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> I am sympathetic to making it easier to build, but we have to be honest about the trade-offs that have been made in some of these hyper dense asian cities. Namely, ugly buildings, and lack of green space.

Sure, we could create housing for the thousands upon thousands of homeless people, we could allow for improvement that makes it more affordable to live, we could allow for economic growth - but hasn't anybody thought about how ugly that makes it all look?

North America does not have the same populations/density that is seen in east/southeast/south Asia. Therefore, North American cities do not have to make any such trade-off between density and green space.

In fact, density allows for more green space. Don't let single-family home suburbs fool you. Lawns are not green space. Laws are a pathetic attempt at greenwashing suburbs that were made by clear cutting forests or destroying nature. The less space humans take, the more can be left for nature.

You can certainly increase density while maintaining green spaces. Westminster (A London borough) has enormous open areas -- Hyde Park, Green Park, Regents Park and St James Park - taking almost half the entire borough's area.

It still has a population of 25,000 per square mile. London as a whole has a density of 14,600. You could add another 6 million people in London while maintaining a density which would allow a third of London to be open green areas.

Yep, it's possible, but hard in practice for lots of places.

London has historical parks/commons which are fantastic, but for cities which don't have many large parks, it's hard to retrofit them.

West London is also the most expensive part, completely unaffordable for 95% of people. It's not a coincidence that the best amenities are there. Certainly not clear that you can have high amenity areas that are also affordable.

it's expensive because it's mostly nice (although the cheapest place I ever lived in was near west kensington tube station, just on the wrong side of the tracks, but about a mile from kensington gardens.

It's quite clear that you can have housing for 15 million people in the area of Greater London with the density and green space of Westminster.

Does that require grand architecture? Sure. Will it happen? Nope. But it's not a density problem, it's an allocation problem.

Instead great swathes of London are built over with high density semi and terrace housing with a tiny bit of poor green space per person (usually paved over to store a car which sits still 23 hours a day or more)

Every place even a little bit exburan/suburban/urban in Canada and the US has highly regulated planning restrictions. It's unavoidable, so the fact people who criticize current planning rules live under them isn't a choice; it's a necessity.

Planning restrictions are also highly bipartisian. Both sides favour restrictions, often for different reasons and with different intent, and the result is no supply.

People like to point to Houston as not having zoning laws, but they have deed restrictions that behave in much the same way (and are even harder to undo). Houston does have some of the least restrictive planning rules and also has some of the lowest housing costs. This is not a coincidence.

Noah is a raging liberal so I’m not sure what “right wing” bloggers you’re talking about.

But the “investment in public transport” thing is a red herring. Prior to the pandemic, Tokyo Metro (a publicly owned private company) ran a profit. The other Tokyo subway, Toei, recovers about 75% of costs in fares. Transport for London regularly runs a surplus. The NYC MTA by contrast is at under 40%.

I'm not sure I follow your public transport argument. Both Tokyo and London have had many decades of significant government investment and support into their transport infrastructure. E.g. The billions from the taxpayer for the recent Elizabeth Line in London. Neither system would exist without very large gov support.

The point is that “public investment” isn’t why transit systems in America suck. The government invested about 60% of Cross Rail capital costs, and the line will likely pay for itself in terms of operating costs. By contrast, the government paid for 100% of the costs for New York’s Second Avenue subway, and will pick up the check for more than half the operating costs too.

The NYC MTA receives over $7 billion in public support annually, and routinely gets billions in federal infusions. It got a $15 billion covid bail out. Transport for a London meanwhile has gotten 3.6 billion pounds over the next two years as it comes out of covid. NYC’s public investment dwarf’s London’s.

American government spending has an extremely low multiplier because of onerous environmental regulations (primarily NEPA).

A mural in San Francisco cost $600k (!) to cover up due to environmental impact reports and legal fees.

Asking for more public spending is literally just asking to burn people's money.

Eh, I think variety is the spice of life. Communities need to have the freedom to plan what works best for them.

> Communities need to have the freedom to plan what works best for them.

Tried that. Didn't work. Now a generation of young people are going to have to move thousands of kms away or live in their parents basements until the boomers die.

> until the boomers die

The earth tried solving that. We destroyed the economy and caused untold mental damage to youngsters to prevent it.

Yes. We need absolute iron hand in deciding in what place and what kind of housing must be available for all people.

Whenever people say they got it right this time, it really means they got it right this time.

> Now a generation of young people are going to have to move thousands of kms away

I feel like having everybody move for work in the first place was a significant contributor to the problem.

I pretty much entirely see this content from "moderate" / "centrist" liberal pundits, not "right wing bloggers".

Indeed, it seems to me more so that there is a "horseshoe" with respect to this, where both further left- and right-wing folks both favor more restrictive planning / zoning, for different reasons. On the left, it seems to be related to a skepticism of anything being less regulated having a general stench of laissez-faire capitalism, and on the right it seems to be more about local control over planning being the mechanism for keeping undesirables elsewhere.

And the more "centrist" people I follow on the right just don't seem interested in this topic at all, for whatever reason.

Ah yes, notable right wing blogger Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

https://www.curbed.com/2022/01/aoc-2022-pledge-pro-housing-y...

So they in favor of abolishing single family zoning?

I’m happy to hate on right-wing bloggers, but I’m suspicious that your “as far as I can tell” might be doing a bit too much work. Do you have any reason to believe that sentence is correct?

I don't hate right-wing bloggers, in fact I follow many and respect their opinions. However I think the debate around housing often lacks nuance, and a pure free market approach feels like it comes more from dogmatism than practical policy making.

It's possible that the bloggers I follow fit in my filter bubble, which is based around the California/London regions so there's likely selection bias.

I imagine the bloggers you refer to would find a lot of resonance with some form of the statement “At the federal level, I’m a Republican. At the state level, I’m a Democrat. With my close friends, I’m a socialist. And with my family, I’m a communist.” Are you perhaps missing a bit of nuance?

Being generous with your friends is not a political position, I don’t think it adds much nuance to our understanding of their political opinions.

Noah and other YIMBY types tend to skew left wing by any US definition that isn’t based around the moderate voter of San Francisco

And yet the moderate voter in San Francisco is on the right wing of most political continuums outside of the U.S. The statement stands.

Absolutely not. SF voters think police shouldn't crack down on people openly selling/using drugs, weather on trains, buses, sidewalks, or in front of schools because that would perpetuate racism. They also are removing algebra from middle school for DEI reasons. Many believe developers should not be allowed to build any market rate housing. The planning process to build anything requires years of environmental costing millions which is much more onerous than in most European and Asian cities. In Asia people in general are not onboard with the "woke" culture of San Francisco. Socially, they're much more conservative. In general, Europe is in between.