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They'll try to build more multi-family dwellings, because density pays off when you start out with some of the most valuable land on Earth, and in the end they'll just rebuild the mansions, because the thumb is pushing hard on the scale for that.
From Newsome's executive order suspending CEQA and Coastal Commission review for rebuilding:
So anything except replacing the McMansions is de facto illegal.
The same executive order extends anti-price-gouging rules on building materials through to January 2026, which may mean that any rebuilding at all turns out to be de facto illegal. But even red state governors do that - the fault is with the voters, not the politicians.
NIMBY lobby is too powerful as a function of democratic politics in a capitalist society, because rich and powerful people disproportionately live in large single-family homes in locales whose character would be damaged by large-scale construction that would also be loud and annoying for existing residents.
The only solution is removing local elites to the greatest extent possible from planning and zoning decisions. This is why in the UK I have long advocated for the establishment of some remote central planning permission authority, perhaps somewhere in a small town in Wales or Scotland, which would approve all construction in Britain and wave everything through over the gnashing of local councils in London or the green belt. In the US the federal system, unfortunately, makes this even more difficult.
I say this over and over again, but specific infrastructure aside, we don't need to build more in the UK! The population is essentially stable, barring immigration which we could stop at any time. The green belt was a good idea that failed because we allowed people to build commuter towns on the other side of the belt; we don't need more sprawl, we need more cities, and I suspect we could do that if we really wanted to. Bristol, Oxford and Cambridge are popular basically because they're like London but more expensive: let people spill further and further into cheaper communities. Fund good city centres. Clean up the charity shops. I really believe we could achieve at least some of that if we had the will.
If nothing else, let's build better. So much planning resistance comes because everybody knows that new-builds will be ugly; if they didn't damage the locale then a lot fo people would be a lot easier on them.
The UK absolutely needs to build more even if immigration drops to 0. The UK has ancient housing stock that desperately needs replacing and the so called Green Belt is strangling the country. New builds should be beautiful yes but what counts as beauty should not be up to people living locally because they're personally incentivised to veto construction that's beneficial for the country. More density would be good but barring that more houses anywhere is good as well. If you don't want density you should absolutely hate the Green Belt because it forces dense building in cities by raising land values on buildable land to the point where the only thing that makes economic sense is apartments.
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