You must be truly desperate to come to us for help. We have basically the worst housing outcomes you could ever hope for.
Should European housing politics be Americanized?
41–50 of 57 posts
Re: Should European housing politics be Americanized?
#42Am I understanding that the solution proposed in the article is to allow more dense building in suburbs/outskirts of cities in Europe? This doesn't solve the actual problem that many European cities face, which is a housing shortage in the actual city center, where people want to live; there's generally not that much a lack of housing the further you get outside of a major city center in Europe, and people don't want…
Most people in HN fail to understand that the vast majority of people don't want to live in incredibly dense city centers. Not everyone is a young single professional without kids.
This doesn't mean that everyone wants to live in a single family house in a suburb, but also not everyone wants to live in a highrise in a packed city center that looks like hong kong.
Re: Should European housing politics be Americanized?
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they are don't rise nearly as much as real estate prices in city centers Pick the low-hanging fruit. More housing outside the city centre (with requisite transit infrastructure) still means more-affordable housing. That, in turn, should relieve pressure on the centre.
Many cities and areas close to major European cities have good transit infrastructure, yet people don't want to live there, they want to live in the city. So making more housing outside of the city, again, doesn't solve the actual problem facing major European cities.
Such as? I don’t think the other commenters meant areas requiring a 1-2 hours commute but actual suburbs
Re: Should European housing politics be Americanized?
#44Am I understanding that the solution proposed in the article is to allow more dense building in suburbs/outskirts of cities in Europe? This doesn't solve the actual problem that many European cities face, which is a housing shortage in the actual city center, where people want to live; there's generally not that much a lack of housing the further you get outside of a major city center in Europe, and people don't want…
With many city centers in europe steeped in history, it’s never going to happen.
But in contradiction to the article, just up the road from me, practically a small town was built of high density housing in what i would still consider “the city”, but with amenities and improved public transport factored in
Re: Should European housing politics be Americanized?
#45Am I understanding that the solution proposed in the article is to allow more dense building in suburbs/outskirts of cities in Europe? This doesn't solve the actual problem that many European cities face, which is a housing shortage in the actual city center, where people want to live; there's generally not that much a lack of housing the further you get outside of a major city center in Europe, and people don't want…
I live in Amsterdam; nobody wants to live in the city center. There are plenty of ways to keep an old city center AND build out the surrounding areas in a way that people actually would like to live there. We do really need to have a serious conversation about single-family homes; you will even find them right next to metro stations. Some of these low-density neighborhoods really need to be demolished and reconstruct…
That's a fair point, maybe "city center" isn't the best term here. What I mean are areas still in the city close to where a lot of the cafes, bars, restaurants, nightlife - third places in general - are, which is where people that want to live in a city generally prefer to live in if possible.
Re: Should European housing politics be Americanized?
#46Could it be the author only read english articles? The assertion that no one in europe speaks about housing shortages does not reflect my experience. There are no countries in europe who’s native language is english, and all online discourse would be in european languages. ( apart of course from the uk, but the author makes the distinction)
> There are no countries in europe who’s native language is english, and all online discourse would be in european languages.
And Ireland. Yes they also have the Irish language codified as primary in their constitution, but in practice 95% speak English, 39.9% claim some ability to speak Irish, and only 1.7% actually speak Irish daily.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Ireland
IMO, one of the things Europe does wrong is something the US also does wrong: There's plenty of cheap housing around, it's just in Detroit, Liverpool, and Chemnitz. How do we make those places desirable to live in once more?
Re: Should European housing politics be Americanized?
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
a combination of many things. For one, Cities in the netherlands are already quite dense, and the dutch are focused on building family houses attachted to each other mostly (row housing). Also, thanks to the massive agricultural sector and a lack of oversight on industry, the netherlands has a massive problem with nitrogen in its soil which prevents building because building stuff generates more nitrogen. Speculation…
This is news to me and interesting re: nitrogen crisis. That said, isn’t construction a very minor contributor relative to the agricultural nitrogen impact? Like, taken to an extreme, preventing construction based on this is like preventing people from having children because children will produce nitrogen compounds
The nitrogen problems has been ignored for so long and nitrogen compound deposition has been so intense for a long time that you can't really do anything anywhere without depositing nitrogen compounds in an area already suffering from the environmental effects.
The Netherlands is a very densely populated country compared to the most of Europe. Furthermore, there are industrial hubs bringing in polluted air through the wind from the west, south, and east, making up a significant source of the nitrogen compound deposition. All efforts to solve the problem have so far upset very powerful lobbyists whose income relies on being allowed to pollute more to stay ahead of the competition (not to mention caused violent protests).
There are many factors to the housing problem, it's not just nitrogen compounds. In my opinion, the entire construction sector coming to a standstill after the 2008 crisis was probably what kicked off a storm of seemingly unrelated issues, from population pyramids to the water table levels to investors using property to accumulate wealth to hyperintensive farming practices.
New measures to supposedly solve the nitrogen compound crisis have been announced. By the looks of it, I expect the agriculture lobby to riot again, and new elections by the start of next year when the government inevitably collapses itself again in an attempt to use populism to gather more votes.
Re: Should European housing politics be Americanized?
#48Could it be the author only read english articles? The assertion that no one in europe speaks about housing shortages does not reflect my experience. There are no countries in europe who’s native language is english, and all online discourse would be in european languages. ( apart of course from the uk, but the author makes the distinction)
In Croatia, which is (and has been) seeing a tremendous rise in real estate prices, everyone talks about the high prices, but rarely can you hear about about housing shortage. Indeed, building new housing is sometimes brought up as one of the reasons for rising prices.
The economic illiteracy is just that bad.
Re: Should European housing politics be Americanized?
#49> European policy debates often become Americanized because of the American domination of social media. No it doesn't. And America doesn't dominate social media in Europe, except repeated administration scandals, paedofiles and history's largest pedo ring cover-up.
America does dominate social media in Europe.
Most Europeans probably know more American politicians than they do their own, and have opinions about every American event.
During US elections it's impossible to talk to anyone without their starting to opine about things they have no control over within a minute.
American culture wars are polarising societies that share nothing with the American one.
The last thing Europe needs is more Americanisation.