The rent is too damn algorithmic

One could make the argument that this is just capitalism and applying market forces to human lives is always the moral thing to do. I don't believe it is, I care more about the human outcomes of the systems we use. Ultimately, the underlying problem is the lack of housing supply, which is different from Realpage enabling the collusion between different independent landlords exploiting the shortage in housing supply even further.

> have all space that could be used for housing in the borders already built, under construction or allocated for short-term begin of construction.

Let me introduce you to the original purpose of Berliner Kleingärten.

Plus there are tons of vacant lots, parking lots etc in Berlin.

I’ve lived in Schöneweide for many years and let me tell ya.

Tegel alone could host half a million people and we haven’t even touched the Tempelhofer Feld.

Berlin has no suburbs to speak of. I guess you have never been to any other city in the world if you think that the suburbs are full.

Guess what: you can run more trains, bigger trains, higher frequencies, and you can build new tracks and new tunnels.

Oh, and last: Before you “force companies to move to smaller cities” think about two things:

- Why do many companies prefer to move to big cities?

- Why do many people prefer to live in big cities?

At the same time, Berlin’s Degrowth mentality has prevented sufficient investment into construction

Increased vehicle traffic is a bad thing. You want to induce demand for other types of transportation.

There is a finite amount of people willing to move to X city / a finite number of jobs for them to support themselves.

But I have to admit that adding another lane does allow more people to use the road. Even if everybody ends up stuck in traffic again, overall more people are able to get to work or wherever they want to go.

That being said, I still think that with correctly priced externalities, and when offered the choice, that most people would prefer to bike or take the train.

If your roads are jammed, some people who want to take trips on them will take other means or abandon the trip. If additional lanes are built, trip capacity increases, and more trips are taken. Sometimes the amount of supressed trips is such that traffic jams continue to the same extent as before... but that's unusual --- when Caltrans widened the 405 in west LA, morning and evening jam duration was significantly reduced; but population growth continued and trip demand growth continued, and the jam duration grew.

It's the same with housing. A lot of people would love to live in (city you like), but can't because it's too expensive or too hard to find a place. It would take a lot of construction to change that, but incremental construction is still brings supply closer to demand; even if the difference is hard to spot.

There's certainly places that have sufficient roads that there's rarely a traffic jam, and that have sufficient housing such that it's affordable enough for all who want to live there... those places tend not to have a lot of traffic density and not a lot of people density either.

The most effective way to make housing affordable is to make the city undesirable to live in, but that's not typically a popular method. It also tends to make traffic better, too.

Though, politics is everywhere, and they want to cap the index rents as well. Make sense, because why can everyone raise prices, while salaries do not automatically rise. There is no balance.

In the Netherlands the average waiting time for rent-controlled social houses in popular places like Amsterdam and Utrecht now exceed 10 years.

Coming from the UK, i find the system here vastly more sensible, having been kicked out of multiple residencies in the UK because landlords felt like raising rents by outrageous amounts

Is it passed on by birth right?

I guess that’s the city of liberty for you then.

IMO, it's better to follow the NYC model. Have a few great parks and then dense building.

Reducing parking requirements _may_ reduce quality of living, if public transportation isn't an option.

Japan solves the parking problem by requiring you to have an off-street parking space to own a car. Removing street parking increases the amount of land available for use, makes the city more walkable (and bikeable) and reduces car ownership.

No, it can be express buses with 100% dedicated bus lanes and fewer bus stops. Of course, that will require removing some standard lanes and converting them into said dedicated bus lanes.

> But in a typical American city, everything is SO spread out that it just won't work: it's too far for most people to walk to the station, having to drive to the station just adds more overhead plus having to deal with traffic with everyone else going to/from the station and looking for parking, etc.

This can be solved with multi-modal traffic with a mix of bikes and buses. This again will require removing standard lanes and converting them into protected bike lanes, and while that's happening and considering the width of the average lane, a green shoulder with trees that separates the road from the bike lane and from the newly added sidewalk.

> Honestly, I don't really see a solution; too many Americans think this kind of thing is anathema anyway, so the political will to make any of these ideas a reality is unlikely to materialize.

However this is what kills any of these proposals, in practice :-)

I think "fast" is subjective. Depending on city size, car culture, etc. Buses with dedicated lanes could be pretty fast. I suppose what I should say is, comprehensive public transit. And maybe not always out to the rural areas until we have good connections to the suburban hubs.

As far as economics, much like Agriculture, Housing and Healthcare the economics will never really work out. They will run at a deficit and require government subsidies because they are necessities.

Often with these things its a vicious cycle.

People don't use Public Transit --> Because its slow and doesn't cover everywhere --> Because adding stops and more vehicles costs money --> And there's not enough money to improve it --> Because People don't use public transit --> ... repeat

If we improve transit, make it more convenient than driving (banning cars in certain metropolitan areas, making it cheaper than gasoline, etc.) Then likely over years the US could transition.

Though I agree, tis a pipe dream at this time in history.

There are lower volume fast public transport mechanisms; BRTs (ie bus systems with largely fully segregated lanes) or high quality standard bus systems with partially segregated lanes. Somewhere in between are trams.

The big downside of a bus system is that it _does_ have volume constraints (even if you have mostly-segregated lanes, you'll start to run into trouble with stops) but it can work pretty well for low-volume scenarios.

for example compare stuttgart in germany with los angeles.

stuttgart has half a million inhabitants. LA has 4 million. both cities have a very similar population density of 3000 people per sqkm. stuttgart has 350km of rail and about 300 stations. los angeles has 175km of rail with about 100 stations.

now, i don't know how much the stuttgart network extends beyond the city. i only looked at the city rail, and ignored regional trains. but i didn't spend much time to research, so i am going to guess on the safe side that it's city rail network serves 1 million people.

for LA to compete with that it would need 1400km of rail with 1200 stations. so, it could be 10 times as large.

another comparison, vienna: 2million people, 4500 per sqkm. 1100 stations on 250km. most the stations are light rail, which is very dense.

in other words, the population density argument is nonsense. there are plenty of cities with a population density of 3000 people or more per sqkm. and none have public transport comparable to european cities.

the problem is not density. the problem is how many people are willing to use public transportion instead of cars.

if you can motivate more people to use public transport, then you can grow the infrastructure.

this is something that will only change slowly as public transportation improves. if you can motivate more people to use public transport, it will grow. even european cities have not reached the end yet, and many cities are investing in more rail.

Stop calling them cities then! They're just endless suburbs and strip malls, which makes for a really really large town. If they're not dense enough to do what cities do, they're not cities.

That argument can still be overruled in the short term by pointing at the current zoning laws of many countries worldwide, and the second rebuttal is more interesting anyway: Who said anything about a 'reasonable' price?

The proportionality constant between the tax levied and the listed sales price of the home is a precise instrument. We could just as easily set it to 0.1% per annum, so that people who list their homes for $1m/year still only pay $1000/year in tax and likely never see a serious purchaser, as we could set it to 10% per annum, where a $1m/year house accrues a whopping $100,000/year in Harberger taxes, which leads to people lowering the listed price, WLT many more sales and purchases, WLT considerably more housing liquidity. You could use either tactic to put the squeeze on bad actors, depending on your goals.