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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31231 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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I have been watching a lot about housing lately. The lack of affordability and so on. I won't bother you with details, since they are known to everyone. Almost every capital city in the developed world (and big parts of developing) is struggling with unaffordable rent, insane house price rises etc.

The process is usually something like this. Rural people move to cities, city people move to capital cities and capital cities people move to global cities. And global cities people try to live as close as possible to the city center. All the eastern europeans that I know that moved to UK didn't move to bumfuck nowhere in the Midlands. They moved to London. Ditto for a lot of other immigrants into the UK. So there is real demand to live in London. The process of concentration of people in the big metro areas doesn't seem to slow down or reverse (white flight is the only counter example).

So there is the minor problem that I have with YIMBY people - why do you think that building more will actually solve the problem with unaffordable housing? We have been adding lanes to highways since time immemorial (aka the 50s) and the congestion is still here.

But what I have been thinking is - are freedom of movement and affordable housing compatible at all? The communist regimes had something like city citizenship - you were allowed to move to the capital only with marriage/secured job in the city. Not saying it was good, but it kept the capitals a bit emptier. In the 30 years since the Berlin wall fell in my eastern european country the only people that didn't try to move to the capital are the ones that moved to London, Paris and the big German cities to make their housing situation worse.

Now people are sometimes just priced out and they move. And if the city becomes terrible people will also move. But so far it seems that if the city is safe enough, people are willing to tolerate insane economic hardships to live there. We can't cram 8 billion people in 20-30 megapolises. Could this be solved with policies alone? Should we even solve it? Is it ok to infringe on the right to move to actually strike a balance.

The key difference between big city housing and traffic is that you are worse off the more other drivers are on the road (the externalities are just negative) while the reason you want to live in a big city is because of the net benefits (net positive externalities) of living near the other people.

while the reason you want to live in a big city is because of the net benefits (net positive externalities) of living near the other people.

This is overly strong phrasing, imo. I personally find cities hideously uncomfortable and claustrophobic.

Sure. I have no desire to live in New York City, I wouldn’t want to live in a hypothetical New York City where all eight million people are gainfully employed, sober, and mentally healthy, and that doesn’t actually have much bearing on his point. People who want to live in cities generally want to live in cities because they derive some benefit from doing so, often economic or social.

This seems like a totally silly line of argument. People are making the choice rationally, what is a positive to you may be a negative to you and vice versa but one doesn't need to prove the appeal to something people are intentionally doing.

People are making the choice rationally

Some people are. Many people are. Most people are. Sure. I'm just noting that it ought to have another qualifier there. "Living in a big city is a net positive" is not an absolute state. Depending on how you class suburbs, it could well be below 50%.

Me as well, so I don't live in a city.

Me too but the more people who want to live in a dense urban center the fewer will want to crowd whatever rural town I may find to reside.

So do I, but can you really deny the benefits? I chose to live in the countryside and I really do prefer it, but there's hardly a day on which I'm not inconvenienced by all the things the city has that the middle of nowhere does not.

So do I, but can you really deny the benefits?

Yeah, I can. Prices are higher in cities (not just for housing) which eats into the benefit of higher wages, and if you can work remote you can get big city level wages while living in the middle of nowhere. The only real advantage I see to cities is access to a wide variety of stores/food/cultural activities.

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