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Comment by kjcharles | Hacker News Reader

But the problem is the supply of housing hasn't kept up with that demand due to artificial limits placed on the market. Single-family zoning has made it illegal to build more of the dense housing that's needed in cities today.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/18/upshot/cities...

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Note, that kind of zoning is US specific issue. The situation zoning wise is quite different in Europe. At the same time Europe also has a housing crisis.

Don’t most European cities have pretty strict building height restrictions? Of course that’s not as bad as banning multi family housing complexes completely but it does seem like basically the same core issue

Yes, but even with a 5 or 6 story limit you can fit 10x as many families living in the same area of land than you can with single family detached housing. The problem is that people that own these detached houses don't want to see more dense housing being built in their area because that will "ruin the community feel" aka lower their property values.

To play devils advocate, surely removing the artifical limits won't help in the long run as the city will just continue to spraw until it hits natural limits?

Most American and European cities are significantly less dense than their Asian counterparts. There's a long way to go before they reach any natural limits.

which comes back to the original question - people who are used to larger spaces prefer to continue having those larger spaces. So houses are more sought after, which causes apartments' prices to not grow, which causes fewer of them to be built (as not as high appreciation).

It's partially a cultural problem imho.

cough Grenfell Tower fire.

Lots of tiny Jerry built flats in tower blocks are not the answer - even more so when the rise of WFH is taken into account.

The answer is to update codes to require new buildings have sprinkler systems, and not to put extremely flammable cladding on the side of a damned building. We absolutely need to be able to build more medium density housing more easily.

New buildings do have to have sprinkler systems - it's the older ones that are the problem. You can add cladding to a 1970s building without having to update it to the latest fire safety rules.

Also it is illegal to put extremely flammable cladding on the side of a building. The problem was that if someone sells you "non-flammable cladding" and they are lying, nobody properly checks.

You are aware of all the problems of quickly built high rise tower blocks both technical and social.

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