

Urban Plight: Vanishing Upward Mobility - wallflower
http://american.com/archive/2010/august/urban-plight-vanishing-upward-mobility

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auxbuss
I was talking to my goddaughter at her 21st birthday family gather in South
West London a couple of weeks back. She, and her boyfriend, have already
resigned themselves to never being able to buy their own home -- barring a
lottery win, or some such, or via inheriting at some point.

I'd already bought my first house at 21, in that same area, and I'd say my
income, adjusted, was comparable to one of theirs.

To be this young, and left with little hope, is a brutal wake-up call. Oh, it
could be worse, but it could be, much more easily, so much better.

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arethuza
So why don't they move to some part of the UK that has cheaper housing if they
really want to own a house?

Place like Edinburgh, where I am, don't exactly seem to be suffering that
badly in the economic downturn and there _is_ affordable property here - might
not be that fancy, or in a great neighborhood but you have to start somewhere.

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pchristensen
Housing supply is constrained everywhere that has planning and zoning. There
are slums everywhere that doesn't. No matter where you draw the line for
"acceptable" housing, some people cant afford it.

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hga
Huston is a counterexample at least to some extent (there are some
regulations): <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston,_Texas#Cityscape>

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pchristensen
Cities like Houston, Dallas, and Indianapolis have low prices because there
are no geographic constraints, so building restrictions can't screw it up too
much. Houston's minimum street widths and parking requirements serve restrict
building almost as much as zoning.

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hga
Yeah, I've wondered about that while living in the Boston area for a dozen
years. It would also seem to apply strongly to the SF Bay area and a bit less
so to NYC.

But what about, say, the D.C. area? Chesapeake Bay isn't so big, then again
there are limited number of bridges in certain critical areas (e.g. north of
Chain Bridge).

What about other cities less constrained by large lakes, bays or the sea?
Rivers are frequently going to be an issue since in olden times they were a
major asset for a city.

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pchristensen
DC: has strong growth controls in MD+VA, it's big enough that traffic becomes
a meaningful constraint (Atlanta has this problem now as well), and it has one
of the strongest most recession-proof economics in the country, so prices are
still high.

I'm having trouble finding the list, but I can't think of a single expensive
metro area (in the US) that isn't constrained by water, mountains, growth
control laws, or all of the above. Rivers are generally not a problem because
federal road funding and near-universal car ownership make it easy to
distribute growth on both sides of a river. It is a problem when that river is
a state boundary as well (which is often).

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goalieca
Well, I'm living in vancouver and I noticed we were mentioned in the article.
I'm currently renting at around 900$/month. I was looking around town at
housing and even a small place costs around 2,2M. I think the average price in
the entire city is around 730K$. Considering the median income for family is
around 66k$, that doesn't give much hope.

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DanielBMarkham
At the extremes, it's beginning to sound like cities (or parts of them) are
becoming centers for the wealthy and connected, the "creative class", while
the poorer neighborhoods and burbs are used to house workers to service them.
Those who can live in the city basically pay some form of subsidized rent to
the rich.

Perhaps serfdom isn't so far gone after all. We've just renamed it.

(overly dramatic, yes, but I was struck at how much it sounds like things are
drifting backwards in more ways than just income)

