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Change my mind: Density increases local but decreases global prices

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Re: Change my mind: Density increases local but decreases global prices

#111

Post by presentation »

atdrummond wrote: post #15
endisneigh wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Very dense, but housing prices are very affordable it's not, though. Tokyo is substantially more expensive than other cities in Japan. Tokyo is also more expensive than American cities when adjusted to per sq/ft rent and PPP. "Tokyo is so cheap" is a meme at this point. Tokyo is cheap the same way having roommates is cheap (roommates are much, much rarer in Tokyo compared to NYC).

Really? I’ve lived in the Bay Area and Tokyo. Right now I can find a 535 sq ft bedroom in Tokyo for $1170 ( https://realestate.co.jp/en/rent/view/929199 ). There are plenty of units like this - and even more (slightly bigger, nicer amenities, etc) to three times more. And this isn’t even a “cheap” part of the city. Even at that higher end of the Tokyo price range, there’s nothing like that for solo renters in SF or O…

Transport is key - it dramatically increases the amount of land available to build on within commute distance. People like to think NYC has a good amount of transit, but when you realize the Tokyo area has 120+ rail lines, most of which have a higher degree of service than even the most central ones in Manhattan, you realize that the USA can be doing so much more.

Re: Change my mind: Density increases local but decreases global prices

#112

Post by csomar »

vasco wrote: post #80
chii wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you got it the wrong way around - cities _form_ around opportunities, rather than produce them. Initially, geographic advantage (such as being near harbour, river, or some other geographic feature) gives a settlement that's not yet a city a big advantage in attracting more people there. This in turn, forces the city to grow as more people cram in. To artificially build denser by policy doesn't produce opportu…

Two are not mutually exclusive. A city can be formed around the "opportunity" of a river or whatever a thousand years ago, and yet provide new opportunities like tinder having loads of people nearby nowadays.

The people themselves rarely create the opportunity. Take the Bay Area/SF for example, the opportunity is the digital economy and not the people who are mining it. That is, you can have a bunch of software developers (or miners), but if there is no gold to mine, they'll just sit idle (and eventually disperse).

Most cities around the world (except some cities in the US) are "strategically" located near a river or on shore. Because of that, pretty much the whole world live near a river or sea. The most strategically located cities "become" a trading hub and these days have become large cities.

It's well worth mentioning, however, that if the people in the city (who where strategically located for trading) didn't adapt to the changes in the world conditions, then these cities simply disappear or become much less relevant. Many cities of the world would have lost this privilege due to digitalization and the sea becoming safer.

Re: Change my mind: Density increases local but decreases global prices

#113

Post by presentation »

endisneigh wrote: post #20
atdrummond wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The median resident isn’t buying a place in Shinjuku - see my edited part of the comment. Tokyo’s transit enables cheaper living than is available in the bay.

The bay isn't remotely reasonable comparison. NYC is much cheaper than Tokyo, adjusted for living quarter size and median wage. I'm not talking about affordances you get by living in certain areas - simply the size of the place and the price, relative to localized income. Tokyo simply is not cheaper, period. It only seems cheaper because rich Americans keep using their income and comparing it to the adjusted USD:YEN…

Also keep in mind, in Japan people are much tidier and space efficient in their lifestyle than Americans are. What seems like an unlivable amount of space to an American is plenty comfortable to a Japanese person (and to those who move there and adapt to the lifestyle), especially considering that people don’t tend to spend all day at home unless you’re a shut-in, nor do they typically host gatherings at home (you meet with people outside). It’s a different lifestyle and people adapt to it just fine, I personally prefer it.

Re: Change my mind: Density increases local but decreases global prices

#114

Post by midoridensha »

piva00 wrote: post #101
rippercushions wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of planned cities that are natural experiments in this: Brasilia, Canberra, Ottawa, Abuja etc. They all show that yes, it is possible to "build it and they will come", but it's hugely expensive, takes a long, long time (decades) to get to critical mass, and produced mixed results at best, eg Brasilia's original strictly separated zoning has been widely panned as a disaster. And I'm pretty sure all of t…

Brasilia was not originally planned to have separate zoning, Lucio Costas's vision (Lucio Costa was one of the architects together with Niemeyer to design the city) was one of "superblocks", a block was supposed to be close to self-sufficiency (hence the enormous block sizes), each was to have housing, shops, schools and so on in the block or in neighbouring blocks. The military dictatorship of Brazil decided to reva…

Sounds just like a typical US city.

Re: Change my mind: Density increases local but decreases global prices

#115

Post by konschubert »

antognini wrote: post #75

I feel like this (along with many discussions about urban housing) slightly misses the real issue. A lot of these discussions center around how to make housing affordable in cities and whether denser construction leads to lower housing costs or higher housing costs. But cities don't exist to minimize housing costs. They exist to maximize opportunities: job opportunities, dating opportunities, friendship opportunities…

I am glad that this is the top comment.

Imagine you build housing such that 5 Million more people can move to Boston. Imagine that housing prices do not go down, and do not go down in other cities either.

That implies that that 5 million more people are now earning Boston-level salaries and 5 million more people were able to make the personal choice to move to Boston.

These 5 million people are on average doing higher-productivity jobs than before, which means economic growth.

Yet at the same time, these 5 million people now have a lower ecological footprint than they would have had if they stayed where they lived before.

These 5 million people are arguably better off, and the rest of society is also better off.

Re: Change my mind: Density increases local but decreases global prices

#116

Post by midoridensha »

nirimda wrote: post #100
rippercushions wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of planned cities that are natural experiments in this: Brasilia, Canberra, Ottawa, Abuja etc. They all show that yes, it is possible to "build it and they will come", but it's hugely expensive, takes a long, long time (decades) to get to critical mass, and produced mixed results at best, eg Brasilia's original strictly separated zoning has been widely panned as a disaster. And I'm pretty sure all of t…

> There are lots of planned cities that are natural experiments in this... They ... produced mixed results at best, eg Brasilia's original strictly separated zoning has been widely panned as a disaster. I'm not sure if there's been some slight shift of topic here. By "planned", I think we originally meant "deliberately built in relatively undeveloped land". But then you mention as an example of a failure of deliberat…

>Washington DC, for instance, is an artificial city with top-down planning, but it was built at a time when people had different ideas about what made a great city, and it doesn't really seem to be a failure.

As I recall, DC was designed by George Washington himself (probably with help from his friends), back in the late 1700s, but the city as a whole was not: what they designed was the Federal district only. The Capitol, the White House, the National Mall between them, etc. Over time, this grew with the additions of the Smithsonian buildings and many other things.

The thing is, no one lives there. That district is entirely devoid of residential areas in fact, and with very little commercial stuff if any. All that stuff is mostly to the north, and I don't see any evidence of it being planned top-down at all, except maybe the original street layout which is largely a simple grid, with lettered streets running east-west, and a few interesting things like Dupont Circle (which probably came later).

DC is definitely not a place I'd call a "master planned city" or "artificial city"; it's evolved far too much in the last 300+ years.

Re: Change my mind: Density increases local but decreases global prices

#117

Post by rippercushions »

piva00 wrote: post #101
rippercushions wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of planned cities that are natural experiments in this: Brasilia, Canberra, Ottawa, Abuja etc. They all show that yes, it is possible to "build it and they will come", but it's hugely expensive, takes a long, long time (decades) to get to critical mass, and produced mixed results at best, eg Brasilia's original strictly separated zoning has been widely panned as a disaster. And I'm pretty sure all of t…

Brasilia was not originally planned to have separate zoning, Lucio Costas's vision (Lucio Costa was one of the architects together with Niemeyer to design the city) was one of "superblocks", a block was supposed to be close to self-sufficiency (hence the enormous block sizes), each was to have housing, shops, schools and so on in the block or in neighbouring blocks. The military dictatorship of Brazil decided to reva…

TIL, thanks for sharing!

Re: Change my mind: Density increases local but decreases global prices

#118

Post by piva00 »

nirimda wrote: post #100
rippercushions wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of planned cities that are natural experiments in this: Brasilia, Canberra, Ottawa, Abuja etc. They all show that yes, it is possible to "build it and they will come", but it's hugely expensive, takes a long, long time (decades) to get to critical mass, and produced mixed results at best, eg Brasilia's original strictly separated zoning has been widely panned as a disaster. And I'm pretty sure all of t…

> There are lots of planned cities that are natural experiments in this... They ... produced mixed results at best, eg Brasilia's original strictly separated zoning has been widely panned as a disaster. I'm not sure if there's been some slight shift of topic here. By "planned", I think we originally meant "deliberately built in relatively undeveloped land". But then you mention as an example of a failure of deliberat…

Brasilia was designed exactly to not be what it became. The original plan from Lucio Costa introduced the concept of "superblocks" which would be more-or-less self-sufficient, having shops, residential apartments, schools, parks and so on every few superblocks.

The military dictatorship decide to introduce strict zoning (probably lifting ideas that were happening in the USA during the 60s), completely destroying the urbanistic approach of the original design.

It's a failure of micromanagement from authoritarianism, inspired by the misguided (and nowadays considered idiotic) approach to urban design of the USA in the 50s onward.

Re: Change my mind: Density increases local but decreases global prices

#119

Post by lozenge »

piva00 wrote: post #101
rippercushions wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of planned cities that are natural experiments in this: Brasilia, Canberra, Ottawa, Abuja etc. They all show that yes, it is possible to "build it and they will come", but it's hugely expensive, takes a long, long time (decades) to get to critical mass, and produced mixed results at best, eg Brasilia's original strictly separated zoning has been widely panned as a disaster. And I'm pretty sure all of t…

Brasilia was not originally planned to have separate zoning, Lucio Costas's vision (Lucio Costa was one of the architects together with Niemeyer to design the city) was one of "superblocks", a block was supposed to be close to self-sufficiency (hence the enormous block sizes), each was to have housing, shops, schools and so on in the block or in neighbouring blocks. The military dictatorship of Brazil decided to reva…

Grand city plans usually fail even with the best intentions. Eg Milton Keynes was meant to be a walking, bike and car friendly town - it achieved one of those.

Re: Change my mind: Density increases local but decreases global prices

#120

Post by dukeyukey »

endisneigh wrote: post #39
zip1234 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is very much evidence that building more housing decreases the price of housing. I'm not sure why you think there isn't. https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/new-construction-...

then why are the places with the most units the most expensive? the research seems bad - they use a simulation, not actual data.

You've got it the wrong way around - expensive areas (usually because of lucrative local jobs) densify because it's how you can still turn a profit despite expensive land. Cheap, poor areas don't densify because the land is cheap, and the way to turn a profit is to build big houses that can still attract some people.
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