I am curious, would you be supportive of a federal law that takes over zoning if housing prices are more than x above the median income in that area?
IE, take control away from NIMBAs?
IE, take control away from NIMBAs?
Besides, the federal government is the least representative of people in larger cities. Your vote counts s lot more in rural America and in smaller states partially because of the electoral college and partially because Rhode Island has the same number of Senators as California.
An abundance of land suited to agriculture or resource extraction is irrelevant in a dispute about access to the 21st century economy, which is essentially urban.
But with the imbalance of power where rural America’s vote is worth more per capita than big cities/big states, do you really want to give that power to the federal government?
There is nothing stopping tech companies from “rural sourcing” - opening smaller satellite offices in less populous areas. A benefit of that would be that the tech industry wouldn’t be so myopic.
Do you know how often people on HN wonder how could any software developer live off of only $120K-$150K?
And they aren't.
I mean, New York City exists, for instance.
I live in Metro Atlanta, we are still building and growing like crazy, and there is no shortage of tech jobs that pay well considering the cost of living. There are plenty of other relatively affordable cities. If LA doesn’t want to grow. So be it.
That was a for instance. There are a number of other large and economically significant cities in the US that aren't on the West Coast, many of which also have relatively high existing (absolute, not just relative to local CoL) tech salaries. Washington, D.C., metro is just behind New York, for another example, but the list is long.
After the most expensive US cities, we find the cost-benefit for new engineering sites points invariably to other countries.
The federal government gave us the interstate highway system and FHA subsidies that enabled sprawl, it owes it to us all to clean up the abomination of suburbia. The most important thing would be a similar scale investment in urban rail, but it should probably be contingent on upzoning around stations, yes.
Another fun fact: there are about 10 cities in the US with a higher population than Rhode Island, and San Jose, CA has a similar population to Rhode Island with one-eighth the land.