
The Process of Urban Change (2017) - oftenwrong
http://newworldeconomics.com/the-process-of-urban-change/
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jhoechtl
Does this article call for (more) market regulation?

Not that it would be a bad thing just figuring out what is the take-away

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atcole
I think the telling quote of the article is the last sentance which sums up
his feelings on the current US situation

\- "The situation that many in-demand U.S. cities find themselves in is an
example of extreme “market failure,” which is what bureaucrats call regulatory
failure; and is also extremely unnatural"

Basically he is saying that "bureaucrats" ineffectively regulated the market
to the point of failure, or where the market could no longer compensate for
the demand which causes a lack of affordable housing.

So I think he isn't calling for more / less regulation, but better slash more
effective regulation that allows the market to operate.

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mc32
I think it's more complicated than the author suspects.

This is not a US only issue. And it's not a developing nations-like issue (say
rural to urban migration pattern).

We're seeing this in developed countries (with a few exceptions, Japan, but
they also have the confounding declining pop factor). So, The UK, Germany,
Sweden, China, many others are seeing similar issues to the US (SF is a
special case exacerbated by politics, but I digress).

I think policymakers (and markets) have been caught off guard by this shift to
the city, ironically, oftentimes, precipitated by a boom in technology and or
technology rich companies, who, despite Marissa's observation, can afford and
can work with a remote workforce.

This is a transformation that was not predicted. And, unless in s top-down
government system (ala China, or Singapore) this kind of change in
infrastructural usage change, takes multiple decades to adjust to.

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fergie
You could make the case (not made in the article) that social policy is
increasingly being shaped to favour _ownership_ over _contribution_. Interest
rates are kept low, residential investment property is taxed favourably,
agricultural land is heavily subsidised, planning/zoning is unreasonably
tough, and so on.

The market doesn't can't correct because the working classes are losing their
ability to afford property whilst ever-richer property owners are heavily
incentivised to continually expand their portfolios.

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mc32
I suppose, but also we have a lot more international wealth buying up real
estate which often times goes under used.

With globalized, unrestricted open markets we get the new international
wealthy buying real estate across borders which competes against local buyers.

So, in SF and Vancouver you're not only competing against transplants from the
Midwest but with wealthy investors from China, India, and other countries
where people for different reasons want to get their money out of their
countries.

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closeparen
Isn’t real estate being abused as a store of value because the better-suited
stores of value (securities, etc) are more restricted?

