> The incumbent interests in cities like New York and San Francisco are so entrenched that the battle for housing deregulation is hopeless when fought with politics.
This is an extremely bold statement. So far it has been difficult to make change, but consensus that there is a serious problem is relatively new and there have been some improvements.
Recently in San Francisco a developer proposed a smaller building than possible in order to appease neighborhood concerns. When neighbors came out in opposition the developer changed to plans for a maximally large building and by new rules had no need of neighborhood approval. Even more dramatic changes to zoning have been proposed and come close to passing. Berkeley is now allowing four units where single family homes now stand. So there is significant progress and a change in the political balance.
> If these regulations are so costly, why were they passed in the first place? The answer lies not in the aggregate cost-benefit calculation of land use regulations, but rather in the analysis of who pays the costs and who garners the benefits.
This is absolutely wrong and critical to understanding the situation. Building codes and ordinances and environmental hearings were all put in place with the intention of functioning as reasonable restrictions to preserve quality of life. The idea was this would be similar to rules about clean air and water. The problems we see now developed slowly over time and have many contributing factors including social and organizational inertia and of course classism and racism and such like. What we need to do is understand how to preserve some basic level of quality of life without unreasonably impacting ability to build, especially in areas that are already dense or have unusual demand.
We are increasingly in a time where young people who are underserved by housing markets are getting political influence while older property owning boomers are seeing their influence steadily reduced.
> There are three stages to the Startup City.
There are no such stages or Startup Cities. Cities are social and commercial constructions which are not wild bets on fast growth that can readily fail and be replaced. Cities have an absolute obligation to move forward carefully while they balance land use concerns, forms of taxation, and costs of labor and so on.
> poorly managed cities like San Francisco or Jakarta ...
> Próspera, a private city in Honduras ...
Now that is all just sloppy. It takes only a small effort to confirm that these cities are in very different locations and contexts and have different strengths, weaknesses, resources, priorities, and so on.
There are certainly cities that get built around a single paradigm and when that paradigm shifts, the city falters. Detroit is an example of this. One of the difficulties nowadays is that technology evolves much faster than the foundation that supports the growth of that technology(infrastructure, education, government, policy) and this is ultimately where tech's philosophy of disruption runs against the slow moving philosophy of government.
This is an extremely bold statement. So far it has been difficult to make change, but consensus that there is a serious problem is relatively new and there have been some improvements.
Recently in San Francisco a developer proposed a smaller building than possible in order to appease neighborhood concerns. When neighbors came out in opposition the developer changed to plans for a maximally large building and by new rules had no need of neighborhood approval. Even more dramatic changes to zoning have been proposed and come close to passing. Berkeley is now allowing four units where single family homes now stand. So there is significant progress and a change in the political balance.
> If these regulations are so costly, why were they passed in the first place? The answer lies not in the aggregate cost-benefit calculation of land use regulations, but rather in the analysis of who pays the costs and who garners the benefits.
This is absolutely wrong and critical to understanding the situation. Building codes and ordinances and environmental hearings were all put in place with the intention of functioning as reasonable restrictions to preserve quality of life. The idea was this would be similar to rules about clean air and water. The problems we see now developed slowly over time and have many contributing factors including social and organizational inertia and of course classism and racism and such like. What we need to do is understand how to preserve some basic level of quality of life without unreasonably impacting ability to build, especially in areas that are already dense or have unusual demand.
We are increasingly in a time where young people who are underserved by housing markets are getting political influence while older property owning boomers are seeing their influence steadily reduced.
> There are three stages to the Startup City.
There are no such stages or Startup Cities. Cities are social and commercial constructions which are not wild bets on fast growth that can readily fail and be replaced. Cities have an absolute obligation to move forward carefully while they balance land use concerns, forms of taxation, and costs of labor and so on.
> poorly managed cities like San Francisco or Jakarta ... > Próspera, a private city in Honduras ...
Now that is all just sloppy. It takes only a small effort to confirm that these cities are in very different locations and contexts and have different strengths, weaknesses, resources, priorities, and so on.