That means I don’t know how to solve the problem. Housing prices are high because residents by and large want to keep supply low. The free market isn’t solving this problem by providing more supply because the government is “in the way,” but the government is in the way because that’s how democracy works.
Sorry, I’ve thought about this statement a bit more now.
A couple things, first, this assumes that the majority of people who live in an area want to maintain their property values on their 3 acre estates. The majority of people in the area probably do not live in such, and therefore, they are also voters who would not seek to replace the politicians who allowed development.
Also, if development is allowed, then that brings in a whole new population of people who also vote, and will be inclined to vote for the politicians who allowed them to move in.
No, the problem isn’t with the voters, it is with the donors.
I only know my own local politics but I don’t have a 3 acre estate, in fact I bought the cheapest house on the block and I’ve still benefited mightily from rising housing prices. Residents here are very much opposed to new development, and the only people who actually want new development are people who can’t afford to live here but would like to.
However, I see your point. I live in an upscale suburb where 95% of voters are also homeowners. The calculus probably changes when the majority of residents are renters – they benefit nothing from rising housing prices. In that case, the push against development would be real estate barons.
It looks like the home ownership rate is somewhere between 40 and 45 percent, and I imagine those folks are more active in local politics than renters.
Not in major cities, and definitely not in the Tokyo metro area (see my post above).
This is the area I grew up in. The 3rd building from the left is a department store, the others are all apartments and condos.
The Special Wards is the downtown area. Granted, that area is about 10 times larger than Manhattan, but there is a definite flow of people into it during the day.
The condo building I grew up in inTokyo was built in the mid 1970s, and it’s still there. So is the 8-story apartment building across the street which is even older. The department store I used to go to was renovated a few years ago, and they added a few floors on top of it, but the lower floors are mostly the same. They did completely rebuild the train station, but mainly because the train tracks used to be at ground level, and they elevated the whole railroad to improve traffic.
I should also point out that Japan is home to the oldest wooden buildings in the world.
I forgot some words, this is in San Fransisco.
Urban flow is not unique to Japan. Is it liable to be more or less extreme when you have an expanding population or a shrinking population?
None of this is false, but none of it really counters anything that I said. There are exceptions. Tokyo isn’t a perfect kaleidoscope - there is an area with actual skyscrapers, for example, but there’s also Hitachi Island off in the middle of nowhere and millions of small businesses, tens of thousands of bank outlets (at least, when I left), and tens of thousands of medium-sized businesses spread out all over the hell.
I took a guy from Seattle to Kichijoji and his mind broke because he realized that we’d just rode 30 minutes “outside” of the city and the Kichijoji area around the train station plus all of the apartment buildings, schools, etc. in the neighborhood were basically as large and economically important as the city of Seattle. (I have no idea if that’s true, but that was his impression.) And there’s probably 200 or so places like Kichijoji within Tokyo (including everything within the concrete swathe - Hiratsuka to Shibukawa to Hitachinaka - not just the legal boundaries). And that’s excluding everything within the Yamanote circle. From an American view, looking at how an American city is organized, Tokyo is flat. It’s ten stories of people for as far as the eye can see in every direction.
Dial back democracy in favor of property rights.
Huh, I think you just coined the libertarian motto.
I’m not, but then again we all cut the heads off our wealthiest landowners some while back. Nothing invisible about it, that would have defeated the purpose.
Capitalist apologists and assorted libertarians opine that an absolutely unregulated free market innately and implicitly creates the best results for everyone involved because… something something. In the real world, self-defeating greed and dishonesty both exist, as do profiteering and price-fixing.
Porque no los dos ?
I am not sure if you’re being frivolous or if you are unaware of the basic principles of economics.
I don’t think anyone says that. In a completely unregulated market, Manhattan would find Central Park quickly covered in 90 story supertall residential towers.
However bad or poorly thought out zoning laws can also stifle growth and lead to unintended consequences. I’ll try and find the link, but there was a recent article about many cities doing away with laws restricting housing to single family homes. Yes, everyone loves a house, but single family homes with yards quickly leads to urban sprawl. OTOH, a neighborhood of 20 story luxury yuppie ghettos can quickly tax local infrastructure and transform communities in ways that not everyone thinks is better.
This buildings look pretty tall to me.
Actually, properly designed skyscrapers can often be better for resisting earthquakes than shorter masonry and concrete structures. Whereas a lower structure can shake apart and crumble like a house of cards, tall buildings are already designed to sway with the wind somewhat. A lot of skyscrapers in earthquake zones are built on springs or with large weights acting as dampers to prevent the building from oscillating at its resonance frequency.
Yeah then you’ll be able to reject tenants based on their race, and say it to their face.
Nor is Kansas flat:
https://images.app.goo.gl/mt7KndoN6cwAH3nx9
http://thehungrysuitcase.com/why-is-tokyos-skyline-so-boring/
It’s the conventional explanation, regardless of whether (in the 21st century) it’s a required answer or an answer that would make sense under Japanese construction culture.
Yep, I remember that time when the people rose up and murdered George Washington.
The Invisible Hand is supposed to touch you in your most private places. And you can’t see it coming. Because it’s Invisible.
But that’s OK because the Invisible Hand sees all, the Invisible Hand knows all. All praise Invisible Hand!
If I recall, Kobal2 is in France so what he said was quite literally true - there was a time when the wealthiest landowners were parted from their heads by the guillotine. Or did you forget that not everyone here is American?
Well, George Washington and the others told the French that they were doing it wrong, at the time, and that’s because they were doing it wrong. It’s fair to tell Commies that Communism plain off doesn’t work, because no one has ever made it work. Capitalism, obviously, does work if done right. Usually, it is done right. And, even when done wrong, usually the main negative is pollution.
But, frankly, none of that has anything to do with the French Revolution. That was a problem of classism. Classism is antithetical to Capitalism. Capitalism believes in a meritocracy.
Socialism always had a hard time gaining much territory in the US because we started on Capitalism earlier than Europe and never had a local nobility. Classism went the way of the dodo before Socialism ever gained prominence and meritocracy was a significant component of the American system.
Meritocracy is a far better system than Socialism. At least partly because the Socialists never really had a solution for hating classism beyond killing the upper class. Neither did the French, during the French revolution. Hating the nobility isn’t Capitalistic nor anti-Capitalistic, it’s just a proper and reasonable realization that class-based society is stupid. But the solution to that is to abandon class-based societies, not to go on a murderous circle-jerk.
Meritocracy pops right out of Capitalism. I don’t know that Smith talked about it, but it follows directly from his lessons. He was a smart one. Robespierre, not so much.
Realistically, it will be very hard to overcome in the political culture and system of the USA. There are too many “veto points” that block new things from being done, and too much reliance on “local control” of important regional/state powers. Even though the states are sovereign over local government, and can override it as they see fit, most of them are constrained by self-imposed (and very difficult to change) limits on this authority.
This is a pretty unlikely solution, really, but the only chance I see for reform is to eventually convince federal judges that the use of zoning powers to block most new housing is a de facto control on internal migration, which is unconstitutional.
Maintaining property values on 3 acre estates is not the only reason people block development. I know lots of renters who are against “development” in their neighborhood of approximately 2-3000 sq foot lots.The development they are opposed to involves such things as replacing a two unit building with a four-unit building. Remember, they’re renters, so they don’t care about property values - they care about traffic, the availability of street parking etc.