It is odd that we have simply accepted that the government has the right to tell everyone if they can live in a flat or a house.
I could think that arranged marriages are much better than choosing your relationship; but that doesn't mean I think that it should be a government policy and government should ban your own choice of relationship. You can have an arranged marriage if you want, even in the West. It works for some people, doesn't work for others.
Some people love flats and renting. Some like owning a flat, some like renting a house, some like owning a house, some like living in the woods off grid, and some like backpacking around the world without a house. Choice is great.
I think a fairer comparison in terms of relationships is like polygamy: forbidding people to live above or below you is a bit like taking away extra potential spouses. I believe polygamy is illegal in most societies due to the inequalities it causes.
Well let's not forget lobbying, corruption (more important than lobbying in some parts of the world, e.g. my country) and the plain and simple fact that politicians are usually quite rich (in many countries, not all) and so will own and rent houses, while having great influence on local laws.
I still think a shift would matter. There is some evidence for this in the UK because homeowners generally vote Conservative, but people are becoming homeowners later in life and less often. So the Conservatives are running around terrified that they're going to lose voters in the long term.
They have introduced quite a few inflationary policies subsidising the first purchases young fairly wealthy people.
I think also the way they have pivoted more recently to focus on the "culture wars" and (English) nationalism is a way to encourage older renters to vote for them.
And for some people, that's great. For me, not living in a flat in the city (quite the opposite) isn't because I want a garden and facilities all my own. It's because you can't control how terrible your neighbors are, so if they're farther away from where you spend most of your time, even if they're terrible, they have little impact.
Take a loud neighbor who works nights. He'll play his music loud at hours you'd be sleeping, and pound on the wall at hours he'd be sleeping, because you're too loud.
Now add 5000 square feet of land between you.
"Good fences make good neighbors."
Terraced houses are common in the UK and are the worst of all worlds: poor noise insulation from neighbours, tiny dark gardens and very low density.
You've obviously never met my neighbors. But noise is just one example; far more annoying when I was in an apartment was someone smoking below my balcony on a hot night when all I wanted was to open the windows.
And I suppose you'll tell me that filtration systems could take care of that, which is true, but staying locked in a closed apartment is, as has been recently shown, terrible for your health, physically and emotionally.
It's no use, I shall keep my yard and clear, dark skies where you can see the stars, and wildlife.
Your stars sound good, but I don't be able to give up being able to walk everywhere.
Genuinely curious: when has one-person-one-vote ever really constrained special interest groups, particularly in the US? Large corporations tend to get their way a lot during legislative sausage-making, and they have zero direct votes. Maybe votes actually don't matter that much?
> People in Singapore really love their flats. I think what people don't realise is that the space between the skyscrapers is well used with lots of playgrounds, parks and sports facilities. It isn't giving up your garden: it's swapping it for a much larger shared garden with facilities you could never dream of affording on your own.
Good for them! One question: could I add my own flooring to my flat for allergy purposes? If the neighbors are loud after my kids' bedtime, can I ask them to stop? Will that cause tension? Would I need to call the police if it escalated?
(I'd be much more interested in exporting Singapore's health care system to the US, which seems quite compatible with American cultural and economic constraints, than its housing policy, which seems entirely mismatched to housing constraints in 95% of America.)
I think Brexit is a good counterpoint to this: almost every large corporation thought it was a terrible idea, but it still got voted through and carried out.
> Good for them! One question: could I add my own flooring to my flat for allergy purposes? If the neighbors are loud after my kids' bedtime, can I ask them to stop? Will that cause tension? Would I need to call the police if it escalated?
With a HDB flat you can do whatever you like - you buy a 99 year lease with the assumption that the building will be demolished after then.
I don't really know Singapore well enough to give you good answers on your other questions, other than that sound insulation is generally good and people really respect the police in general.
I guess they couldn't state it openly, e.g. like:
"Let's bypass democratic majority rule, by taking away something people vote to protect - and not just anything, but their homes -, and consolidating its ownership to fewer rich property moguls and conglomerates"
Because that would immediately strike people as a tad worse than North Korea...
The trouble is that it is only a local majority. There are a larger number of people who would like to live in high-demand areas, but they can't vote to make that possible because they don't live there.
> by taking away something people vote to protect - and not just anything, but their homes -,
No-one is suggesting taking away their homes. Just making it more uneconomical to sit on land that has been improved by the state and profit from the ensuing increase in value. I personally would advocate for making these changes to the tax system very slowly, perhaps over the course of 20 years or so.
> and consolidating its ownership to fewer rich property moguls and conglomerates
They don't necessarily have to be rich. I personally wouldn't ever invest in a property conglomerate - they're far too unprofitable and buffeted by political winds. Software is where the money is at, but if you're on this website you already know that.
Any majority is a "local majority".
Would it be OK for third parties to come into your community / town etc, and decide for you?
That would be a nice racket for lobbyists, too: various interests could hire majorities to move from place to place and vote to overturn what those already living there want...
But this is a case where we're taking about outsiders making it more difficult for locals to hold to their homes, so they (the outsiders) have it easier to live in some place.
How is that OK? Ousiders "really" wanting to live to that place is not enough justification (people want lots of things. Many people want a pony too, doesn't mean they will get one or that they deserve one).
Plus, those outsiders only want to come live to a place (over other places) because the place has been developed well by the locals.
So they like what the locals have toiled and paid to build, and want to make it easier to throw the locals out of their homes, to rent there themselves. Doesn't sit right...
More generally, who could reasonably be considered to have a legitimate interest in housing policy? I can think of a few potential groups:
1) People who own homes in the locality
2) Renters
3) People who work in locality but commute
4) (This is the biggest stretch) People left behind by economic geography
On economic geography: as the economy evolves over time, the location of jobs changes. As farming is automated, there are less jobs in the rural Midwest. After the steel mills closed, Pittsburgh lost population. As the economy has become more knowledge and technology oriented, more jobs have moved to relatively dense urban areas that can support very liquid job markets and a high degree of labor specialization.
Obviously there's a lot of subjective trade-offs here. Personally, I feel there should be a middle ground (on policies around development) between "kick existing residents out of their homes" and "no middle class housing in areas with lots of job growth".
I'm predominantly suggesting making it easier to build new high density housing. The other side is to slow move to taxing estimated land values rather than house prices. This means that you pay for your share of the benefit you get from improvements to the land that you didn't make - a new metro line, for example, or a new supermarket or school. But if you renovate your house you wouldn't pay any more in taxes.
> Plus, those outsiders only want to come live to a place (over other places) because the place has been developed well by the locals.
Most infrastructure funding comes from central governments (at least in the countries I am aware of) so I don't understand what you mean by this exactly.
All these "collective" behaviours have appeared since then helped along by government campaigns: https://remembersingapore.org/2013/01/18/singapore-campaigns...
(Note that one of those campaigns - speak Mandarin - was encouraging people to abandon their native languages and learn a completely different one. It was highly successful. I think by comparison "don't throw litter" would be extremely easy.)
Your gross-generalization is so poorly constructed it's hard for it to be wrong, never mind right. So I'll ask you a few questions instead.
How would you even begin to test your claim in a realistic way? What time period/s would you select? Even if it were true, would it matter? Would efforts to solve these problems best be dealt with government policy/funding/enforcement or by pushing "Asian culture" in Europe or Africa?
Do you really mean East Asia? Does Bangkok, New Delhi and Manila count as Asian? Does a skyscraper in the Philippines surrounded by gangs, illegal trade and graffiti not count if it is made of garbage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_Mountain)? What if it was closed and re-opened elsewhere, does that mean the culture changed twice?
Is your generalization "significant" in understanding why Tokyo is cleaner than New Delhi or Bangkok or why Toronto has fewer youth gangs than New York? Was their "respect" for "the commons" in Singapore in 1964 when youth gangs and others engaged in race warfare? Or is it just more respect for the commons now that Singapore is no longer part of Malaysia?
How does a communal "respecting their commons" work when most people in a society think it is okay to conduct trade in ivory or whales, that are illegal under international law? What about dumping plastic in the ocean, where Asia in the main source? Or does the "commons" not count if it refers to the rest of the world? Perhaps how much money a society has to clean up pollution is more predictive than culture? Maybe individualism is useful when an entire society needs to change in some fashion and perhaps less useful when norms are reasonable?
Is there a chance that you are bothered by the problems you cite, but find it convenient to say "culture" because it allows you to wash your hands of these problems?
Unfortunately most of the influencing of politics isn't accomplished by voting, it's done by lobbying.
So it's sadly the opposite. The more you concentrate ownership, the larger those mega-landlord-corporations become and the more clout they have with the politicians.
Yes, but constraining the supply is done through political means: planning laws, green belts, individual objections to developments, voting etc. All of those in theory are based on "one man one vote", so if you concentrate ownership of supply you drastically reduce the number of votes it gets.
> the middle class who used to be able to live in a nice semi/detatched house are now living in flats in a skyscraper that is a massive detriment to their quality of life
People in Singapore really love their flats. I think what people don't realise is that the space between the skyscrapers is well used with lots of playgrounds, parks and sports facilities. It isn't giving up your garden: it's swapping it for a much larger shared garden with facilities you could never dream of affording on your own.
HMOs aren't a fair comparison because they have comical soundproofing compared to modern flats.