Would recommend this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Buildings_Learn
One reason many couples move out of London when they have children is that it is impossible for most to afford such a house in London.
This also makes housing quite low density, which leads to longer commute and more expensive public transport.
Some early 20th century (and some earlier) housing in my UK city is 3 or 4 storeys. Many of the newer buildings are 4 storey, a few tower blocks (60s/70s).
But if you read through The London Plan [1] policy 7.6 says: "Buildings and structures should [...] not cause unacceptable harm to the amenity of surrounding land and buildings, particularly residential buildings, in relation to privacy, overshadowing, wind and microclimate. This is particularly important for tall buildings"
So if you're filling in a gap in a Victorian terrace, planning officers will be checking whether you're going to be able to see into your neighbours' gardens more than existing buildings can, or cast shadows onto other homes.
Meanwhile, policy 7.7 calls for "tall and large" buildings to "generally be limited to sites in the Central Activity Zone, opportunity areas, areas of intensification or town centres that have good access to public transport" and to "only be considered in areas whose character would not be affected adversely by the scale, mass or bulk of a tall or large building"
And as some sources describe a tall building as "1½ times or more the height of their context" [2] tall building rules are easily activated in a two-storey area.
Of course, it's not completely restrictive - if an existing Victorian terrace has two-storey buildings with lofts, I've seen people get permission for a building with a basement, three above-ground stories and a flat roof - and if it's a house rather than a block of flats, that's a lot of stairs already.
[1] https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/the_london_pla... [2] https://planningconsult.rbkc.gov.uk/gf2.ti/f/276546/18804485...
This is explicitly not socialism.
I think you're thinking of the other UK, the imaginary one that right-wing commentators make out to be a hellish nightmare of bad teeth inflicted upon the populace by fiendishly free health care. Instead of the real UK, with it's right-wing, capitalist, free-market friendly, populist government.
Building regulations aren't in any way socialist, they are pretty much global and many countries, including the "freedom" loving USA, have extensive government-mandated building codes which include height restrictions or mechanisms to limit height.
The UK however has a pretty interventionist state. (But yes, they are less interventionist than eg the French. Low bar, though.) And eg re-nationalising the railways is perennial popular with the population. Luckily, no government has been crazy enough to do it, nor has it even featured much in election campaigns.
With your corrections, it does move Britain a bit more into the interventionist state direction.
Yes because building density regulations are one of the hallmarks of socialism.
Wat?
People are understandably frightened of situations like this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UKPersonalFinance/comments/eo9qim/l...
I guess you've never heard of bunk beds?
"We" clearly do.
[I'm also in UK, fwiw]
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/in-the-home/s...
The article itself mentions that mandates themselves made the low density configuration persist.
There needs to be a change of perception, expectations, and better flats.
Developers would far rather build a couple of "Exclusive Modern Mansions" rather than two blocks of four three bedroom flats. They make more money, but create far less value.
If the market structure doesn't allow reaping profit proportional to the value you create, the less profitable thing doesn't get done, even if it creates more value for society. It's a market failure.
The implications of that for progressive personal income taxation are left as an exercise for the reader. They're usually not explored for ideological reasons.
I don't think there are any. An individual doesn't get to choose between a high tax job and a low tax job. The only way to get more money in your pockets is to get paid more money, regardless of whether you're taxed at 15% or 50%.
Sure, I agree with you on that. You have to consider the effects on an additional unit of effort put in at that job. Progressive taxation sets up steeply diminishing returns on that marginal effort. And incentives to spend that effort on alternatives with better returns, like shopping for tax-sheltered investments. Because a salary's not the only income professionals have. So you can effectively make tradeoffs between revenue streams with different tax rates, one of which happens to be your job.
This clearly disincentivizes creating additional value for society through an additional unit of effort at that job, and it's a result of market structure.
And it's likely that whatever they're doing to get money should simply be counted as income too.
> This clearly disincentivizes creating additional value for society through an additional unit of effort at that job
Whatever they do instead might create less value for society, or it might create more value for society. I have no idea what the average is.
Also we have to look at the opportunity cost. By taxing one person with a huge income more, you can tax dozens of people with lower incomes less. In most cases that's a huge boon for society.
> Progressive taxation sets up steeply diminishing returns on that marginal effort.
Steeply? Bah. When you're talking about millions of dollars, removing 37 percent (or 50 or 70) still leaves an enormous incentive.
The thing that actually causes significant diminishing returns is that every dollar you earn benefits your life less than the previous dollar.
I never meant millions of dollars. This argument applies to middle class incomes too.
Thus we ought to massively increase taxation on the highest earners in order to rebalance our economy.