The issues around zoning are not comparable. For one, here in the Netherlands we have plenty of density and not a lot of missing-middle, but still a giant shortage.
The problem here was never zoning, it was a lack of building.
> problem here was never zoning, it was a lack of building
Why isn’t the latter an effect of the former? I believe the Netherlands restricts building height by parcel unless a deviation procedure is granted, something I understand to be expensive and risky.
For one, Cities in the netherlands are already quite dense, and the dutch are focused on building family houses attachted to each other mostly (row housing).
Also, thanks to the massive agricultural sector and a lack of oversight on industry, the netherlands has a massive problem with nitrogen in its soil which prevents building because building stuff generates more nitrogen.
Speculation and the liberalisation of the housing market has also massively contributed to price increases.
This is news to me and interesting re: nitrogen crisis. That said, isn’t construction a very minor contributor relative to the agricultural nitrogen impact? Like, taken to an extreme, preventing construction based on this is like preventing people from having children because children will produce nitrogen compounds
The nitrogen problems has been ignored for so long and nitrogen compound deposition has been so intense for a long time that you can't really do anything anywhere without depositing nitrogen compounds in an area already suffering from the environmental effects.
The Netherlands is a very densely populated country compared to the most of Europe. Furthermore, there are industrial hubs bringing in polluted air through the wind from the west, south, and east, making up a significant source of the nitrogen compound deposition. All efforts to solve the problem have so far upset very powerful lobbyists whose income relies on being allowed to pollute more to stay ahead of the competition (not to mention caused violent protests).
There are many factors to the housing problem, it's not just nitrogen compounds. In my opinion, the entire construction sector coming to a standstill after the 2008 crisis was probably what kicked off a storm of seemingly unrelated issues, from population pyramids to the water table levels to investors using property to accumulate wealth to hyperintensive farming practices.
New measures to supposedly solve the nitrogen compound crisis have been announced. By the looks of it, I expect the agriculture lobby to riot again, and new elections by the start of next year when the government inevitably collapses itself again in an attempt to use populism to gather more votes.
It’s expensive to build (many rules, not enough construction workers, expensive materials), expensive land, nitrogen policies, economic crisis 2008-2013 when there were no buyers for new houses caused a backlog of new houses.
> European policy debates often become Americanized because of the American domination of social media.
No it doesn't. And America doesn't dominate social media in Europe, except repeated administration scandals, paedofiles and history's largest pedo ring cover-up.
Lol, Europeans are quick to adopt all the worst things from America related to tech, including social media, streaming services, proprietary software, iPhones, and random IoT garbage.
Every European you meet on social media is necessarily the subset of Europeans who adopted social media. A subset of the population adopting a subset of the stuff doesn't mean adoption in general is as universal as you might assume.
e.g. podcast I was listening to the other day had a German complaining about their bank, after the bank suggested they send a fax.
Am I understanding that the solution proposed in the article is to allow more dense building in suburbs/outskirts of cities in Europe? This doesn't solve the actual problem that many European cities face, which is a housing shortage in the actual city center, where people want to live; there's generally not that much a lack of housing the further you get outside of a major city center in Europe, and people don't want to live outside of the city center because, well, they want to be in the city.
I live in Amsterdam; nobody wants to live in the city center. There are plenty of ways to keep an old city center AND build out the surrounding areas in a way that people actually would like to live there.
We do really need to have a serious conversation about single-family homes; you will even find them right next to metro stations. Some of these low-density neighborhoods really need to be demolished and reconstructed into higher-density housing that can still reasonably house a family.
That's a fair point, maybe "city center" isn't the best term here. What I mean are areas still in the city close to where a lot of the cafes, bars, restaurants, nightlife - third places in general - are, which is where people that want to live in a city generally prefer to live in if possible.
No, but they are don't rise nearly as much as real estate prices in city centers, and it's mostly irrelevant to the point I was making, because it doesn't matter how the prices are outside of the city center if you want to live in the city center.
> they are don't rise nearly as much as real estate prices in city centers
Pick the low-hanging fruit. More housing outside the city centre (with requisite transit infrastructure) still means more-affordable housing. That, in turn, should relieve pressure on the centre.
Many cities and areas close to major European cities have good transit infrastructure, yet people don't want to live there, they want to live in the city. So making more housing outside of the city, again, doesn't solve the actual problem facing major European cities.
Most people in HN fail to understand that the vast majority of people don't want to live in incredibly dense city centers. Not everyone is a young single professional without kids.
This doesn't mean that everyone wants to live in a single family house in a suburb, but also not everyone wants to live in a highrise in a packed city center that looks like hong kong.
With many city centers in europe steeped in history, it’s never going to happen.
But in contradiction to the article, just up the road from me, practically a small town was built of high density housing in what i would still consider “the city”, but with amenities and improved public transport factored in
> There are no countries in europe who’s native language is english, and all online discourse would be in european languages.
And Ireland. Yes they also have the Irish language codified as primary in their constitution, but in practice 95% speak English, 39.9% claim some ability to speak Irish, and only 1.7% actually speak Irish daily.
IMO, one of the things Europe does wrong is something the US also does wrong: There's plenty of cheap housing around, it's just in Detroit, Liverpool, and Chemnitz. How do we make those places desirable to live in once more?
In Croatia, which is (and has been) seeing a tremendous rise in real estate prices, everyone talks about the high prices, but rarely can you hear about about housing shortage. Indeed, building new housing is sometimes brought up as one of the reasons for rising prices.
That is weird article. Suburban zone nobody really cares about exists in some places therefore Europeans should make it big polarized political issue on the assumption that any suburban zone is the reason of all issues.
But like, did that polarized angry rhetorics actually solved the American issue?
> did that polarized angry rhetorics actually solved the American issue?
The issue was already polarized by the NIMBY’s. They just had a political monopoly. Pro-growth policies have resulted in new housing and abated price increases in several American cities.
Funny how everything worked pretty well, zoning restrictions and all, until public policy shifted towards papering over population decline with mass migration. An immigrant needs a house _today_, a baby needs their own separate housing unit in roughly 20 years. One approach towards population growth flattens the housing demand curve considerably, and it's not the one we're pursuing any longer. That's what's changed.
You can see it in the Japanese data. Japan is more or less closed to immigrants, is experiencing a (for now) slow population decline, and house prices are plummeting.
Yeah I do, it's called supply and demand. To have a growing population, every couple needs to have an average of 2.1 children.
Let's say a couple have two children. From t=0 until approximately t=20, all four people require one housing unit.
If that same couple does not have children (guess what's happening in every single western country!) and we instead lean on migration to increase the population for them, at t=0 you have at least 2, maybe 3 housing units required for the same number of people. It's not complicated.
This is not how one attributes principal causation among multiple potential causes.
> at t=0 you have at least 2, maybe 3 housing units required for the same number of people
Plenty of families immigrate. And at least in America, immigrant households seem to be denser than native-born ones. You’re assuming immigrant households are smaller than average, which would indeed be surprising unless they’re all quite wealthy.
> you agree it certainly must contribute to the problem?
As a multi-decade effect? No, not really. Absent migration I don’t think home prices would be flat in Europe.
In some cases, in the short term? Sure. But to answer to what extent is it a distraction versus actual driver of home unaffordability, you need numbers. The article provides compelling evidence for zoning. Given the animus against immigrants in Europe, I’d guess I’m assuming if these data existed they’d already have been found.
> One couple+one child requires less housing (in the short-to-medium term) than one couple+one immigrant
If two couples and two children take up one unit of housing while providing three units of labour, that’s more space efficient than the one couple + one child if even both parents work.
This sort of napkin math doesn’t work for these problems. Particularly when we’re essentially debating elasticity with respect to demand versus supply.
Considerably less immigration was required for said workers because guess what, the requisite 2.1 children average per couple threshold was being met during those times.
The issues around zoning are not comparable. For one, here in the Netherlands we have plenty of density and not a lot of missing-middle, but still a giant shortage.
The problem here was never zoning, it was a lack of building.
> problem here was never zoning, it was a lack of building
Why isn’t the latter an effect of the former? I believe the Netherlands restricts building height by parcel unless a deviation procedure is granted, something I understand to be expensive and risky.
What causes the lack of building?
a combination of many things.
For one, Cities in the netherlands are already quite dense, and the dutch are focused on building family houses attachted to each other mostly (row housing).
Also, thanks to the massive agricultural sector and a lack of oversight on industry, the netherlands has a massive problem with nitrogen in its soil which prevents building because building stuff generates more nitrogen.
Speculation and the liberalisation of the housing market has also massively contributed to price increases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_crisis_in_the_Netherl...
This is news to me and interesting re: nitrogen crisis. That said, isn’t construction a very minor contributor relative to the agricultural nitrogen impact? Like, taken to an extreme, preventing construction based on this is like preventing people from having children because children will produce nitrogen compounds
The nitrogen problems has been ignored for so long and nitrogen compound deposition has been so intense for a long time that you can't really do anything anywhere without depositing nitrogen compounds in an area already suffering from the environmental effects.
The Netherlands is a very densely populated country compared to the most of Europe. Furthermore, there are industrial hubs bringing in polluted air through the wind from the west, south, and east, making up a significant source of the nitrogen compound deposition. All efforts to solve the problem have so far upset very powerful lobbyists whose income relies on being allowed to pollute more to stay ahead of the competition (not to mention caused violent protests).
There are many factors to the housing problem, it's not just nitrogen compounds. In my opinion, the entire construction sector coming to a standstill after the 2008 crisis was probably what kicked off a storm of seemingly unrelated issues, from population pyramids to the water table levels to investors using property to accumulate wealth to hyperintensive farming practices.
New measures to supposedly solve the nitrogen compound crisis have been announced. By the looks of it, I expect the agriculture lobby to riot again, and new elections by the start of next year when the government inevitably collapses itself again in an attempt to use populism to gather more votes.
Thanks for that link and info - I had never heard of this issue, even obliquely!
It’s expensive to build (many rules, not enough construction workers, expensive materials), expensive land, nitrogen policies, economic crisis 2008-2013 when there were no buyers for new houses caused a backlog of new houses.
Lack of building is the default natural state, one should (in general) ask what causes building.
Even with the stuff in the sibling comments, the Netherlands also famously makes new land.
[dead]
> European policy debates often become Americanized because of the American domination of social media.
No it doesn't. And America doesn't dominate social media in Europe, except repeated administration scandals, paedofiles and history's largest pedo ring cover-up.
America does dominate social media in Europe.
Most Europeans probably know more American politicians than they do their own, and have opinions about every American event.
During US elections it's impossible to talk to anyone without their starting to opine about things they have no control over within a minute.
American culture wars are polarising societies that share nothing with the American one.
The last thing Europe needs is more Americanisation.
Lol, Europeans are quick to adopt all the worst things from America related to tech, including social media, streaming services, proprietary software, iPhones, and random IoT garbage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Survivorship-bias.svg
Every European you meet on social media is necessarily the subset of Europeans who adopted social media. A subset of the population adopting a subset of the stuff doesn't mean adoption in general is as universal as you might assume.
e.g. podcast I was listening to the other day had a German complaining about their bank, after the bank suggested they send a fax.
[dead]
Am I understanding that the solution proposed in the article is to allow more dense building in suburbs/outskirts of cities in Europe? This doesn't solve the actual problem that many European cities face, which is a housing shortage in the actual city center, where people want to live; there's generally not that much a lack of housing the further you get outside of a major city center in Europe, and people don't want to live outside of the city center because, well, they want to be in the city.
I live in Amsterdam; nobody wants to live in the city center. There are plenty of ways to keep an old city center AND build out the surrounding areas in a way that people actually would like to live there.
We do really need to have a serious conversation about single-family homes; you will even find them right next to metro stations. Some of these low-density neighborhoods really need to be demolished and reconstructed into higher-density housing that can still reasonably house a family.
That's a fair point, maybe "city center" isn't the best term here. What I mean are areas still in the city close to where a lot of the cafes, bars, restaurants, nightlife - third places in general - are, which is where people that want to live in a city generally prefer to live in if possible.
Making secondary cities more attractive ought to be part of the conversation around housing affordability
> people don't want to live outside of the city center
Are home prices just outside the city center stagnant?
No, but they are don't rise nearly as much as real estate prices in city centers, and it's mostly irrelevant to the point I was making, because it doesn't matter how the prices are outside of the city center if you want to live in the city center.
> they are don't rise nearly as much as real estate prices in city centers
Pick the low-hanging fruit. More housing outside the city centre (with requisite transit infrastructure) still means more-affordable housing. That, in turn, should relieve pressure on the centre.
Many cities and areas close to major European cities have good transit infrastructure, yet people don't want to live there, they want to live in the city. So making more housing outside of the city, again, doesn't solve the actual problem facing major European cities.
Such as? I don’t think the other commenters meant areas requiring a 1-2 hours commute but actual suburbs
> yet people don't want to live there
This is obviously untrue if the prices have risen.
What?
If prices for houses just outside the city haven’t fallen, there is clearly demand for them.
Most people in HN fail to understand that the vast majority of people don't want to live in incredibly dense city centers. Not everyone is a young single professional without kids. This doesn't mean that everyone wants to live in a single family house in a suburb, but also not everyone wants to live in a highrise in a packed city center that looks like hong kong.
With many city centers in europe steeped in history, it’s never going to happen.
But in contradiction to the article, just up the road from me, practically a small town was built of high density housing in what i would still consider “the city”, but with amenities and improved public transport factored in
Could it be the author only read english articles? The assertion that no one in europe speaks about housing shortages does not reflect my experience.
There are no countries in europe who’s native language is english, and all online discourse would be in european languages.
( apart of course from the uk, but the author makes the distinction)
> There are no countries in europe who’s native language is english, and all online discourse would be in european languages.
And Ireland. Yes they also have the Irish language codified as primary in their constitution, but in practice 95% speak English, 39.9% claim some ability to speak Irish, and only 1.7% actually speak Irish daily.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Ireland
IMO, one of the things Europe does wrong is something the US also does wrong: There's plenty of cheap housing around, it's just in Detroit, Liverpool, and Chemnitz. How do we make those places desirable to live in once more?
In Croatia, which is (and has been) seeing a tremendous rise in real estate prices, everyone talks about the high prices, but rarely can you hear about about housing shortage. Indeed, building new housing is sometimes brought up as one of the reasons for rising prices.
The economic illiteracy is just that bad.
Actually, just typing any search query with a member of the eu and “housing shortages” does bring up results, so this assertion is even more bizarre
That is weird article. Suburban zone nobody really cares about exists in some places therefore Europeans should make it big polarized political issue on the assumption that any suburban zone is the reason of all issues.
But like, did that polarized angry rhetorics actually solved the American issue?
> did that polarized angry rhetorics actually solved the American issue?
The issue was already polarized by the NIMBY’s. They just had a political monopoly. Pro-growth policies have resulted in new housing and abated price increases in several American cities.
You must be truly desperate to come to us for help. We have basically the worst housing outcomes you could ever hope for.
Funny how everything worked pretty well, zoning restrictions and all, until public policy shifted towards papering over population decline with mass migration. An immigrant needs a house _today_, a baby needs their own separate housing unit in roughly 20 years. One approach towards population growth flattens the housing demand curve considerably, and it's not the one we're pursuing any longer. That's what's changed.
> until public policy shifted towards papering over population decline with mass migration
Do you have a source showing price increases correlate with migration? (The article seems to show a timing relationship between zoning and prices.)
You can see it in the Japanese data. Japan is more or less closed to immigrants, is experiencing a (for now) slow population decline, and house prices are plummeting.
> Japan is more or less closed to immigrants, is experienced a (for now) slow population decline, and house prices are plummeting
Japan also famously builds lots of housing. (Agree they are a good example, though, for measuring these effects.)
Yeah I do, it's called supply and demand. To have a growing population, every couple needs to have an average of 2.1 children.
Let's say a couple have two children. From t=0 until approximately t=20, all four people require one housing unit.
If that same couple does not have children (guess what's happening in every single western country!) and we instead lean on migration to increase the population for them, at t=0 you have at least 2, maybe 3 housing units required for the same number of people. It's not complicated.
This is not how one attributes principal causation among multiple potential causes.
> at t=0 you have at least 2, maybe 3 housing units required for the same number of people
Plenty of families immigrate. And at least in America, immigrant households seem to be denser than native-born ones. You’re assuming immigrant households are smaller than average, which would indeed be surprising unless they’re all quite wealthy.
But you agree it certainly must contribute to the problem?
> you agree it certainly must contribute to the problem?
As a multi-decade effect? No, not really. Absent migration I don’t think home prices would be flat in Europe.
In some cases, in the short term? Sure. But to answer to what extent is it a distraction versus actual driver of home unaffordability, you need numbers. The article provides compelling evidence for zoning. Given the animus against immigrants in Europe, I’d guess I’m assuming if these data existed they’d already have been found.
> And at least in America, immigrant households seem to be denser than native-born ones.
Answer true or false. One couple+one child requires less housing (in the short-to-medium term) than one couple+one immigrant.
> One couple+one child requires less housing (in the short-to-medium term) than one couple+one immigrant
If two couples and two children take up one unit of housing while providing three units of labour, that’s more space efficient than the one couple + one child if even both parents work.
This sort of napkin math doesn’t work for these problems. Particularly when we’re essentially debating elasticity with respect to demand versus supply.
And in the boom times of the 60's/70's, European factories, construction, infrastructure builders, needed workers "today", not "in 20 years"...
Considerably less immigration was required for said workers because guess what, the requisite 2.1 children average per couple threshold was being met during those times.
You’re going to be downvoted to heck.