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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   29161 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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There is a plentiful supply of dense urban cores in America with lower population than they had a century ago, and yet all the demand is for building more suburbs. The population has spoken, and they don't want to live in cities, they want to live in suburbs, New York City, and nothing in between.

Of course fewer people want to live in places where you don't need cars than they did when cars were unaffordable to most people. That is hardly saying anything, and it doesn't mean more people wouldn't want to live in those areas if the government didn't prevent them from existing.

The people have not spoken. There is no free market. Various taxes and regulations artificially reduce the supply of dense neighbourhoods. That's not to deny that many people like the suburbs. It's just to say that many don't and only do so because of government distortion of the market.

There is more availability of dense neighborhoods than there is demand for them. Yes, many of those dense neighborhoods are not particularly nice, but my not-particularly-nice sprawling suburb has more demand to live in it than supply of housing. The fact of the matter is that most people have a revealed preference for less density.

This seems clearly false to me. What is this based on? If there were a surplus of dense neighbourhoods, you wouldn't see much condo construction, which is an extremely inefficient use of materials for providing housing and is only economically viable when the price of housing is very high.

There is more availability of dense neighborhoods than there is demand for them.

And that's why you can get an apartment in a major metropolis downtown for $50k.

"Downtown" and "dense neighborhoods" are different things. In my city, downtown is a bunch 30 story office buildings, a stadium and some restaurants. It's pretty much empty by 6pm on weekdays. If we're talking about dense, walkable neighborhoods in major cities then yeah you can definitely do that.

Here's a whole house for $40k: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1421-Granville-Pl-Saint-Louis-MO-63112/2966082_zpid/

This isn't even a dense neighborhood. It's a bunch of detached houses and empty lots. Not exactly a slam dunk argument.

It's densely packed houses without big yards, 10 minute walk to a grocery store or restaurants. Of course there's always going to be some reason why it doesn't count.

If you think that a place where 25%-50% of each block is empty is dense I don't know what to tell you. I guess there will always be some ghetto that needs to be passed off as a dense area to advance the argument.

A village of 100 people is also highly walkable to all available amenities but it's not dense.

Slow down. Empty closely packed units are dense in construction and unpopular so not-dense in occupancy. Surely dense construction is the point and not-dense occupancy is revealed preference.

Once again I must point out it's not dense in construction when half the block is empty.

It’s a dense neighborhood that happens to be empty because no one wants to live there, because the supply of dense walkable neighborhoods exceeds the demand.

Americans really do be thinking that density is when half the block is empty.

More comments

This was true for a significant part of the 1960s-mid 1990s. Ever since the Guiliani-Bloomberg revolution there has been a city renaissance. But, that has little to do with cities being awesome as cities, rather it is due to cities being built, originally, in the best places. People still don't mostly prefer going up 35 stories on an elevator. But they do prefer being very close to a nice waterfront and lots of high paying jobs. The jobs existing there because the water existed their when water was most important.

There's plenty of water to go around. The West Coast of the United States is extremely long. Nevertheless, prices are highest in the dense urban areas.

On the other hand, several big cities (Phoenix, salt lake) are built in the middle of the desert with no useful waterways.

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