Hacker News Reader

Comment by darkwizard42 | Hacker News Reader

Sure, but this is less possible if your downtown is already full of commercial real estate in towers already. Yes, you could argue further zoning changes on the remaining plots could be turned into towers, but it doesn't provide a guarantee the office space will get filled.

View on HN

No downtown area in North America is full. Every city has vast swaths of underdeveloped land that can be turned into nice, new housing. Zoning should be changed so developers can make the call on what is profitable and not profitable, not NIMBY politicians or internet commentators.

As a side benefit, the new housing will relieve price pressure on existing, overpriced older housing.

Depends on what you mean by Full. Here is Los Angeles the downtown core is completely built. You'd need to tear down existing structures and purchase the land to do so.

LA is one of the most underdeveloped cities in the US. It is ripe for much denser housing in its urban core.

As stated, you'd need to purchase the expensive land and then turn it into housing. This is done in Los Angeles, but the property that is built isn't cheap affordable housing.

He didn't say it would be cheap affordable housing. He said it "will relieve price pressure on existing, overpriced older housing". Which makes sense. Normally new buildings are the luxury housing and over time, as they become outdated, they become the affordable housing. Building new "affordable housing" is a fools errand, since it costs almost as much to build as luxury housing. You just build more housing period and let nature take its course over the decades.

Yep. And don’t we have to wait for the new expensive housing to trickle down and become cheap. If enough new housing is built, the older housing becomes cheaper almost immediately.

About 23% of downtown Los Angeles is parking lots.

https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/how-much-of-your-city-is-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com