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Comment by 01100011 | Hacker News Reader

Or it slowly goads people back into cities with efficient transportation networks.

I've been saying the following for a couple years now:

If you believe governments believe climate change is real(and I phrase it this way to avoid debating people on the reality of AGW), then you accept that incentives will align to reduce energy usage(assuming no mass carbon neutral energy on the horizon, which I believe is a safe assumption) and goad the population away from inefficent suburbs/exburbs and back into higher density urban environments.

And I say this as a lover of suburbia who generally hates urban areas(save Tokyo, which is wonderful).

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Isn't that a massive issue? That cities are overcrowded, expensive, and polluted? Europe has decent public transport and there's the same issue. Cramming people into cities makes things worse.

If you're only thinking of European capitals, there's some truth in that. But it does not apply to every city, not even close.

You don't even have to go down the list very far, the 2nd or maybe 3rd most populous city is any random European country is much more affordable and less crowded than the capital.

Correct, but see, people in tech or many blue collar jobs can't afford to live in small towns since all jobs are in large cities.

And since high earners are all in large cities then so does everyone else move there because that's where the money is.

Instead we should facilitate spreading out, so that wealth can also spread out, and people can enjoy what you just mentioned.

As much as there is a brutal logic to densification, people are already being nudged towards cities by carbon taxes, and most municipalities are interested in raising property prices & increasing quality of life for residents more than they are in fixing the climate, and those goals are at odds with densification. Likely people will not be able to afford densification and any legal reform to start changing this will run into entrenched political opposition.

Urban areas may also fix one issue, that of AGW and the looming energy crisis, but you also run into other issues like air pollution increasing in urban areas whilst more people are concentrated inside of them. 80% of urban areas exceed UN air pollution standards. So uh, this change will spike lung cancer deaths and such.

https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2016/05/un-he...

Urbanisation is already a growing the trend as it is I think in no small part due to the factors you point out.

https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-...

there’s too much red tape and special interest play in trying to expand transit options in the United States.

Examples in California include: car companies killing off successful street cars in SoCal, car dealers and residents block the expansion of BART down the SF Peninsula, residents in northwestern Bay Area blocking BART from entering their area for fear of criminals accessing their area easily from the East Bay.

> car companies killing off successful street cars in SoCal

You're referencing a conspiracy theory/urban legend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...

> residents block the expansion of BART down the SF Peninsula, residents in northwestern Bay Area blocking BART from entering their area for fear of criminals accessing their area easily from the East Bay.

This one I believe. I live near a BART station and it is where most crime happens. My next place will be far, far away from any public transportation.

Nobody will be goaded unless a lot of housing is built there. Hard to move to a place with no place to live.

There are a lot of political barriers to that throughout the West.

The multifamily market is different from the single-family home market. Lots of MFH going in lately. But I'm not saying that people will move into the existing cities. I'm only contending that folks will be forced into denser, urban environments and those may be built in previously suburban/rural areas or maybe existing cities. The incentives are coming though.

The problem is that NIMBY folks have the ability to block multifamily in California almost indefinitely. And often do. The cities where they most efficiently bock it are the ones with most of the offices, because local government collects more taxes over time with offices than housing. This is a result of https://www.nber.org/digest/apr05/lock-effect-californias-pr....

The result? California is about 3-4 million housing units short of what it needs. And it is getting steadily worse. There is no prospect of this changing any time soon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_housing_shortage

When it comes to rent, we're boiling the frog. And the frog is already well-cooked.

You seem oddly fixated on CA(and, really, Coastal CA) regional issues. Issues with fixes already in the works.

> about 3-4 million housing units short of what it needs

Completely separate rant, but I take issue with this. You can go find stats and articles from 2006 saying the same thing, and then, suddenly, we had enough housing. It's almost as if economics drives the housing people choose and when circumstances change they can opt for something else(relocation, MFH, living with family, delaying household formation, etc).

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