Why Britain doesn’t build • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#291

Post by Swizec » Tue, Jun 27, 2023, 2:46 AM UTC

nervousvarun wrote: post #205

parthdesai wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or at least in North America, younger people don't want to live in soulless suburbs where there's literally nothing to do apart from visiting the same big box stores, chain restaurants and bars in exactly same looking plaza.

Until they get married/have kids and do the same thing their parents and their parent's parents did...move to the suburbs. One difference with "younger" kids now is they're getting married later...but once you have kids the suburbs look completely different and it's been that way for as long as there have been suburbs.

> Until they get married/have kids and do the same thing their parents and their parent's parents did...move to the suburbs.

My parents moved to the city when they had kids. Specifically to enable a better life for us. More access to friends, better schools, more independence, better extracurriculars, more family time because no commute, etc. It was pretty great.

Living in the city also made college affordable because we could just live at home and walk to school.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#292

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 27, 2023, 2:50 AM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #253

majormajor wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of real estate development is to make real estate more valuable. So if you have laws restricting that development you need to look further than just "real-estate investors don't want development." Even ones not doing the development benefit financially - landlords love being able to raise the rents cause other people in the area built a bunch of new shit. The better off - and therefore more politically-co…

The thing is that large developers love restricting development because it limits competition. If there is only a limited supply of land to build further on, it is much easier to corner said market of land and sit on it if the prices are not high enough for your liking. The cheapest development is the kind that larger developers do not bother with (one house to two or three on a single plot of land, rather than large…

[deleted]

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#293

Post by ux-app » Tue, Jun 27, 2023, 2:53 AM UTC

Auracle wrote: post #276

P_I_Staker wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can have just as much fun at the TGI Friday's at your local strip mall as you can at the hippest restaurant no one else has ever heard of in Brooklyn. It's just a matter of who you spend that time with, and how you perceive that time, in the Stoic tradition. It's not just about restaurants. I'm not going to be able to go to concerts or events. There will be no specialized stores. Even in the example you gave, m…

How often do people actually go to concerts or events? Why do I need specialized stores if I have the internet? Eating out is expensive and generally not good for you, calorie-wise. Cities are fun, but people fail to realize that rural places are also pretty great. You just need to make your own fun, but you actually have the room (and money) to do so. I can go out in my yard and do archery, target shooting, etc. I l…

>suburbs are probably the worst of both worlds

hit the nail on the head right there.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#294

Post by marcosdumay » Tue, Jun 27, 2023, 2:56 AM UTC

lll-o-lll wrote: post #49

ggm wrote: post #3

I find the economic reductionism in housing planning really irritating. It's not like other public utility functions, but it is damn close to a fundamental and is included in human rights declarations. What kind of state throws up it's hands and claims "it can't" fix housing when states can do precisely that? Thatcher's revolution in council housing is a cesspit of counterfactual outcomes. It made individual househol…

It’s the whole western world at the same time. The same policies, the same social outcomes. It makes me question whether there is any real democracy; did we all just happen to make the exact same decisions in lock step since the 70s by incredible coincidence? And it’s not as if the eventual negative outcomes of housing costs continually outstripping wage growth weren’t obvious and growing year on year. Who is actuall…

Whether or not there is real democracy anywhere (I'd say "no"), there has been a deep cultural homogenization imposed by the media since the 70s. And a really strong deviation from fact-based bottom-up world modeling.

It's technically possible that people just decided to vote the same way in half of the world for decades. Besides, the local plutocracy wanting the same things everywhere isn't easy to explain either.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#295

Post by marcosdumay » Tue, Jun 27, 2023, 2:58 AM UTC

rcarr wrote: post #154

lll-o-lll wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the whole western world at the same time. The same policies, the same social outcomes. It makes me question whether there is any real democracy; did we all just happen to make the exact same decisions in lock step since the 70s by incredible coincidence? And it’s not as if the eventual negative outcomes of housing costs continually outstripping wage growth weren’t obvious and growing year on year. Who is actuall…

It definitely seems to be more of an Anglosphere problem than elsewhere. I've been learning other languages with the long term view of permanently escaping the Anglosphere in the next 5 years, unless I finally manage to land a job that pays enough to allow me some stability.

There may be entire regions without this problem, but it is absolutely not restricted to the Anglosphere.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#296

Post by asdff » Tue, Jun 27, 2023, 3:00 AM UTC

bufio wrote: post #289

asdff wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New housing means the area is worthy of investment. Homeowners should want that for their communities, it makes their homes more valuable than those in communities that developers pass over. Plus the more people living in an area, the more pressure on housing, the more your single family home would fetch compared to a less dense area. Ask yourself if as an investor you'd rather own a single family home in some New Je…

What investment?

Investment from anything. Developers looking to make apartments. People looking to open stores or restaurants. Community groups. These are all examples of investing time or money into a community, all of which affect property value. Given two homes in a city, one where you see new restaurants opening and new apartments and community events all summer, and one that's the same sleepy retiree community its always been, you can probably guess which one is more valuable.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#297

Post by asdff » Tue, Jun 27, 2023, 3:02 AM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #286

Remember: regulations are written in blood. You can't simply build things willy nilly. The Grenfell Tower fire is a recent and stark reminder of what happens when you don't apply a lot of trained and expert input into things.

You can, however, build willy nilly copies of things that you've already approved previously and deemed are still habitable. Even that though is unpalatable, by right development hardly happens anywhere these days.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#298

Post by marcosdumay » Tue, Jun 27, 2023, 3:07 AM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #190

ggm wrote: post #3

I find the economic reductionism in housing planning really irritating. It's not like other public utility functions, but it is damn close to a fundamental and is included in human rights declarations. What kind of state throws up it's hands and claims "it can't" fix housing when states can do precisely that? Thatcher's revolution in council housing is a cesspit of counterfactual outcomes. It made individual househol…

The developed world has one great example of functional housing policy: Japan. A single policy that allows for unique neighborhoods, affordable houses, supports small businesses, and enables walkable cities. Just.... do what we know already works. For anyone not familiar, here is a primer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfm2xCKOCNk

Housing has become more affordable in Japan about the same time as the country completed its demographic transition and its population began to decline.

Personally, I'd prefer my country do something that works faster than waiting for people to die. But yeah, on the other side of the curve, anything you try works like magic.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#299

Post by Aunche » Tue, Jun 27, 2023, 3:14 AM UTC

ggm wrote: post #3

I find the economic reductionism in housing planning really irritating. It's not like other public utility functions, but it is damn close to a fundamental and is included in human rights declarations. What kind of state throws up it's hands and claims "it can't" fix housing when states can do precisely that? Thatcher's revolution in council housing is a cesspit of counterfactual outcomes. It made individual househol…

>Truly sordid tropes about rent caps and freezes are trotted out again and again, as if simply reciting them makes them axioms: they're not.

Neither does insisting that these are sordid tropes make them so. In a vacuum, freezing rent disincentivizes the creation of new housing. You can negate this effect by subsidizing new housing, but that doesn't mean that the effect is fake news.

>Our elected leadership are captive to stupid market force arguments.

I wish. If that were the case, we'd replace property taxes with a land value tax, and it would be much easier for both the government and private developers to build new housing.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#300

Post by renewiltord » Tue, Jun 27, 2023, 3:26 AM UTC

asdff wrote: post #297

renewiltord wrote: post #286

Remember: regulations are written in blood. You can't simply build things willy nilly. The Grenfell Tower fire is a recent and stark reminder of what happens when you don't apply a lot of trained and expert input into things.

You can, however, build willy nilly copies of things that you've already approved previously and deemed are still habitable. Even that though is unpalatable, by right development hardly happens anywhere these days.

The thing that changes is where you're building it. China tried the cookie-cutter approach and see what they got: buildings falling down. It turns out that even if you approved something in one circumstance it doesn't apply to another. Since the ground conditions are different, each building is truly different.

This isn't software where you can put it in a Docker container. There's a reason why everything requires planning approval in almost every big city in America: lives matter. People matter.