The fix is to let the companies who want to build, build. For some reason a lot of cities won't support new construction if a private company might make a profit on it.
Personally, I believe Berlin has more issues with a lack of affordable housing than with a lack of luxury condos.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009411902...
https://archive.is/2026.02.23-212725/https://www.theatlantic...
IMO, in Berlin the most lacking thing is the supply in affordable housing, so it makes sense to optimize for that directly instead of a side effect of some other optimization.
Why not build something like Alt-Erlaa? [0] [1]
Cities can just build stuff. And if private developers are not as incentivized to invest, that makes it cheaper for the city to do so itself. As somebody from Vienna, it's crazy to me this is even up for debate.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alterlaa [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxuACFQBwxs
I am not sure how it is in Berlin. I haven't visited in a while. I think it's too general an assessment though. In many cities the limit is not land but permits - both being permitted to build at all and then build high enough.
>>Cities can just build stuff. And if private developers are not as incentivized to invest, that makes it cheaper for the city to do so itself. As somebody from Vienna, it's crazy to me this is even up for debate.
I hear a lot of good things about housing in Vienna. Are those city build apartments readily available for anyone? The problem with public housing when I am from is that it turns the city population into lucky few who get access and the rest who not only have to subsidize it but then need to buy on private market themselves.
>>If you let the "market" decide on its own it will always decide on the most profitable items, even if that's not what is needed.
How do you define "not needed"? Businesses will build what they can sell - the very definition of needed. The problem is that it's difficult to build. A lot of cheaper housing projects don't get build because some restrictions (like height, number of apartments, parking places) that are not necessary.
The affordable housing from ~50 years ago was single family housing and is crazy expensive today.
We should be building lots of high density luxury condos today. Those are the affordable apartments of the future.