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Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

strongtowns.org

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Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#151

Post by nivenkos »

Gwypaas wrote: post #124
nivenkos wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but the salaries are much, much lower. SF: ~$167k USD p.a. - https://www.builtinsf.com/salaries/dev-engineer/software-eng... Stockholm: 45k SEK per month = ~$63k USD p.a. - https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/stockholm-software-engine... Taxes are also much higher (especially if your employer has good health insurance coverage in the US, so the added benefits are less). Like I pay an average 40% rate on income p…

Don't forget the 31.42% payroll tax that's hidden from your salary but a tax right on it. A salary of 50k SEK costs the employer 65.7k SEK on their books, which is what actually matters. The actual marginal taxrate flowing from your employers books at that level is somewhere up at 75%-80%, not even counting sales tax when you use the money.

Yeah, but even considering that, the gross salaries are still much lower.

Taxes are too high (on income), and wages are too low.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#152

Post by ptr »

ascar wrote: post #78
nivenkos wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The walkability comes at the cost of tiny housing though. Like here in Stockholm even 60m2 is getting very pricy (~350-450k USD). The main issue is that there is just nowhere near enough housing to keep up with population increases, seemingly anywhere in the Western world. And housing has become a "store of value" against inflation for investors, driving up prices and becoming a retirement fund for landlords and home…

> Like here in Stockholm even 60m2 is getting very pricy (~350-450k USD). Isn't that still really cheap compared to NY or Silicon Valley? Rising housing prices has more to do with pressure to move to a select few cities rather than walkability or rising population. E.g. in Germany housing in Munich, Hamburg or Frankfurt costs multiples of housing in smaller eastern German cities.

I think the original poster is off by a bit, 350-450k USD for 60m2 is what you pay outside Stockholm. In the city proper, it's ~770k USD for 60m2. Basically this segregates society into the "haves" and the "have nots".

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#153

Post by CalRobert »

nivenkos wrote: post #81
dr_dshiv wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use price per square meter to compare European housing to American housing, Europe seems super expensive. But, if you compare by the functional space (# bedrooms), Europe is cheap. I moved from San Diego to Amsterdam and was very happy to find 3-4 bedroom apartments to buy (the bank accepted my self employment income and gave a 1.6% interest rate). Apartments are well designed so you don’t need as much space.…

I guess you're on a US salary as a contractor? There's no way I could afford more than 2 bedrooms in the city as a senior engineer, and even that's a push.

This might be useful to you - trimodal nature of comp in NL.

https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#154

Post by wongarsu »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #131
the__alchemist wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related: Most European cities are comparably beautiful compared to North American ones. Pick a random European city, and it's probably more aesthetically interesting than any in NA. I'm curious why this is the case (Older / less centrally-planned? A subjective difference in tastes?)

Well, the USA is only ~250 years old and most of its planning was done in the past ~150 years, whereas most European cities date back to the middle ages or even before that, growing much more organically, often around a castle, wall, church, or all of the above. It's only in the past 100 years or so that cars are a thing. But the other is just different approach to planning. I live in a relatively new, so-called "vin…

> we need 100K houses in the next decade

That's a lot for a country with 17M inhabitants. Is that mostly driven by urban flight (not enough flats where people want to be) or is it more about population increase or less people living together (no enough flats anywhere)?

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#155

Post by CalRobert »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #38
nivenkos wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The walkability comes at the cost of tiny housing though. Like here in Stockholm even 60m2 is getting very pricy (~350-450k USD). The main issue is that there is just nowhere near enough housing to keep up with population increases, seemingly anywhere in the Western world. And housing has become a "store of value" against inflation for investors, driving up prices and becoming a retirement fund for landlords and home…

If you use price per square meter to compare European housing to American housing, Europe seems super expensive. But, if you compare by the functional space (# bedrooms), Europe is cheap. I moved from San Diego to Amsterdam and was very happy to find 3-4 bedroom apartments to buy (the bank accepted my self employment income and gave a 1.6% interest rate). Apartments are well designed so you don’t need as much space.…

If I may ask, your profile says "Professor of Human Centered Design" - is this why you moved to the Netherlands? I'm very curious about your work, based on that.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#156

Post by kharak »

jseban wrote: post #67
sammorrowdrums wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the Netherlands. We bike rather than just walk everywhere, and generally people do more frequent small shops rather than big weekly shop. It takes some imagination and a lot of urban planning work, but quality of life improves dramatically, it’s life-changing. Much Urban planning was involved in making it better for cycling though, and it wasn’t always great for it. Off-road cycle paths being a mainstay for…

> We bike rather than just walk everywhere, and generally people do more frequent small shops rather than big weekly shop. It takes some imagination and a lot of urban planning work, but quality of life improves dramatically, it’s life-changing. Yeah which means that you spend a lot more time and energy on grocery shopping. That is for me directly inverse to quality of life. The more time I spend in traffic (cycling…

It is not automatically inefficient. In Zurich, I have around 5 supermarkets near by, walkable in about 5-10 minutes. Don't even need a bike. Taking the car would increase my travel time, not decrease it.

So my walkable city is more time efficient and has health benefits for using your own body instead of a machine to do the traveling. It's better if we measure for time efficiency and health. And it shows. Looking around, 95% of the people here, at least those not in cars, are healthy, slim and fit. All as it should be. What else would you optimize for?

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#157

Post by nuerow »

sokoloff wrote: post #116
torben-friis wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The main issue is that there is just nowhere near enough housing to keep up with population increases, seemingly anywhere in the Western world. Not sure about Sweden but at least here (Spain) housing being bought for investment is much more of a problem than physical unavailability. And I don't mean it as a store of value: People (and companies) buy houses to rent them and have the rent payments pay for the mortgage…

> Basic needs really shouldn't be investment material. Companies providing and selling food, energy, and consumer staples are investment materials. I don’t get why housing should be a special carve-out and don’t see a workable answer to how to provide food for everyone while banning all investment in companies that grow or sell food. These companies are invested in precisely because these are basic needs. The company…

> I don’t get why housing should be a special carve-out and don’t see a workable answer to how to provide food for everyone while banning all investment in companies that grow or sell food.

The economy exists to support everyone's life, not the other way around. Just because you can argue someone can make a quick buck selling a basic necessity, that does not mean it's ok to deprive a whole community of basic necessities.

Take for example water. Would it be ok to hold everyone hostage over access to it, and even lobby for municipalities to stop the public sector from encroaching onto a service provided by a private business, just because Nestle and the likes bottle and sell it?

The current delta between the have and have-nots, and the profound impact that "small" real estate investments have on pushing access to housing far out of reach of your average middle and upper-middle class family, is a collosal social and economical red flag. Access to housing has a profound impact on everyone's lives and even community. You accept jobs based on access to housing, and the amount of time wasted supporting said job is time eaten away from the time you spend doing far more important things like caring for your children and family. Being deprived from that just because a faceless investor wanted to park his bailout money somewhere and decided to dump it in real estate hurts society.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#158

Post by nivenkos »

Maarten88 wrote: post #150
nivenkos wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but the salaries are much, much lower. SF: ~$167k USD p.a. - https://www.builtinsf.com/salaries/dev-engineer/software-eng... Stockholm: 45k SEK per month = ~$63k USD p.a. - https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/stockholm-software-engine... Taxes are also much higher (especially if your employer has good health insurance coverage in the US, so the added benefits are less). Like I pay an average 40% rate on income p…

> remember those freedoms can also destroy your life, if you end up on the other end. Americans have to step over homeless people on the sidewalks, who got fired, who got sick while uninsured, who are addicted or mentally ill. Those who do well live in suburbia, where their kids are also not that free, going outside alone is too dangerous. Those taxes pay for other forms of freedom

I support universal healthcare, free life-long education and universal paid leave.

I don't support inviting 3 million refugees (to a nation of only 11 million people at the time) when we have no spare housing, or being forced to fund others' childcare (it's a lifestyle choice).

Taxes can be much better managed.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#159

Post by [deleted] »

fsloth wrote: post #8

Fantastic cultural divide. This is one of the reasons why I read HN. Most of Europe is more or less walkable - one reason is that the largest urban centers predate cars, but intentional design AF (anno ford) is also a factor. I can bike or walk everywhere, and the only reason I have a car is that it makes grocery shopping much, much easier. I am not very green or anything, I just like to keep things simple. You can c…

[deleted]

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#160

Post by nivenkos »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #147
nivenkos wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you're on a US salary as a contractor? There's no way I could afford more than 2 bedrooms in the city as a senior engineer, and even that's a push.

Yeah, that US viewpoint kinda irks me too. Of course Europe is cheap when you earn US tech salaries. Amsterdam is definitely not cheap on your average non-FAANG/IB local Dutch wages.

Even FAANG pays shit in Europe. I was paid 75k at Amazon.

Europe is designed for the landed aristocracy, not working people.

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