One common argument against building new urban housing is that cities are geographically constrained by their natural and political boundaries, and thus can never build enough housing to bring prices down. This claim rests on a variety of false assumptions. The first false assumption is that the … [Read more...]
old posts
Before there was a Market Urbanism blog, I posted short thoughts on the Congress for New Urbanism group blog. I am in the process of recovering as many of the posts as possible through the Internet Archive (archive.org). My 2015 posts are here. I hope to gradually recover the earlier posts as … [Read more...]
Living Downtown: A Great Book for Market Urbanists
One long-forgotten housing option is residential hotels; a century ago, most renters lived in hotels and shared space with short-term tenants. I just read a book, Living Downtown, about the rise and fall of residential hotels. Rather than discuss them in detail I refer you to my amazon.com … [Read more...]
NIMBY Contradictions
Ever since zoning was invented in the 1920s, homeowners have argued that limits on density and on multifamily housing are necessary to protect property values. But today, urban NIMBYs seek to prevent new housing on the ground that new housing will lead to gentrification, which will in turn lead to … [Read more...]
(Not So) Infinite Demand
In a recent blog post, Julia Galef has generated a fairly comprehensive list of pro-housing arguments and counterarguments to those arguments. She gives the most detailed consideration to the "infinite demand" argument- in her words, “So even if SF adds a lot of additional housing, prices will … [Read more...]
More on “Empty Houses”
I recently saw a Facebook post asserting that San Francisco has 30,000 vacant units, so therefore no market-rate housing should be built. So I looked up Census data on these allegedly empty units. It is true, according to the Census Factfinder website, that there are 30,000 or so unoccupied … [Read more...]
Empty Houses, part 2
The most interesting comment to my last post focused on one narrow issue: to what extent are vacant housing units second homes (and thus presumably less likely to be rented out) as opposed to units for rent/sale or held for other unknown reasons? Why does this matter? Because one might argue … [Read more...]
The “Empty House” Theory
One common argument against new urban housing runs as follows: "If we build new housing, it will all be bought up by rich investors who will sit on it. So new supply doesn't restrain housing costs." This argument (at least as I have phrased it) strikes me as absurd. Here's why: for the argument … [Read more...]
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