Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto • Hacker News Board

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#201

Post by sudosysgen » Thu, May 07, 2020, 7:29 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #190

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a super simplistic perspective. Property developers are probably going to preferentially build high-margin housing, right? And they’re going to preferentially build those at a rate that doesn’t meet demand, in order to keep prices high. So what’s missing?

> super simplistic The law of gravity is super simple, but it produces all kinds of complex results. Underlying the complex behavior of the real estate market is supply&demand driving it.

The law of gravity is actually not super simple. Relativistic gravity is an incredibly difficult and complex concept to understand, and the Newtonian law of gravity is simply wrong, enough that it has big impacts on the real world.

Whereas the law of supply and demand is not only preceded by a lot of assumptions that never are true in practice, and even with all those assumptions still has serious exceptions that apply to more and more and more goods as you move from theory to practice.

The laws of supply and demand are simply not useful for analyzing this market. Any attempt to use them will have to be accompanied by more classical incentive analysis and experiments that mean that ignoring it will give you better results than relying on it in this situation. Attempting to apply it gives you ridiculous conclusions, like that demand for housing is increasing everywhere in the world at the same time faster than supply, even when in practice supply is often greater than demand, leading to empty buildings, while prices still rise.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#202

Post by sudosysgen » Thu, May 07, 2020, 7:30 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #184

sudosysgen wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, demand and supply has increased dramatically in almost every single city in the world, and in almost no cities has supply outpaced demand? The world is not an economics 101 textbook. In Canada for example, the only province with functional and affordable housing is the one that enacted serious rent control and public housing, and they didn't have to build a lot. Seems to me that supply and demand isn't the whole…

> in almost no cities has supply outpaced demand? Detroit. Rural communities. In real estate, it takes a while (years) for supply to catch up with demand. What you're seeing is simply city populations are rising quickly.

Detroit has some of the greatest increases in rent in the US[0]. Despite its population decreasing [1].

As for rural communities, they are not comparable in the slightest to cities.

[0] : https://detroit.curbed.com/2020/3/4/21164568/detroit-rent-ra...

[1] : https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/detroit-populati...

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#203

Post by true_religion » Thu, May 07, 2020, 7:30 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #158

ehsankia wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just tax empty places, isn't that what Vancouver does? Leaving a place empty/inhabited should be very expensive.

>> Leaving a place empty/inhabited should be very expensive. Vancouver is finding that difficult to enforce. How do you tell if a unit is "occupied" or not? At the moment it is largely voluntary. The city cannot tell whether someone is living in a unit or it living overseas ten months out of the year. They aren't going to be sending inspectors to knock on doors. I'm a good example of the difficulties. I was away on t…

There would probably be an exception for people in the military or government service. If on the other hand you spent 6 months in the US working for a private business like Google, then it would be fair to tax you.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#204

Post by colinmhayes » Thu, May 07, 2020, 7:30 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #55

briffle wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building Luxury condos does create affordable housing. Where do you think those people move from? interesting thought from this link: If you destroy 10,000 luxury condo's in Toronto tomorrow, will your prices go down? https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/8/1/how-luxury-hous...

Of course, destroying luxury condos and not replacing them with anything will not help. But the housing market is more complicated that straightforward supply and demand, with a lot of second and third order effects, and in the end building incredible amounts of luxury condos has done nothing for rent prices and housing availability in Toronto, or in Montreal where I live.

This is a naive take. Building luxury condos has definitely caused prices to drop, it's just that the effect of increased demand increased prices by more. Without the supply increase housing would be even more expensive.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#205

Post by thatfrenchguy » Thu, May 07, 2020, 7:31 PM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #156

asdff wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do when city council members profit off of the status quo? It's not that they are poorly informed, they are well aware of what they are doing and choose to ignore expert advice on city planning decisions. This is the frustration I have with my local government in LA. Most people who live in my city are renters, but most voters in local elections are homeowners so their voice is heard above all else, and c…

> Most people who live in my city are renters, but most voters in local elections are homeowners Sounds like renters should start voting. Why would city council members do anything for the interests of people that don't vote? Not only is it against their own self-interest, it's anti-democratic. Elected representatives have to do what their voters want - it's the bedrock of democracy. That reps are profiting off the s…

Just look at a typical city council video in the United States. Everyone who is there is old (because they have nothing better to do than spending 4 hours in a city council meeting), 60+, and they're against anything new.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#206

Post by cactus2093 » Thu, May 07, 2020, 7:33 PM UTC

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #64

briffle wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building Luxury condos does create affordable housing. Where do you think those people move from? interesting thought from this link: If you destroy 10,000 luxury condo's in Toronto tomorrow, will your prices go down? https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/8/1/how-luxury-hous...

People who buy luxury condos are probably not vacating affordable housing to do so. Why would you think that to be the case? The Strong Towns link you provided gives two examples of apartments build approximately a century ago. Trickle-down economics at its best. Build luxury apartments, fine. Probably not exclusively though, as in many cities the need is more pressing than that.

affordable housing is a pretty loaded phrase at this point. In fact it has come to just mean government-subsidized housing. So by that definition you are probably correct, people aren't often moving from housing projects to brand new condos. Nobody is saying that they do.

luxury condos is also a loaded phrase. In an expensive city, all housing is expensive, even if it is 50 years old and used to house working class people. So-called "luxury housing" is just regular-sized new apartments, with a few thousand dollars of added perks like sleek recessed lighting and upgraded appliances to help sell it.

If you take out those loaded phrases, people are absolutely moving from existing, mid-tier market rate housing into only slighty more expensive new construction market rate housing. The more new construction housing you build, the more supply you have, and the more prices come down. Which allows market-rate housing to become affordable to more of the population. That was the case 10-15 years ago, and could be true again in the future if we just let people build enough housing to match the incoming demand of new residents moving into cities.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#207

Post by the-dude-abides » Thu, May 07, 2020, 7:34 PM UTC

neom wrote: post #101

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you still exist?!

https://municipal.systems/ :)

Very cool :)

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#208

Post by sudosysgen » Thu, May 07, 2020, 7:36 PM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #189

sudosysgen wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A non-occupancy tax is orthogonal to this particular issue, a lot of high rise condos cannot be rented, reasonably. And so they are only accessible to people that can afford to buy them, occupied or not.

Why can't they be rented?

Exorbitant HOA/Condo Association fees and regulations that make renting out a condo unfeasible, or outright banned.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#209

Post by g8oz » Thu, May 07, 2020, 7:36 PM UTC

Google HQ never seemed to have to much to do with this. It was rather their subsidiary Sidewalk Labs that was going to make it happen. They always struck me as long on "vision" and short on execution.

Re: Google ends plans for smart city in Toronto

#210

Post by asdff » Thu, May 07, 2020, 7:39 PM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #191

asdff wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rent, I vote. Plenty of people do vote. But, a typical homeowner in LA is more well off and therefore has more free time to wait in line to vote, so that is who is most likely to vote. There are people here who need to work 60-80 hour weeks to survive.

> has more free time to wait in line to vote Lobby for vote-by-mail, early voting, and holidays on election day. I'm sorry, but that's the only way. Hard problems don't have easy solutions. You can't expect any council member to go against their voters' wishes on any issue. Local elections are personal and people who vote in them follow the issues closely. A council member who listens to "expert advice" rather their…

Fundamentally, its a cultural issue we have in this country that is somewhat disgusting. Politicians should not be just listening to their voters, or their backers, they should be listening to all their constituents, everyone who lives in the areas they represent, with particular focus to the most vulnerable and not the other way around as what frequently happens. The incentives are completely backward. The interests of those that play the politick game well are prioritized at the cost of the people who need the most assistance from public government.

I'm very supportive of expanded voting and recently LA has made election day into an entire week that you can stroll in and cast your vote (Of course, everyone waited until the last minute and polls wrapped around the block at the very last day you could cast your ballot, but that is beside the point).

Even with vote by mail or other initiatives to get out the vote, this leaves a lot of people without representation in LA. There is the requirement that you have the time to study the issues and become an informed voter, which is a privilege not enjoyed by everyone. There are also a lot of undocumented people paying rent and working jobs in LA. I think these people who are contributing to the local economy should also be represented by the people in charge of the area in which they live their life. They have just as much right to be here as I or any other citizen does.

I think the best way to overcome petty politicking would be to limit the control elected officials have over what should be logical and factually rooted decision making. In LA, council members are more powerful in their district than the mayor or any other elected official, they have absolute control over what gets built be it on parcels of land or even paint on the roads. Just look at the patchyness of the bike lane network to see this effect in action; metro has money earmarked and is ready to build but local council members just refuse to allow it to happen in their district. They operate as little feudal lords who award contracts to friends and deny contracts if some who holds their ear takes issue for whatever reason at all.

Urban planning decisions should not be controlled by politicians, they should be controlled by urban planners who are highly trained civil engineers from the best engineering schools hired to do an apolitical job. They understand these issues better than anyone else in government, and their decisionmaking is rooted in the cutting edge theories and ideas present in their field, profit and personal preference be damned.

This is how public government should be run, deferring decision making to informed experts rather than the wills and wishes of those who command the most influence over their representative.