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The Car was supposed to kill The Landlord by increasing the supply of adequate housing and driving residential land prices near zero. It didn't work, for the re
by michaelochurch 11y ago
The Car was supposed to kill The Landlord by increasing the supply of adequate housing and driving residential land prices near zero. It didn't work, for the reasons you described. First, driving itself is very expensive, especially if you include parking the damn thing. Second, the few suburbs that are desirable at all (near major cities, good public schools) are often similar in price to city housing-- and NIMBY laws keep housing scarce in them. Third, cars scale poorly (congestion). So none of that actually happened, and we're stuck with this ugly, polluting infrastructure.
- freehunter 11y agoSpot on. I live in a suburban town that is unique for my metro area in that it has a nice thriving downtown, great schools, 10 minutes from the downtown exit on the freeway, and really great quality of life. I have friends who want to move here and there are developers champing at the bit right to take some polluted and therefore useless and undeveloped property and clean it up to turn it into some nice condos.. it got shut down in a public vote. New houses haven't been built in the city in about 20 years, and the ones that are here are starting to show their age. The city has been in a boom, but that cycle is going to end if we don't get fresh money and new houses. The developers are moving further up the main artery to other, smaller towns, which leads to more congestion on the main roads. It used to be that the traffic started at my town, now it's starting at the next town up. But everyone is worried that their house value will go down if there is more availability. They don't realize the value will go down if the property becomes undesirable as well.
- mjevans 11y agoSounds like that situation isn't going to change soon, and you should probably sell out earlier rather than later.