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The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

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Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#21

Post by zucchini_head »

akanet wrote: post #2

The author's recommendations are certainly apt, though I wonder if he realizes how much of a political nightmare trying to get cities like Berkeley to build more housing is. Berkeley is probably the staunchest NIMBY city of the major Bay Area cities. The mayor and city council recently outright denied a simple rebuild of a house on Haskell St (heh) that would have added a couple extra units of housing. We believe thi…

Just skim-read through that story. Sounds pretty part-and-parcel for these kind of things, it's the same where I live too (UK).

The first step is always to include irrelevant statistics, since this bulks-up the case with "we are good people" rabble, and makes it harder to understand. It's essentially used to drown-out the key details of the case and to slow things down by making it much longer to read.

One of my older family members has been a council (our version of states I suppose) member for over 40 years, and some of the stories I hear are incredible.

I've heard stories of people submitting 300+ page testimonials and hundreds of correspondence over just 1-2 days just over small renovations, purely to obfuscate the case's legitimate and important details that are against their favour.

I'm really glad people are documenting things like this so we can actually see how bad it is getting...

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#22

Post by jacobolus »

dasmoth wrote: post #11
stupidcar wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard not to be left with the impression that you consider people who enjoy living in cities to be insects, and expect every piece you read to reflect that bizarre prejudice.

There are many variations on "living in cities". Some of them involve single-family dwellings and lots of private space. It actually seems to be those models which are most strongly under attack right now.

Some cities have this nice feature where there are enough studio and 1-bedroom apartments available in low-rise and mid-rise apartment buildings that all the people who want to live in small apartments can afford to, pushing down pricing of all housing including the 4-bedroom single-family houses, and the duplexes, etc.

Other cities are zoned to only allow single-family houses on most of their lots, and don’t have enough small apartments, so instead all of the people who want to live in studio apartments end up stuck splitting the rent 3 ways so they can afford to sleep in the dining room of what used to be a single-family house. Due to rent control people living with roommates get locked into their slightly awkward housing situations, and can’t afford to move in with a partner, trade up for a larger space to start a family, or even move when they have a falling out with the roommates. Now the rent price of single family houses goes up to whatever 3 or 4 full-time junior programmer salaries can pay for, all of the families with parents working less lucrative careers can no longer afford the city, and only the richest can afford to ever buy houses.

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#23

Post by aninhumer »

dilemma wrote: post #20
aninhumer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how you think winning a war leads "simply" to higher wages? There were a lot of factors surrounding WW2 which contributed to the success of the US afterwards, but they're nowhere near as simple as the fact that they won. If anything, the most immediate outcome of the victory is a sudden influx of unemployed soldiers needing jobs, which causes downward pressure on wages.

What the parent is referring to is the US having industrial production capacity that was left intact while Europe was in shambles.

Yes, that is one factor, and perhaps the parent was referring to that, but if so I don't feel that "simply because they won the war" expresses that particularly clearly.

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#24

Post by hueving »

aninhumer wrote: post #16
ionwake wrote: post #4

Please do correct me if I am wrong. But isn't the whole reason lower class job salaries increased in the USA was simply because they had just won a world war? I do not know enough about the reasons for affluence in the 50s, but surely it was in large part to success in the war? If so, how could one suggest the minimum wage is just raised without it causing mass unemployment in the present? I must be misunderstanding…

I'm not sure how you think winning a war leads "simply" to higher wages? There were a lot of factors surrounding WW2 which contributed to the success of the US afterwards, but they're nowhere near as simple as the fact that they won. If anything, the most immediate outcome of the victory is a sudden influx of unemployed soldiers needing jobs, which causes downward pressure on wages.

The shattered manufacturing capabilities of Europe put the US in a leading position to be the primary provider to take its place. Essentially Europe was gone as a competitor in the global economy and became a consumer. This led to massive demand in the US which of course led to companies paying lots of workers to fulfill it.

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#25

Post by SmellTheGlove »

aninhumer wrote: post #16
ionwake wrote: post #4

Please do correct me if I am wrong. But isn't the whole reason lower class job salaries increased in the USA was simply because they had just won a world war? I do not know enough about the reasons for affluence in the 50s, but surely it was in large part to success in the war? If so, how could one suggest the minimum wage is just raised without it causing mass unemployment in the present? I must be misunderstanding…

I'm not sure how you think winning a war leads "simply" to higher wages? There were a lot of factors surrounding WW2 which contributed to the success of the US afterwards, but they're nowhere near as simple as the fact that they won. If anything, the most immediate outcome of the victory is a sudden influx of unemployed soldiers needing jobs, which causes downward pressure on wages.

> If anything, the most immediate outcome of the victory is a sudden influx of unemployed soldiers needing jobs, which causes downward pressure on wages.

You had fewer soldiers coming back than you had shipping off. You also had worldwide demand for manufactured goods to meet, and Europe lost basically its entire infrastructure and nearly an entire generation of working age men.

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#26

Post by zucchini_head »

muninn_ wrote: post #19
akanet wrote: post #2

The author's recommendations are certainly apt, though I wonder if he realizes how much of a political nightmare trying to get cities like Berkeley to build more housing is. Berkeley is probably the staunchest NIMBY city of the major Bay Area cities. The mayor and city council recently outright denied a simple rebuild of a house on Haskell St (heh) that would have added a couple extra units of housing. We believe thi…

Or you can move if you can't afford the area. There are plenty of places with lower costs of living. You can't live in what is perhaps the most desirable area in the world and then be upset that people want to protect/increase their property value or not change how their community is. Not everybody wants to live in a sea of imposing skyscrapers. -edit So I see a few comments discussing things like commuting, urban sp…

Doesn't solve the problem. This approach contributes to urban sprawl, which is normally bad for the environment (people doing 2h car commutes is incredibly polluting, verses a shorter and commute or using public transport).

A good summary of the bad effects of urban sprawl is available on Wikipedia [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_sprawl#Effects

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#27

Post by maxsilver »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #13
dasmoth wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many variations on "living in cities". Some of them involve single-family dwellings and lots of private space. It actually seems to be those models which are most strongly under attack right now.

They're under attack because they make those cities unaffordable to most, they're a cash transfer from immigrants to the emplaced, from the young to the old. They're under attack because they can't possibly scale. They're under attack because they take more energy and are more hostile to walking, biking, and transit. They're under attack because they're not the natural outcome of people expressing preferences in the…

> (single family homes with reasonable space) they make those cities unaffordable, they can't possibly scale, they are more hostile to walking, biking, and transit.

None of that is actually true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGbC5j4pG9w and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv6SbFlZMbU Apartments are great for those who want them, but there's nothing wrong or anti-urban about family housing.

You can easily give everyone (edit: everyone who wants one) their own single-family detached housing (with privacy, and parking), inside a major city, for really cheap. It would still be 100% supportive of walking, biking, and transit, and can scale for at least the next 100 years. I can state this as a simple fact, because it is, it already exists on Earth today.

Wealthier Americans just refuse to let that happen in our own cities. We simply don't build urban housing for families (even in instances where zoning rules do allow it) so families literally can't make that choice. Cities force sprawl, and then complain that decisions must be made to service the sprawl they themselves made.

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#28

Post by sevensor »

jdavis703 wrote: post #15
sevensor wrote: post #14

This piece is by Richard Florida, who helped create the very problem he laments. Ten-fifteen years ago, he was talking up the same cities as magnets for the "creative class." Now all of a sudden he's concerned about the janitors and street sweepers? I'm not taking Florida seriously if he can't acknowledge his past myopia.

Isn't this an ad homin argument? What is wrong with his actual policy proposals?

They're pretty thin. Build housing. Build transit. Raise the minimum wage. There's nothing wrong with those, but he's pretty late to the party.

So I'd say this isn't an ad hominem. I'm not trying to attack the argument by attacking the man. I'm just attacking the man. Florida in particular isn't credible because a decade ago he was boosting municipal gold-digging -- chasing after high-flying tech companies and ignoring bread and butter issues like the ones he's lately rediscovered.

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#29

Post by shawnee_ »

ams6110 wrote: post #7
shawnee_ wrote: post #3

Now everything’s changed. In 2016, the San Francisco metro area was the top location for venture capital investment in the country, hauling in $23.4 billion—more than triple the VC investment in Silicon Valley proper. Interesting numbers, what seems to be evidence of inflation chasing inflation. There's no logical justification for such a concentrated purse of investment dollars benefiting so few people. Furthermore,…

Renting has been the standard model for suburban office parks too. Most companies do not own their own office buildings. It's more common for specialized space, e.g. manufacturing facilities but not usually done for offices.

That is not how it was in the 80's, as the author of this article mentioned. High-tech companies had more intelligent strategies then; they knew that people are the real value of high-tech companies, so it doesn't matter where you put them when you put them all together and give them the tools they need to be creative and build. Why not let them build something in areas with cleaner air, less crime, and more physical room to grow?

All of the companies he mentioned own the land and buildings in these 'burbs where they grew their companies. That is why Apple is building their space ship HQ today... they established equity and are now sitting on more piles of cash than they know what to do with. Their employees own their homes in the areas surrounding them, thus building affluence. In fact, it could probably be further proven that when a company does own its land and buildings, it's inherently stronger and more likely to be able to withstand upturns and downturns in economic timelines (thus giving employees even more incentive to work a fledgling company out of hard times).

There's probably a neat little equation to be written to pithily show the relation. Maybe I will write something up later and post it on ecosteader...

Something about the summation of rents (Sigma) paid by all team members (T[x]) in a startup as a function of runway building. To lengthen the runway, the Sigma cannot grow faster than a company's ability to acquire the top talent needed to build out that runway. There's an inflection point somewhere where you can neither grow, nor afford to attract and hire the top talent because of the wasted and sunk costs in rents and achieving "brand recognition" by being in a place like San Francisco. You can't pay the best people enough to relocate there when the probability of overall success is hinged upon getting more and more VC to sustain there.

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#30

Post by zucchini_head »

ionwake wrote: post #4

Please do correct me if I am wrong. But isn't the whole reason lower class job salaries increased in the USA was simply because they had just won a world war? I do not know enough about the reasons for affluence in the 50s, but surely it was in large part to success in the war? If so, how could one suggest the minimum wage is just raised without it causing mass unemployment in the present? I must be misunderstanding…

Well, a lot of historians say that the USA's economy flourished post-war not necessarily because they "won" it (hard to define concept these days), but because everybody else's manufacturing infrastructure was completely flattened.

Why do you think the USA automobile market exploded post-war? It's because the two biggest automobile manufactures - Germany and Japan - were flattened to smouldering ashes and took around 30-40 years to recover.

That's why the USA auto industry declined on an enormous scale after the 80's, because in the end the USA was never automobile king. There was never the "good old Detroit days". It was just a temporary market vacuum that the USA capitalised on, while Germany and Japan, who simply were better at making cars (debatable of course, but they make more money and that's probably the most reliable metric here), were rebuilding their entire country from catastrophe.

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