Airbnb has absolutely wrecked most of the holiday spots in the UK. Locals can't afford to rent, so it's killing local shops - only the tourist traps remain.
A multi-billion dollar corporation that actively strategizes to benefit from no regulation or bad regulation. Likely they also lobby for favorable regulation that will actively harm locals.
A local government not properly regulating.
I'd compare it to PG&E or Comcast in the United States.
Markets solve these problems and that remains true even when you disagree with the results. If people don't want to visit places with tall buildings and sprawl, then it won't get built and where it does it will fail.
What actually bothers you is that this is what people want and it will get built and it will be patronized.
> What actually bothers you is that this is what people want and it will get built and it will be patronized.
Yes. It does bother me that the utility function of "the market" does not align with what is good for me, and that therefore it frequently produces results that are worse for me.
In fact this applies not just to urban development, but also to many other things.
Multi-story luxury condos are a thing. Not a lot of land used, and it's something that many people want to live in. Why are they not being built in these places?
Even high-end condos cost less than a low-end house to build, since the land costs are amortized among many units.
Your example has one thing that those condos don't have: glorious socialist realism waste of space - and I mean it in a good way.
When they were young, my grandparents moved into a whole district built from scratch for the purpose of housing workers from a nearby steelmill.
Communism notwithstanding, the district is amazingly well planned and - what's dearly missing in modern, hyper-optimized construction - sufficiently spread apart.
> Your example has one thing that those condos don't have: glorious socialist realism waste of space - and I mean it in a good way.
Exactly! If you rise up enough, it becomes possible to have green zones around these big buildings and make living actually enjoyable.
On the other end of the spectrum is Hong Kong and most of Manhattan - I don't look forward to living there, even if some condos are really nice inside.
One of the sisters is a great example for sure, and they were in my mind as I read your previous comment but I cant think of any others that come even close. Would love to see other examples.
If your urban planning is going to prioritize giving tourists scenic views rather than building affordable homes for the people that live and work in the city, then you shouldn't be surprised if the city turns into an giant museum/resort where only the wealthy can afford a decent QoL (because they're the only ones who can financially compete with the tourists).
Here's the thing: with the proliferation of AirBnB and real-estate-as-an-investment that's already the case regardless of density.
In my corner of the world people move out of large cities not because they enjoy driving so much, but because they don't have the credit score for anything within city limits
Space and access to sunlight are also components of quality of life and you have neither in very dense housing.
The owners of said AirBnBs, who would be eligible to vote for the local councilors (who must approve new developments), have an incentive to ensure that that would not be the case.
The UK housing market is at least as f'ed up as the US market, in terms of actual construction of housing (no matter how badly needed) being mostly forbidden.
As far as I understand it, the UK housing market suffers from an additional problem that is rare to non-existent in the US: builders who get planning permission for new housing but then sit on the land because they know with almost 100% certainty that built or not, it will be worth more in the future.
There are places in the USA where a builder could take this bet, but it would be much, much riskier.
In the 80s and early 90s we would alienate book our holiday cottage in Cornwall though a catalog. I’m not entirely sure how it worked, I guess my parents phoned up the company and asked for a given cottage for a given week.
I'm curious about hotel capacity in Airbnb locations. If 1,000 people want to visit a city, they need a place to live. If Airbnb didn't exist, would hotels just be fully booked?
Tourists with no money are worthless for this town.
They just block up the pavement lining up photos of landmarks (and anything else) with their mobile phones, that they could certainly download from Insta and get a better photo. Every square foot of this town has already been snapped a million times.
The implication of your comment is that poor people should just stay at home and look at pictures on the internet instead of occasionally traveling and experiencing things for themselves.
If this is your perspective, you’re either incredibly privileged, jaded, or both. I don’t think that poor people are necessarily owed cheap accommodation or transportation in any sense, but I also don’t think that active steps should be taken to remove more affordable options simply because they can’t afford to patronize high-end restaurants and stores or do the more expensive tourist activities.
> If this is your perspective, you’re either incredibly privileged, jaded, or both.
My perspective on poor people and travel is that international air-travel is hopelessly underpriced; it isn't reasonable for all 6 billion people in the world to travel for holidays. I don't really care who travels; tourists don't better my bread, whether they're rich or poor. But the argument that tourists are good for the local enconomy depends on them being willing to spend money. Huge columns of overseas students don't spend much money.
My town is pretty, and world-famous. It is quite capable of sustaining itself without tourists; it has two universities, and several large hospitals. Housing is in short supply, and expensive. It's not a great shopping destination; tourists who want to shop shop elsewhere.
> but I also don’t think that active steps should be taken to remove more affordable options
Every housing unit devoted to tourists is a housing unit that isn't available for the local people. The Council is right to try to restrict residential housing to residential use.
