I'm reminded of how few heads of EU states are parents
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/do-childless-leaders-mean-...
Basically, two incomes are useful, so both people in a relationship pursue careers. Now they have more money to compete on the housing market. This seems like a good move, so others follow suit. At first this is largely a win for people who pursue this route. But, as more people do this, it becomes necessary in order to compete for real estate in good neighborhoods.
Now there is an advantage to be had by putting off having a family even longer, or having even less children. So people do this. But as more and more people follow suit, the advantage evaporates. And so on and so forth until you have demographic implosion.
For the life of me, I can’t see a way out of this in the short term. Maybe a wholesale transition to remote work?
If the graphs were plotted with increase in population against the change in fertility then those places would be outliers.
Texas zoning and tax on houses work.
The funny thing about housing prices is that a state in the US has handled house prices so well with an economy that is doing well but Texas is often ignored in these discussions.
Also, negative externalities of Texas' built environment (lung disease, cancer, potentially more autism near motorways(still early stages of research) dead people on roads, inability to travel or perform basic tasks for those who can't or prefer not to drive, being impoverished by your automobile, and the potential collapse of global civilization due to climate change) are not priced in, so often the neighbors or the rest of the world are paying for those houses.
Texas zoning also paved over all the marsh land that would've kept the city from flooding.
I've theory-crafted other potential policies like "require any increase in office build density to be matched by increased residential density". That seems more potentially game-able than simply increasing density of properties the market had determined are valuable.
If there are less people, then pressure for good neighborhoods goes down, and we'll reach an equilibrium. I think it only seems like a ratchet because we're in the middle of a downturn after a 5000 year run of exponential growth.
Doesn't mean it doesn't suck to live in this time in terms of housing -- but in other terms, life is pretty outstanding. The two income thing is mostly new, but then compare the amount of time that medieval women spent on childcare and providing clothing. It's so much better now that they're not expected to spend every spare moment at the spinning wheel.
Given the vast differences in climate impact between different populations and consumption habits, this doesn't seem to be the case.
Perhaps a better way of phrasing it would be "We're above the carrying capacity of Earth for Rich Americans".
As well, what makes you think we will reach an equilibrium for good neighborhoods? Some housing will be abandoned, causing blight; blight causes good neighborhoods to become less desirable, and they spiral down from there.
Detroit is a great example of what happens when neighborhoods lose people.
I was mainly talking about the SF case, where lower global population should make it more affordable rather than causing things to be abandoned. This is what is playing out in Tokyo, which is still growing while the countryside is abandoned. As for the small towns, it sucks, but dying small towns has been a thing for quite a while now as agriculture has become more mechanized. Detroit's kind of the odd man out being a depopulating metropolis, so I'd actually argue that it's a terrible example, at least for the next 100 years.
The impact of global population on SF is and will be negligible.
[0] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/28/book-review-the-two-inc...
If families have at most 1 earner, then the worse case scenario is to have 0 earners, being one down. If most families have 2 though, when you fall to 0, you're much, much worse off compared to the norm.
People with kids vs people without. People with college degrees in high demand profession vs people without. Basically, every time we push people in drove toward a more efficient "lifestyle", the worse off people who don't are.
In case of food, it comes to your nearest super market. So its not just overproduction of food, its also supply chain optimization.
Obligatory link going deep into this: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/.
There are 500$/mo rents everywhere and food costs are the lowest in history.
If you dont care to keep up with the Joneses and have minimum wage people cook you food, you can easily live off 1 low-income salary.
The cheapest I see is $625, which is 25% more than $500/month.