Re:What If Urban Sprawl Is the Only Realistic Way to Create ...
by TulliusCicero on Wednesday September 14, 2016 @05:45PM
(#12501464)
> That's the textbook case of privatizing the profits and socializing the losses.
Yes, agreed. And I'm not completely against socialization, but I see little reason to encourage it for this case. If infrastructure and services cost more further out, property taxes for those areas should reflect that.
> When things are not subsidized, the developers only end up building luxury condos in urban areas, which is the case for most large metro areas right now.
This tends to be true because SFH-zoned areas are held as sacred cows, and what increased density is allowed is constrained into small areas. This both keeps land prices high, so developers need to target the high end of the market, and it means that cheaper forms of increased density (say, building duplexes/triplexes/granny flats in existing low-density areas) are literally illegal.
I swear, people want developers to build huge towers and then offer up the units for cheap. Do you think it's cheap to build those towers? Hint: it is not. Brand new, inherently-expensive-to-build housing is always going to be expensive to rent. The solution is to a) permit cheaper forms of housing where possible, b) allowed increased density across a wide swathe of residential area (which can be done the same way as (a), really), and c) accept that new things always cost more than old things. The luxury units of today are the upper-middle class units of twenty years from now, the middle-class units of forty years from now, the working-units of sixty years from now, etc.
Yes, agreed. And I'm not completely against socialization, but I see little reason to encourage it for this case. If infrastructure and services cost more further out, property taxes for those areas should reflect that.
> When things are not subsidized, the developers only end up building luxury condos in urban areas, which is the case for most large metro areas right now.
This tends to be true because SFH-zoned areas are held as sacred cows, and what increased density is allowed is constrained into small areas. This both keeps land prices high, so developers need to target the high end of the market, and it means that cheaper forms of increased density (say, building duplexes/triplexes/granny flats in existing low-density areas) are literally illegal.
I swear, people want developers to build huge towers and then offer up the units for cheap. Do you think it's cheap to build those towers? Hint: it is not. Brand new, inherently-expensive-to-build housing is always going to be expensive to rent. The solution is to a) permit cheaper forms of housing where possible, b) allowed increased density across a wide swathe of residential area (which can be done the same way as (a), really), and c) accept that new things always cost more than old things. The luxury units of today are the upper-middle class units of twenty years from now, the middle-class units of forty years from now, the working-units of sixty years from now, etc.