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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

There is really one one reason cities are not gaining population as fast (or they are losing it) as they have been relatively recently: the astronomical cost of living in major urban centers. The article points this out, but I think it's conclusion, that urban revival is over because of this, is pretty odd. Prices are so high because there are still way more people that want to live in central cities than there is housing. If the urban revival were truly over, so many people wouldn't want to live there.

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This only means there is lots of unsatisfied demand. That's more or less the policy endgame of NIMBYism and anti-gentrification: keep things affordable for existing residents by removing them from market pressures, then let the market deter unwanted outsiders.

EDIT: I should add that my point is, there's no reason it couldn't remain this way forever. Urban revival could be over, even though the desire for it isn't.

Here in the Boston area, Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville now have lower population and more units of housing than they did before WWII. The average was four residents per housing unit and now it is only two. This is partly why there is never enough housing no matter how much you build: the more there is available, the more people will want to have.

Do children count as residents? Couldn't this just be a different view of the fact that people are having fewer children?

As an aside, I'd say people satisfying their desire to have their own space is great thing that we should be optimizing for.

Sure, but not everyone is going to be able to optimize it in the same place. Also, if that's what you want, don't complain about having to pay for it.

I feel justified complaining about having to pay for it as long as the reasons it's expensive are artifically imposed.

As a counterpoint, one could argue that the normal price we'd expect doesn't factor in externalities like infrastructure and maintenance. So the inflated price could, from an exterior observation, be in fact better aligned with true, long term settlement costs.

The sad part is the inflated rents don't seem to go towards these externalities either, but to landlords' pockets and land managers' margins. Even though the price is theoretically correct, the market reflects it for the wrong reasons giving the sell side an undeserved moral argument.

Oh, I'm not talking about property taxes, I'm talking about protecting other people from the evils of shadow, or from observing any evidence that they live in a major world city in 2017 and not a quaint Midwestern town in 1950.

This is also my first thought when people say "Well, nobody wants to move to the Bay area anymore, everybody's leaving". Well, why is the rent still so high?

No one lives in SF anymore, it's too crowded.

There are still many people moving to SF, especially those who work in companies in SF where the high compensation makes living in SF possible. Lots of people don't want to deal with travelling from outside SF to the city. Taking BART / Caltrain is soul sucking. Lots of young, unmarried people love the vibe of the city, and are willing to fork out part of their income to live there.

Nice paraphrase of the famous Yogi Berra quote... ;)

> Well, why is the rent still so high?

Rent in SF is going down actually. 2 years ago we moved into our apartment with my girlfriend and whatever price they mentioned our immediate response "YES WHERE DO I SIGN" just because we were so happy to even find a vacancy at all.

1 year ago they wanted to raise our rent $400 (about 6%), we negotiated it down to a $40 increase. Pretty good right?

Well, this year we negotiated our rent down by almost $300. In SoMa. Our rent is now cheaper than it was when we first moved in.

Next year we're hoping to move to a bigger place for the same price or cheaper. It's probably going to be possible.

Fun fact: Our apartment building considers it a success if they get 50% of their tenants to renew the lease.

I managed to negotiate my rent down by almost $1000 this year in SoMa. Pretty crazy.

Do tell! What were the magic words?

sudo rent decrement 1000

Yea, what is this "negotiation" magic?

The trouble is that urban real estate hyperinflation prices out all the stuff that makes cities cool. Eventually they just become big overpriced corporate office parks.

I keep waiting for a country like India or Japan to start building arcologies and others to adopt the solution. The way many people live, even a slum out of 'Shadowrun' would have more amenities.

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