That article is not immune from criticism. The first example it gives is Houston which it directly notes solved affordability through “sprawl”. It is totally invalid in an SF context where we live on the tip of a peninsula.
The second example is Tokyo. It is true that Tokyo is more liberal on building codes, but there are many other differences that go unmentioned. For example a massive, generation-defining pop of a real estate asset bubble and resulting 30 year recession. That that goes unmentioned smacks of cherry picking.
A more successful example is Vienna where the government was heavily involved in housing.
Apparently it is hard to understand, because what you're describing isn't induced demand, it's the same exact supply and demand curve working as it always has done. Induced demand is where a shift in the supply curve shifts the demand curve, not simply adjusting to a new equilibrium on the existing demand curve (as would be expected for literally everything). We can prove this quite simply: in countries where driving is priced correctly, road expansions reduce congestion. And they don't reduce congestion in countries where driving is subsidized, like ours.
> That article is not immune from criticism. The first example it gives is Houston which it directly notes solved affordability through “sprawl”. It is totally invalid in an SF context where we live on the tip of a peninsula.
You didn't get the point of the article at all if you think that's a criticism of it. The whole point was that you can attack housing affordability in tons of different ways, but they all have something in common: they increase supply to meet demand. You can do it with sprawl, you can do it with tall density, you can do it with short density, you can do it with social housing, you can do it with market rate housing, etc. It doesn't matter, supply is the key factor. There isn't a single one size fits all solution to the housing crisis, but there are plenty of different ways to realize the goal of reducing rents via increasing supply.
> For example a massive, generation-defining pop of a real estate asset bubble and resulting 30 year recession.
Tokyo's economic reality has been different from Japan as a whole, with Tokyo booming for at least 20 years now. Tokyo has been one of the fastest growing megacities in the world for those two decades, highlighting exactly how successful they've been at keeping rents flat.
> That that goes unmentioned smacks of cherry picking.
Kind of like how you point out how Houston's model could never work for San Francisco, but conveniently forget to mention Montreal's or Chicago's model while jumping directly to your preferred solution that would require the most dramatic shift in American politics that we have ever seen?
That is incorrect. You fundamentally misunderstand induced demand. You can literally google “induced demand” and see a graph showing that the demand curve does not shift.[1]
Ie: Traffic isn't bad at 4am; building/opening more roads at 4am likely won't cause more traffic/time/etc to happen at 4am.
http://www.sightline.org/2017/09/21/yes-you-can-build-your-w...
As far as the roads situation, a lot of people confuse that phenomenon with induced demand, which is likely incorrect (and very hard to prove, even if it is correct). The much more likely scenarios is that because roads are underpriced (we don't make people pay their full costs for use), there will always be unmet demand. If people were paying $8-15/gallon for gas (approximately what the unsubsidized cost would be), it would be much easier to build a new road and actualize the intended effect of reducing congestion, because you wouldn't be trying to catch up to pent up subsidized demand.