo ago
  Always comes back to the good ol “fuck you, I got mine.”
  - jfoster 7mo ago
    When the problem is particularly exacerbated, it's not even "I got mine", but rather, "I already went into eye-watering levels of debt and I'm still paying off the roof over my head."
    - foltik 7mo ago
      So you made a half-million dollar leveraged bet and now want the government to rig the market so it pays off, at everyone else’s expense. Being more desperate doesn’t make it any less selfish. It’s a universal desire for everyone who’s not selfish.
xboxnolifes 7mo ago
In this hypothetical, who is the individual or group of people that you envision would take the initiative to start a new city? What is their incentive to do so?
AngryData 7mo ago
People move to where there is jobs and money. You can't build the housing first, in our society you need capitalists to invest into building businesses to make people want to move there. And because we have spent decades killing small business in favor of corporations, you need corporations to decide to build where there are no people and they have to pay a small short term premium to attract workers. Except corporations don't like doing that because it is a longer term investment and they are worried about next quarter's numbers and maximizing executive level bonuses which means short term planning.
- steve-atx-7600 7mo ago
  You could build all the housing first in China until recently…
  - AngryData 7mo ago
    China was dumping money into those cities for people to build businesses and paying people to move there though, it wasn't just the housing. So yes I agree it can work if you go beyond that, but not through applying capitalist principles first and foremost. If you tried to pay people to live in a specific city and pay them again to build a small local business in the US, people would go bonkers about communism and 99% of politicians and capitalist investors would spend every waking moment trying to stop it.
knappe 7mo ago
You can, but it is damn difficult. https://www.volts.wtf/p/is-the-brand-new-city-in-california https://www.volts.wtf/p/is-the-brand-new-city-in-california
renewiltord 7mo ago
Subject to the same constraints. They tried to make one in California and it was blocked by others in the same county. It’s fine to be honest. Over time California will become less relevant to the US and Texas more so.
cowboy7q 7mo ago
[dead]

by nomilk 7mo ago

1970-01-01 7mo ago

Water. You need clean water to grow a city. There isn't much of that to spread around anymore.

bluGill 7mo ago
most people posting here are talking about california or texas - desert or near deserts where there isn't enough water. however there are many places where there is more than enough water. East of the mississippi for example. other continents also have areas where there is plenty.
aorloff 7mo ago
Except in the oceans, and near the oceans
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]

blesss121q 7mo ago

[dead]

noahbp 7mo ago

Why would you think that the same thing preventing density and new development in cities won’t stop your new city from growing before any building taller than 2 stories is built?

trollbridge 7mo ago

[dead]

bluGill 7mo ago

You can't start a new city. I city exists for all the things you can do. Your new city will have nothing to do because nobody lives there and there are no jobs to attract anyone to move. that is why we build suburbs - they get anound this by being right next to a place with everything you want in a city

vel0city 7mo ago
It obviously wouldn't be successful on day one, and it would take some kind of exceptional pressure to jump start it, but these things have been done in the past in the US and have been done recently in China. Not arguing these were good things, but they have happened before. Think back to the old "company towns". Lowell, Massachusetts, built for a textile mill. Hershey Pennsylvania, built around a chocolate factory. Fordlandia, Brazil, a rubber plantation town. All of these were essentially cities and towns planned out around a central industry. Similar things happened with the ghost cities in China with several of the big notable ones eventually actually growing into real, functional cities. Once again, these have all kinds of messy histories and I'm not saying they're all good ideas. But just pointing out, it can be done.
- bluGill 7mo ago
  And you proved my point why you can't today.
ryanmerket 7mo ago
Sure you can. You just need enough land and money to start basic things like a post office, city hall, courthouse, roads, and a way to get power to the whole thing. See Starbase, Texas
- terminalshort 7mo ago
  Starbase TX isn't a city in any sense other than a legal designation. It's a massive SpaceX industrial facility that has its own municipality similar to the way Disney World has one for its park.

abtinf 7mo ago

You might enjoy the novel A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute.

rcpt 7mo ago

[dead]

jojobas 7mo ago

There is no shortage of cheaper existing cities in Australia, but everyone wants to live in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth. The existing smaller cities just slowly wither. Existing homeowners of the capitals have little interest in real estate prices dramatically dropping - would you?

jfoster 7mo ago

> Crazy that the reason we can't have an order-of-magnitude reduction in the cost of the most important thing people need (shelter) is not due to resource constraints, but man-made ones. You say that as though reduction in cost of housing is a universal desire, but it isn't. Suppose a couple of years ago you took a $500,000 loan to buy a $700,000 house, which you'll be paying off for the next 10 years. Would you like the market value of your house to decline substantially during that time? If there's enough of the population bought into property, it won't be politically feasible to allow the value of homes to decline.

FireBeyond 7mo ago
> Suppose a couple of years ago you took a $500,000 loan to buy a $700,000 house, which you'll be paying off for the next 10 years. Would you like the market value of your house to decline substantially during that time? No, but when your city proposes a "missing middle" plan, watch who all comes out of the woodwork to scream murder at their research that shows that the projected effect of doing so will lower property values in my town from an 11.5% YoY average increase to a "mere" 9% YoY increase. You'd have thought the city was suggesting executing grandmothers in the streets. (I cannot personally complain, I put down 10% on my home purchase here in 2021 and was able to get out of PMI due to having 20% equity against appraised value 366 days later, while only making required payments.)
foltik 7mo ago
Always comes back to the good ol “fuck you, I got mine.”
- jfoster 7mo ago
  When the problem is particularly exacerbated, it's not even "I got mine", but rather, "I already went into eye-watering levels of debt and I'm still paying off the roof over my head."
  - foltik 7mo ago
    So you made a half-million dollar leveraged bet and now want the government to rig the market so it pays off, at everyone else’s expense. Being more desperate doesn’t make it any less selfish. It’s a universal desire for everyone who’s not selfish.

xboxnolifes 7mo ago

In this hypothetical, who is the individual or group of people that you envision would take the initiative to start a new city? What is their incentive to do so?

AngryData 7mo ago

People move to where there is jobs and money. You can't build the housing first, in our society you need capitalists to invest into building businesses to make people want to move there. And because we have spent decades killing small business in favor of corporations, you need corporations to decide to build where there are no people and they have to pay a small short term premium to attract workers. Except corporations don't like doing that because it is a longer term investment and they are worried about next quarter's numbers and maximizing executive level bonuses which means short term planning.

steve-atx-7600 7mo ago
You could build all the housing first in China until recently…
- AngryData 7mo ago
  China was dumping money into those cities for people to build businesses and paying people to move there though, it wasn't just the housing. So yes I agree it can work if you go beyond that, but not through applying capitalist principles first and foremost. If you tried to pay people to live in a specific city and pay them again to build a small local business in the US, people would go bonkers about communism and 99% of politicians and capitalist investors would spend every waking moment trying to stop it.

knappe 7mo ago

You can, but it is damn difficult. https://www.volts.wtf/p/is-the-brand-new-city-in-california https://www.volts.wtf/p/is-the-brand-new-city-in-california

renewiltord 7mo ago

Subject to the same constraints. They tried to make one in California and it was blocked by others in the same county. It’s fine to be honest. Over time California will become less relevant to the US and Texas more so.

cowboy7q 7mo ago

[dead]