Comment by RangerScience | Hacker News Reader

Comment by RangerScience | Hacker News Reader

So, if the problem is that real estate in cities is too expensive to build affordable housing... isn't the solution to build more cities?

There keep being more people and those people keep wanting to live in the same places.

But, the people already in those places don't want them - charitably, because it gets too crowded. Turns LA or SF into Manhattan, where you pay a lot for a mediocre shoebox.

Better transportation gets us a ways - when you ask someone in LA how far away something is, they tell it to you in time, because that's what matters - not the physical distance, but the temporal one. Better transportation means more physical space is accessible within the same "city".

But, it strikes me that this is nearly the same problem as corporatism and monopolies - as power concentrates, power concentrates faster. I guess that extends past money and politics to society and populations.

So if the government needs to redistribute power - wealth (universal basic income), politics (democracy vs autocracy), access (mass transit, education)... does it need to build more cities? Not build existing cities larger, mind you - but cause more cities?

The west coast grew later than the east coast. We have, what, three major cities / metropolitan areas? San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle? Five if you move the bar to include Portland and San Diego? East coast has more than a dozen MAJOR metropolitan areas, and how many more when you move the bar?

Maybe the answer isn't higher density housing in the cities we have where everyone wants to live. Maybe the answer is getting more cities where everyone wants to live.

Sure, it's not exactly like New York has a monopoly on metropolitan-ness, and we need to go all anti-trust on it... But you get the idea, yeah?

Make me think of Dublin. What was Dublin two decades ago? What is it now?

Makes me think of - what was it called, where you make a city with different laws, one part test bed, one part diversity? Happened in the Renaissance, and it's what Hong Kong is.

Good point. For example, I find it really strange that lots of money is spent on improving infrastructure in London rather than building new subways etc. in other cities in the UK:

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/aug/07/london-...

I wonder, is it the same in the US (and other countries)? Lots of money being spent in cities that are already large, rather than building new roads, tramways and subways in smaller cities?

The England situation is a bit odd because London is such a distortion. We've entered into a weird feedback loop - London generates so much money that companies and government locates there, so a bunch of infrastructure is built and maintained there, which makes it more attractive for businesses to locate there.

Upgrading London transport has "trickle down"[1] benefits outside London. Some of the older London trains are sold off cheap to be used outside London, where they're newer that current stock.

I'd love to see better transport links between Bristol, Swindon, Birmingham, Manchester, and London. And some tax incentives to make it easier for companies to locate outside London. And for more government departments to locate away from London. And I'd freaking love it if Houses of Parliament relocated and turned current Westminster into a museum. But I don't think any of that is going to happen.

[1] I'm aware the term is tainted.

The term might be tainted, but the taint may be reasonably spread - consider why trickle-down economics doesn't work (while trickle-up economics does) and consider whether those reasons would apply to this situation. I think they would, actually, so it's good you pointed out the similarity.

More cities?

This sounds like a solution China would come up with.

That's a very good point, although I don't think I'm taking it the way you're intending it. I'm taking it as "here are case studies".

I've been to a couple of planned cities (Astana and Pavlodar in Kazakhstan - that was a trip!), and I've been to suburban developments, and there IS a distinct difference, but neither has that... /something/ that established cities have. Ironically, Pavlodar, I felt, had it more, and what I think it it is, is...

...Space for the people to own what they bring. Planned cities don't let you own it, and HOAs don't necessarily give the you the metaphorical space to bring it.

If you don't own it - and not in the simple legal property sense, but the sense of "if I invest myself in this thing, it's not going to be taken away one day" - you won't work on it. If there's no "space", only one vision (and likely one that isn't even present) can exist. Need both.

I think you CAN make a city. )*( does it every year, after all, and while much of that event can't persist year-round, some of the ideas about how to make a city definitely could (I would expect).

Or the UK: Welwyn Garden City, Milton Keynes, etc.

per capita, NYC has the smallest carbon footprint in the country.

increasing the population density of existing cities is the most responsible thing we could do, and beyond that, yes, more cities.

This is the opposite of what china would come up with. China tries to consolidate everything in a few very large mega cities: like Shanghai - population 23 million! This gives them more control, which is important to China's government.

Good Point. And it's not like we don't have the space. Only 5% of CA land is being used currently! That's even less than the average state in the US. Mostly what's lacking is political will. Incumbent residents would rather see their investments go up in value and a slight improvement in traffic, etc rather than solve the Housing problem.

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