London: the city that ate itself

Re:London: the city that ate itself by facepalm on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @02:53AM (#9803414)

London is not creating the prices of property, the people are. They will be prepared to pay as much as they think living in London is worth. If eventually all the cool stuff is driven out by the high prices, prices will fall accordingly. Or rather, presumably there will be an equilibrium of prices vs coolness.

It kind of sucks, but what would actually be a better system? That people get assigned places to live by lottery, so if you happen to live in a cool place on the cheap, you were simply lucky? It sounds good on the surface because you only have the people living there in your mind. You forget about all the other people who never get a chance of living there. Why is it fair if some randomly selected people get to live in nice places and others don't?

I am not convinced that the market approach is not preferable. After all, those people PAY for the privilege to live in a cool place. If they have the money, presumably they should have delivered something good to the world in exchange.

And, hello, welcome to overpopulation. The number of nice places to live is finite. Even if we can cram ever more and more people into the world (by building skyscrapers or whatever), it doesn't seem obvious to me that we can provide nice places for everyone. For example, the length of shorelines is finite (glossing over fractal issues), so if your idea of living in a nice place is to live by the sea, there are only so many people who can have that privilege.

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Re:London: the city that ate itself by toupeetape on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @05:57AM (#9804033)

"It kind of sucks, but what would actually be a better system? That people get assigned places to live by lottery, so if you happen to live in a cool place on the cheap, you were simply lucky? It sounds good on the surface because you only have the people living there in your mind. You forget about all the other people who never get a chance of living there. Why is it fair if some randomly selected people get to live in nice places and others don't?"

We actually have had something not completely dissimilar to this since the 1980s. Anyone who lives in state housing for at least a minimum period of time is able to buy that home at a subsidized price. As local authorities are banned from using this money to build more state housing, this leads to long term shortages in state housing which is one of the causes of the problems we are facing now. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Buy)

Nobody is expecting to get a cheap home in Kensington or the equivalent super-expensive part of whatever city you are from. But it is not just the "cool", "nice" places that are becoming unaffordable. And the problem is that people are not paying to live in these homes. People are paying to use them as big, shiny piggy banks in the sky that happen to offer a better rate of return than other investments. Poor people who actually live in London and use London businesses generally contribute more to London's culture than rich people who don't.

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Re:London: the city that ate itself by facepalm on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @06:02AM (#9804057)

Of course it is the cool, nice places that become unaffordable. Pretty sure if you move further out, or to another city, it is cheaper?

How much would you say contributing to the culture should be worth?

And I still don't understand how they make money by letting houses remain vacant?

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Re:London: the city that ate itself by aries1980 on Monday July 06, 2015 @03:41AM (#9837449)

What would be preferable is more housing and better infrastructure, because the current living cost is toxic to the economy. The cost of living is still high in the suburbs where support workers (cleaners, plumbers, etc.) can afford to live, but they pushed outer regions y/y while the commuting time and cost is higher. We will end up being uncompetitive just because we have to pay extra for the employees living cost. This can be acceptable for the financial and tech sector, but what will a locksmith or street food owner do? And this happens just because there is no city planning and more housing. These prices are artificially high.

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