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Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

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Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#181

Post by dr_dshiv »

CalRobert wrote: post #155
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.…

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.

That’s why I moved to the Netherlands. While the pay for professors was almost half the pay in the USA (ouch), it was allowed for me to continue to run my company.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#182

Post by eaxix »

torben-friis wrote: post #85
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…

>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…

The role of investors in the economy is ultimately to finance new development.

It's easy to see how this works when an investor is the first owner. If it weren't for the initial investor with the required capital and/or credit to make the purchase, the housing likely wouldn't have been built in the first place.

Now you may ask, what is the role of investors who buy up older properties? They provide valuable liquidity to the market, which provides an incentive for the initial investors to invest. Both investors and regular homeowners alike prefer to own a property that they can easily sell on short notice if needed. Without investors buying up "second-hand" properties, it would be harder to sell a property making homes a less attractive investment. Fewer people would buy new properties, resulting in less new housing being built.

All of this extra development spurred by investment money pouring in leads to lower rents for everyone since rents are pure supply/demand. If you build more, rents will go down.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#183

Post by oftenwrong »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #13

Everybody wants walkable cities, but nobody wants to live in tiny-ass flats. I'm a European and if you look at the size of housing here (perhaps excluding the few cities that have low population density) it's tiny in comparison to most of the USA (except for NYC). So as always there are pro's and con's - would you want to live in a city like NYC? Would you like to raise a family in those conditions?

The available housing options govern our housing choices. I cannot afford a large flat in a very desirable and expensive neighbourhood, but I could possibly afford a very tiny flat there. If I want more space, I can live in a larger flat in a less desirable neighbourhood. If I want to own a car and have a car-centric lifestyle, I can live in a more distant suburb and live large. I can freely trade space, location, and cost as needed if the options exist. To the article's point, breaking the artificial scarcity on walkable neighbourhoods, and increasing the diversity of housing types, will allow more people to make these types of trade-offs.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#184

Post by quantumofalpha »

nivenkos wrote: post #164
CalRobert wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be useful to you - trimodal nature of comp in NL. https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...

In my experience, it's bullshit. The author must be conflating staff positions with "senior". I was paid 75k as an L5 engineer at Amazon, that's like intermediate senior (two levels down from Staff). So maybe one level up you'd get 100-110k? I've never seen salaries anywhere close to that article. Even contractors might pay $150k (and then you have to pay your own taxes, insurance, etc. out of that).

The author is spot on. You just happened to be working for the scrappiest/shittiest faang that's all. Shop around, there is decent money to be made in Europe - but of course it's not as easy to walk into it as in the US today. Oh and don't forget that it's TC that matters in big public tech, not salary.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#185

Post by boondaburrah »

makeitdouble wrote: post #108
akanet wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion that increasing housing supply is similar to "trickle down" economics is common in discourses of housing policy in America, but it is misguided. Reagan's notion that increasing the margins of the wealthy would induce them to pass profits to workers was mistaken in that its proposed mechanism was entirely altruism. Price reductions in housing from an increase in supply do not occur because the rich voluntar…

My point is that increase in supply alone doesn't automatically lead to less domination. For instance increasing the supply of high quality affordable housing by 2% in a place where there is high demand might not mean 2% more people will get the houses at a good price. It can mean instead that investors buy 2% more houses in that area to rent it at a price aligned with the market value. Wouldn't it be ok then if the…

I mean that's a weird way to describe Tokyo but it does work. Your last point still stands though & I'm not sure where the tipping point is.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#186

Post by fsloth »

null_object wrote: post #101
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…

Walkability isn't uniform across Europe, Scandinavia or even within a single country: other people have mentioned Stockholm - which is still a walkable town, even though car-traffic is prioritized over cycles and pedestrians[0] - but other towns in Sweden are definitely not modelled for pedestrians. Nyköping is a town I need to visit regularly, and there pretty much all of the grocery and larger stores have been plac…

"any characterization of USA vs Europe positing Europe as some sort of walkable-heaven is really just idealized bullshit"

Ouch, a bit harsh, that. I did not intend to claim Europe does not have unwalkable areas, but that walkable areas are not considered as such novelties. I should have used a more cautious tone.

Never the less, using Helsinki as an example, you can plan to purchase an apartment within one hours of commute from the Helsinki center and never get a car, as there are sufficient amount of neigbourhoods that facilitate that, even though every possible combination of housing and employment does not support not owning a car.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#187

Post by oftenwrong »

sokoloff wrote: post #95
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #79

> Would you like to raise a family in those conditions? apparently hundreds of millions of people already do it... A provocative answer to your comment: would you like to raise your family where your kids can walk to school and play with other kids in a nearby park at walking distance and never be afraid of mass shootings? I get the impression that huge houses are a symptom of a bigger issue: people in US feel they n…

I would like to (and do) raise my family like that. We live in Cambridge, MA; our kids walk to school and to play with friends in the park, I’ve never feared a mass shooting*, we have reasonable accommodations for cars, bikes, and pedestrians. * - Do you live in fear of drowning, choking, or bicycling? All are significantly higher lifetime risks in America than mass shootings. Drowning is 10x more likely but few live…

It's sad that "riding inside a car, van or truck" and "pedestrian" are so high on that list, but also surprising that "bicycling" is so significantly safer.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#188

Post by jseban »

FriedrichN wrote: post #176
jseban wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society is about efficiency. Social interactions are voluntarily and can be organised around any random activity such as games, sports, hobbies etc. It's really inflexible and incredibly limiting to force inefficiency of transport, because that increases social interactions. People had the same argument when banks went online, all the retired people want to still go and pay their bills at the bank, because they get t…

I can tell that we're very different people. Society to me is not about efficiency at all. I like a bit of randomness to my life and not live an absolutely regimented and organised existence. But I guess that's not for everyone.

I also like a bit of randomness and don't live an absolutely regimented existence, my point is just that people should be free to choose this randomness in their own space and time, and we should not force a particular way of randomness on everyone, and we also should not put it in the way of getting our work done.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#189

Post by fsloth »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #69
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…

> AF (anno ford) Nice reference to Brave New World, I suppose?

Oh, yes, I actually forgot the original reference. While Ford did not invent the automobile, he can be rightfully to be considered the icon of affordable automobile for the masses and hence a clear demarcation line on the design constraints of inhabited areas.

Re: Our self imposed scarcity of nice places

#190

Post by Panzer04 »

Aeolun wrote: post #137
sokoloff wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

But this clearly isn’t true for housing. Landlords keep buying up more and more, supply only goes down, and the prices keep going up.

And are the landlords just leaving the house empty for the hell of it? Or is it being rented out to people? I know with one is more likely.

The thing is, housing is a surprisingly flexible commodity (too expensive, people live with parents/share, and then move back out if prices fall) , and encouraging everyone to buy a full on house in a suburb is a recipe to drive expensive housing.

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