It's kind of delightful watching NYC and SF in the gif inflate like gigantic pustules, cysts of real estate.
This imagery makes me cringe while being spot on.
Mapping the U.S. By Property Value Instead of Land Area
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Re: Mapping the U.S. By Property Value Instead of Land Area
#12I wonder how things will change once self driving cars become the norm.
Re: Mapping the U.S. By Property Value Instead of Land Area
#13i kind of understand why people here frequently against high-density - the way it is done in US ends up with pretty unlivable space of towering boxes surrounded by concrete and asphalt (which is just obvious result of profit maximization while obeying height limits, etc.. While i think having a 200 stories tower surrounded by a park would be better than a bunch of 20-30 stories mid-towers sticking out of concrete/asphalt space)
Re: Mapping the U.S. By Property Value Instead of Land Area
#14It's kind of delightful watching NYC and SF in the gif inflate like gigantic pustules, cysts of real estate.
Totally agree. It's easy to understand the implications but as a New Yorker it's hard not to be proud of your city in some ways. The UES being worth more than six states, it just boggles the mind to try to do the comparisons in your head.
Re: Mapping the U.S. By Property Value Instead of Land Area
#15> The demand to live in these places is soaring, but the desire among incumbents to accommodate newcomers is low Sums up why we ended up in Bend, Oregon rather than Boulder, Colorado. In the latter, there is a small but significant group of people whose idea is that the area needs fewer jobs, not smarter housing. Edit: http://journal.dedasys.com/2015/06/18/boulder-colorado-vs-be... - more about our choice, for the cu…
But if Boulder looked more like Denver (or Bend like Portland), you might not have made that choice, right? I'm guessing that you wanted those spots because they were semi-rural mountain cities with low population density. So even if you did move to Boulder, you'd probably oppose the construction of more high-density housing, right?
I want to live someplace that's not too big in area, actually. Padova (where I've spent most of the past 15 years) is actually about the same size as Boulder, and has more than twice as many people, and I liked it just fine.
What I want is to live within biking distance of where I work (10 minutes today - yay!), as well as be able to ride my road and mountain bikes, and have other outdoor stuff close by. In Boulder, to get something affordable, you need to live in one of the nearby towns, which means either an hour by bike, or a drive. Thus - for me - defeating the entire purpose of not living in a big city.
I like density in other words, as long as the total population is not too high.
Re: Mapping the U.S. By Property Value Instead of Land Area
#16> "The stubborn unwillingness of incumbent homeowners in highly productive places—namely San Francisco and New York City, which are barely visible on the land-area map, but dominate the housing value map—is a huge drain on the nation’s economy." Are they trying to say that if people didn't have to spend as much on housing then there would be greater GDP?
Re: Mapping the U.S. By Property Value Instead of Land Area
#17Isn't this just the same as population density? I think there's an XKCD about this ... https://xkcd.com/1138/
Not quite fair. Usually the xkcd syndrome is caused by plotting density of something that is intrinsic to people e.g. red hair. You end up with a heatmap of population.
Here, land prices may be higher because more people are there bidding up the prices. But its not a direct property of the individuals. So the heatmap effect is indirect.
Maybe not big point, but there it is.
Re: Mapping the U.S. By Property Value Instead of Land Area
#18i kind of understand why people here frequently against high-density - the way it is done in US ends up with pretty unlivable space of towering boxes surrounded by concrete and asphalt (which is just obvious result of profit maximization while obeying height limits, etc.. While i think having a 200 stories tower surrounded by a park would be better than a bunch of 20-30 stories mid-towers sticking out of concrete/asp…
I feel that sound is a big part of it too. European buildings tend to be a titch bit better about this, but American ones are downright terrible. I'd love to live in a apartment building for a long time, but the sound is what gets me. I can't play my sound as loud as I want, I can't stand other people ignoring that the walls are paper thin, I hear every toilet flush and chopping of carrots in the building. If you can find a way to really dampen the sound, then I feel a lot of people wouldn't mind the high density quite as much.
Re: Mapping the U.S. By Property Value Instead of Land Area
#19Going down into the rabbit hole, here is a JSON file [1] containing the county level data from the Economist. I think that this is the source of the data used by the author.
[1] http://infographics.economist.com/2015/ASBTest/Land/js/count...
Re: Mapping the U.S. By Property Value Instead of Land Area
#20> "The stubborn unwillingness of incumbent homeowners in highly productive places—namely San Francisco and New York City, which are barely visible on the land-area map, but dominate the housing value map—is a huge drain on the nation’s economy." Are they trying to say that if people didn't have to spend as much on housing then there would be greater GDP?
I think that if rents weren't such a drain, then yes, you could spend the money on other things and drive up GDP. SF currently has bad rents that are hurting the local economy. Money that just a few years ago was going to eating out, new cars, vacations, etc. is now going to a greedy landlord.