> Japan has a relatively simple and unambiguous zoning code, one which the national government has repeatedly adjusted in order to allow for more housing growth in Tokyo. That has been done in the face of opposition at neighbourhood and even city level, opposition that in countries which have devolved land use decisions to a local level would be enough to stop densification or at least divert it to poorer areas.
AFAIK EU zonings are not significantly (if at all) more complex than Japanese zoning, the US are the stand-out there with a constellation of byzantine exclusive zonings. I do know for certain that both french and german zoning are national/federal policy and (quite necessarily) mixed-use.
So it would probably be a good thing to unfuck US zoning (good luck with that though), but it can not be the "true essence" of the article.
My reading is not that the meat is "simple zoning" but:
1. Japanese people don't have "mandatory fantasies" of single-occupancy dwellings, and people are fine with living in good multi-family dwellings (apartments), note that the average Tokyoite dwelling is 64 sq m (690 sq ft)
2. Japanese people don't value buildings[0], only land
3. Which means tearing down buildings and replacing them is normal and expected
4. Which (combined with residential zoning concepts) means it's easy and common to redevelop low-density dwellings (single-occupancy and low-density 1~2 storeys apartment buildings) into higher-density ones, the graphs in the middle of the article could hardly be clearer there with single-occupancy dwellings having remained roughly flat but 3~5 and 6+ storey buildings having skyrocketed (alongside the number of homes having increased much faster than residential land acreage)
Simplifying zoning codes is not going to make Europe — let alone the US — adopt these mentalities.
[0] personal ones, family/clan homes & temples are a different case
We’re working on it in California this year, but the bill is about to go through some very difficult committees. Details here: https://yimbyaction.org/supportsb827/
Calling your state senator to leave a message of support takes just 30 seconds. Emailing them takes just one paragraph. In both cases, they don’t usually get much constituent feedback, so you really can make a difference.
I think it's worth occasionally thinking of the "economy" in simple terms, especially for the wider middle class. There are relatively few broad categories that make up most of our economic lives.
For most people the "economy" mostly consists of (0) their job/income (1) food/consumable (2) stuff/durables (3) transport (4) vital services: health, education, etc. (5) housing.
1 & 2 are well served by free markets, and industrial capitalism^. We're "rich" in these. 3 & 4 are not, and are generally managed by governments. The long term trend is decent-ish though. Medicine, education and such have grown over the decades and people get more of this.
Housing is in many places (mostly successful cities) the economic disaster. Fully exposed to financialization, business cycles, inflation prone. Rather than signalling to supply, prices adjust to whatever the median person can afford to pay. Meanwhile, the whole market acts a mechanism transferring wealth up the generations & economic classes.
Especially in europe, the whole thing is stagnant too. Modern planning doesn't seem much better than old planning. Modern building is not much better/cheaper than old building. It seems that we have less ability to deliver on larger & more ambitious projects than they did 100 years ago.
Interestingly, this generational stagnation seems to hold for both the liberal and ex-communist parts of europe. No one wants to go back to soviet supermarkets, cars or electronics. Soviet housing system...? opinions vary.
Housing is the biggest problem in our economic lives.
The planning commission in my small town recently blocked a $10 million apartment building that would have mostly been cheaper housing.
Some directly stated that they didn't want the poor people living in the area, which is stupid because they already live there (demographically it's already the poorest zone in the county). A few others said they didn't want to disturb the historical character of the shabby, decades old commercial building that is currently on the site.
The real reason is that they don't consider reducing housing prices a good outcome. Which is just bonkers. Variations of that problem will repeat all over the place. Entrenched interests are often at odds with the policies that would serve the larger group of people (and even be economically beneficial...).
>Housing is in many places (mostly successful cities) the economic disaster. Fully exposed to financialization, business cycles, inflation prone. Rather than signalling to supply, prices adjust to whatever the median person can afford to pay
Why should housing not be to governed by market forces? Housing shortages are due to regulations, from limiting new development outright, to limiting high density buildings, to heavy rent control (disincentivizing investment and maintenance), to regulations that just make housing investment expensive. Reasonable regulations should be the guideline, but they aren't. The most aggregious local example is San Francisco.
Soviet housing never worked. More to the point the wait lists for apartments was measured in years (ripe for corruption). The buildings were shoddy and depressing (hope you like grey). Urban planning was haphazard and may or not may have corresponded to where people actually wanted to live.
Its important to think about what the problem really is. Right now many people are moving to the big cities, and the big cities have expensive housing. To me the real problem is why people want to live in a handful of big cities instead of cheaper regions. If its true that there is no choice but to live in big cities then the current high prices really aren't a problem, its just that is where the money is. Manhattan is a great example, lots of high density development and it still isn't cheap.
Every market has its own peculiarities, and housing much like anything benefits enormously from behaving like a free one.
The two single most important factors that make housing not behave efficiently as a market are zoning and taxation.
Zoning because it puts limits on what can be built, which means the process to expand is now bureaucratic. The original article talks about how in tokyo zoning hasnt been a problem for the market as the championing difference.
Taxation is the second one. No matter how much you build, the people and the space require considerable resources to manage: sewage, garbage, public transportation, local courts ,etc. If you tax income, the more people you cram, and the more the expenditure of the government is, the more oppressive becomes rent. That is because as a dweller, you pay taxes that go to services that increase your rent. This great injustice is described in the book "Poverty and Progress" by henry george in the 1900's in california, where the concept of Land Value Tax was created and then validated by economists on the left (Krugman) and the right (Milton Friedman).
You would not see any problems with local neighbors in San Francisco if instead of state income taxes and sales taxes they moved that to land value taxes, and suddenly the guy with the picturesque 1920 house for himself will find that his taxes look like a monthly rent.
The biggest problems of housing, much like the biggest problems on almost any market, come from the government, not for the peculiarities of the market itself.
From a German perspective, I can say that costs of building a house are rising mainly due to new legislation around CO2 reduction and fire safety. In a time when producing most goods is getting cheaper through technology, cost of house conatruction is rising.
There also doesn't seem to be much innivation in the building industry.
Soviet housing worked by building a huge number of small and medium cities while trying to limit number of people moving into capital and other desirable cities.
Guess what? After collapse of communism, housing in small cities depreciate rapidly, while housing in capitals skyrocket. There's much many more small cities than there's economic demand for, hence not enough jobs in those.
EDIT: Even when new factories are built by capital, they are usually not in small cities in the middle of nowhere with limited worker pool, but on outskirts of medium-to-large cities in comfortable distance of capital/large city (think Tesla Factory). This makes small cities unfit for anything other than eco-tourism.
Of course it applies more to large countries, since small ones (like Montenegro) just never had the quantities of population to form too many extra cities.
Opinions vary for those who were exposed to privileged side only. In reality, most people had to wait decades for an apartment. There was an easy way to get an apartment though - get sent to bumfuck nowhere for infrastructure project (military base or factory, nuclear plant etc..). Or climb up the party ladder or get a job at well-connected company than get arrange you an apartment.
On top of that, many people were stuck in Kolchoz without any prospect of moving to a city. Thus were was no pressure to the system. If a city can't take in people - they're not sent in..
There can never be enough jobs for everybody with 'free markets'. Structurally there can only ever be 95 jobs for every 100 people. Inflation is controlled by an unemployment buffer - because matching people to jobs doesn't clear a market in a world with full time jobs.
The reason housing is such an issue in the richest parts of the world is because zoning policy is set at the local level. The interests of prospective buyers and market incumbents are at polar opposites.
Byers want cheap housing, but existing owners want their property value to rise. Since those living in the area get to vote the natural outcome is stagnation.
Japan is somewhat getting around this for two reasons. National zoning laws as noted in that article, and expanded upon by e.g. [1], and a zoning law that doesn't lock areas into certain developments, which avoids American-style developments where certain parts of town are only residential, or only office space etc.
> The reason housing is such an issue in the richest parts of the world is because zoning policy is set at the local level.
Don't assume US insanity has sway everywhere else. Continental EU zoning models are similar to Japan's, Germany and France zoning are national/federal policies and non-exclusive zoning.
Yes, but this is also the only way to preserve any kind of historic character. This decision was made for Tokyo when it was burnt down, but in lots of places preserving the status quo appearance is locally popular.
> For obvious reasons there aren’t many dwellings in Tokyo dating from earlier than 1950
For those unfamiliar with this bit of history, a significant quantity of Tokyo housing stock was burnt by a US Air Force incendiary bombing operation on March 10th, 1945. It was the single most destructive air attack of WWII, though it is likely that more individuals died in the Atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
>>> Bat bombs were an experimental World War II weapon developed by the United States. The bomb consisted of a bomb-shaped casing with over a thousand compartments, each containing a hibernating Mexican free-tailed bat with a small, timed incendiary bomb attached. Dropped from a bomber at dawn, the casings would deploy a parachute in mid-flight and open to release the bats, which would then roost in eaves and attics in a 20–40 mile radius. The incendiaries would start fires in inaccessible places in the largely wood and paper constructions of the Japanese cities that were the weapon's intended target.
> It was the single most destructive air attack of WWII, though it is likely that more individuals died in the Atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
If you take it as a single event, yes, but by far the cumulative effects of fire-bombing Japanese cities killed way more civilians that Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined.
Interesting note about floor space, NYC has a 400ft minimum which has been had demo projects under that limit, there are some current buildings going to 490 on average so its not like Westerners cannot live in smaller spaces, many do and for similar reasons as Tokyo, the rise in single living.
It was only 20 years ago that Tokyo was famous for having the most expensive, unaffordable housing in the world. Since then it has had a 20 year economic depression. Maybe Tokyo's population has risen (I'm a bit surprised at that) but it also has near-zero foreign immigration. I'm a bit surprised those things aren't mentioned in the article, but it really doesn't prove Tokyo is a great way to run things.
Also, Tokyo sprawls. The city isn’t one giant cluster of skyscrapers called Shinjuku, sorry. Most of the people on this thread would be shocked to see pictures of actual Tokyo housing, which mostly consists of low-rise, detached buildings.
Japan is magic, you see. They must be doing something different there. It can’t possibly be something boring like “the city is built in an enormous, flat river delta.”
[+] [-] mabbo|8 years ago|reply
> Japan has a relatively simple and unambiguous zoning code, one which the national government has repeatedly adjusted in order to allow for more housing growth in Tokyo. That has been done in the face of opposition at neighbourhood and even city level, opposition that in countries which have devolved land use decisions to a local level would be enough to stop densification or at least divert it to poorer areas.
We need more of this in the western world.
[+] [-] masklinn|8 years ago|reply
AFAIK EU zonings are not significantly (if at all) more complex than Japanese zoning, the US are the stand-out there with a constellation of byzantine exclusive zonings. I do know for certain that both french and german zoning are national/federal policy and (quite necessarily) mixed-use.
So it would probably be a good thing to unfuck US zoning (good luck with that though), but it can not be the "true essence" of the article.
My reading is not that the meat is "simple zoning" but:
1. Japanese people don't have "mandatory fantasies" of single-occupancy dwellings, and people are fine with living in good multi-family dwellings (apartments), note that the average Tokyoite dwelling is 64 sq m (690 sq ft)
2. Japanese people don't value buildings[0], only land
3. Which means tearing down buildings and replacing them is normal and expected
4. Which (combined with residential zoning concepts) means it's easy and common to redevelop low-density dwellings (single-occupancy and low-density 1~2 storeys apartment buildings) into higher-density ones, the graphs in the middle of the article could hardly be clearer there with single-occupancy dwellings having remained roughly flat but 3~5 and 6+ storey buildings having skyrocketed (alongside the number of homes having increased much faster than residential land acreage)
Simplifying zoning codes is not going to make Europe — let alone the US — adopt these mentalities.
[0] personal ones, family/clan homes & temples are a different case
[+] [-] patio11|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raldi|8 years ago|reply
Calling your state senator to leave a message of support takes just 30 seconds. Emailing them takes just one paragraph. In both cases, they don’t usually get much constituent feedback, so you really can make a difference.
The link above makes it easy.
[+] [-] triangleman|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dalbasal|8 years ago|reply
For most people the "economy" mostly consists of (0) their job/income (1) food/consumable (2) stuff/durables (3) transport (4) vital services: health, education, etc. (5) housing.
1 & 2 are well served by free markets, and industrial capitalism^. We're "rich" in these. 3 & 4 are not, and are generally managed by governments. The long term trend is decent-ish though. Medicine, education and such have grown over the decades and people get more of this.
Housing is in many places (mostly successful cities) the economic disaster. Fully exposed to financialization, business cycles, inflation prone. Rather than signalling to supply, prices adjust to whatever the median person can afford to pay. Meanwhile, the whole market acts a mechanism transferring wealth up the generations & economic classes.
Especially in europe, the whole thing is stagnant too. Modern planning doesn't seem much better than old planning. Modern building is not much better/cheaper than old building. It seems that we have less ability to deliver on larger & more ambitious projects than they did 100 years ago.
Interestingly, this generational stagnation seems to hold for both the liberal and ex-communist parts of europe. No one wants to go back to soviet supermarkets, cars or electronics. Soviet housing system...? opinions vary.
Housing is the biggest problem in our economic lives.
^excepting mattresses :)
[+] [-] maxerickson|8 years ago|reply
Some directly stated that they didn't want the poor people living in the area, which is stupid because they already live there (demographically it's already the poorest zone in the county). A few others said they didn't want to disturb the historical character of the shabby, decades old commercial building that is currently on the site.
The real reason is that they don't consider reducing housing prices a good outcome. Which is just bonkers. Variations of that problem will repeat all over the place. Entrenched interests are often at odds with the policies that would serve the larger group of people (and even be economically beneficial...).
[+] [-] macspoofing|8 years ago|reply
Why should housing not be to governed by market forces? Housing shortages are due to regulations, from limiting new development outright, to limiting high density buildings, to heavy rent control (disincentivizing investment and maintenance), to regulations that just make housing investment expensive. Reasonable regulations should be the guideline, but they aren't. The most aggregious local example is San Francisco.
Soviet housing never worked. More to the point the wait lists for apartments was measured in years (ripe for corruption). The buildings were shoddy and depressing (hope you like grey). Urban planning was haphazard and may or not may have corresponded to where people actually wanted to live.
[+] [-] rb808|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] conanbatt|8 years ago|reply
The two single most important factors that make housing not behave efficiently as a market are zoning and taxation.
Zoning because it puts limits on what can be built, which means the process to expand is now bureaucratic. The original article talks about how in tokyo zoning hasnt been a problem for the market as the championing difference.
Taxation is the second one. No matter how much you build, the people and the space require considerable resources to manage: sewage, garbage, public transportation, local courts ,etc. If you tax income, the more people you cram, and the more the expenditure of the government is, the more oppressive becomes rent. That is because as a dweller, you pay taxes that go to services that increase your rent. This great injustice is described in the book "Poverty and Progress" by henry george in the 1900's in california, where the concept of Land Value Tax was created and then validated by economists on the left (Krugman) and the right (Milton Friedman).
You would not see any problems with local neighbors in San Francisco if instead of state income taxes and sales taxes they moved that to land value taxes, and suddenly the guy with the picturesque 1920 house for himself will find that his taxes look like a monthly rent.
The biggest problems of housing, much like the biggest problems on almost any market, come from the government, not for the peculiarities of the market itself.
[+] [-] daanlo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thriftwy|8 years ago|reply
Guess what? After collapse of communism, housing in small cities depreciate rapidly, while housing in capitals skyrocket. There's much many more small cities than there's economic demand for, hence not enough jobs in those.
EDIT: Even when new factories are built by capital, they are usually not in small cities in the middle of nowhere with limited worker pool, but on outskirts of medium-to-large cities in comfortable distance of capital/large city (think Tesla Factory). This makes small cities unfit for anything other than eco-tourism.
Of course it applies more to large countries, since small ones (like Montenegro) just never had the quantities of population to form too many extra cities.
[+] [-] mantas|8 years ago|reply
Opinions vary for those who were exposed to privileged side only. In reality, most people had to wait decades for an apartment. There was an easy way to get an apartment though - get sent to bumfuck nowhere for infrastructure project (military base or factory, nuclear plant etc..). Or climb up the party ladder or get a job at well-connected company than get arrange you an apartment.
On top of that, many people were stuck in Kolchoz without any prospect of moving to a city. Thus were was no pressure to the system. If a city can't take in people - they're not sent in..
[+] [-] petra|8 years ago|reply
The how is somewhat complex , google 'Evans hartwich better homes greener cities' pg 13. On mobile so it's complicated to link to a PDF search result.
[+] [-] neilwilson|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avar|8 years ago|reply
Byers want cheap housing, but existing owners want their property value to rise. Since those living in the area get to vote the natural outcome is stagnation.
Japan is somewhat getting around this for two reasons. National zoning laws as noted in that article, and expanded upon by e.g. [1], and a zoning law that doesn't lock areas into certain developments, which avoids American-style developments where certain parts of town are only residential, or only office space etc.
1. http://urbankchoze.blogspot.nl/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
[+] [-] masklinn|8 years ago|reply
Don't assume US insanity has sway everywhere else. Continental EU zoning models are similar to Japan's, Germany and France zoning are national/federal policies and non-exclusive zoning.
[+] [-] pjc50|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afarrell|8 years ago|reply
For those unfamiliar with this bit of history, a significant quantity of Tokyo housing stock was burnt by a US Air Force incendiary bombing operation on March 10th, 1945. It was the single most destructive air attack of WWII, though it is likely that more individuals died in the Atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
[+] [-] aidos|8 years ago|reply
Probably a good time for this reminder: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb
>>> Bat bombs were an experimental World War II weapon developed by the United States. The bomb consisted of a bomb-shaped casing with over a thousand compartments, each containing a hibernating Mexican free-tailed bat with a small, timed incendiary bomb attached. Dropped from a bomber at dawn, the casings would deploy a parachute in mid-flight and open to release the bats, which would then roost in eaves and attics in a 20–40 mile radius. The incendiaries would start fires in inaccessible places in the largely wood and paper constructions of the Japanese cities that were the weapon's intended target.
[+] [-] ekianjo|8 years ago|reply
If you take it as a single event, yes, but by far the cumulative effects of fire-bombing Japanese cities killed way more civilians that Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined.
[+] [-] Shivetya|8 years ago|reply
this 2016 article covers the NYC scene pretty well https://ny.curbed.com/2016/9/19/12970542/micro-housing-nyc-f...
[+] [-] rocqua|8 years ago|reply
I happen to write this from a 24 square meter (~260 square foot) apartment, I am very happy with.
[+] [-] qwerty456127|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rb808|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] irq11|8 years ago|reply
Japan is magic, you see. They must be doing something different there. It can’t possibly be something boring like “the city is built in an enormous, flat river delta.”
[+] [-] golemiprague|8 years ago|reply
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