[davidw]

The US is pretty bad from this point of view from what I recall, compared to other places where it's generally legal to build a broader variety of housing in cities. But perhaps it just got bad here early compared to other places.

Portugal's demographics, like much of western Europe, didn't look like they were going to change dramatically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Portugal - so getting set up to build a bunch probably wasn't a priority.

It looks like immigration picked up a lot, and also there has been an influx of wealthier immigrants.

It will be interesting to see how they handle it. Having people with money move to your country ought to be a positive thing, but you need to build housing for them so they're not competing with locals - and winning.

[happyopossum]

> The US is pretty bad from this point of view from what I recall, compared to other places where it's generally legal to build a broader variety of housing in cities.

It's really impossible to make generalizations about the legalities go building in the US, as there is no federal control over such things. There are some state-level laws in some states, but for the most part zoning is left up to cities and counties, leading to literally thousands of disparate sets of laws and regulations.

My city has historically heavily restricted high density housing (until the state stepped in), while the city literally next door has added enough high density housing for ~20k people in the past decade.

[davidw]

People study this stuff and have written about it extensively. By and large, in most US cities and towns, it's not legal to build anything but detached single family units in most of the city. So while each locale may have its own zoning code, they're rarely all that unique. There are some exceptions like Houston.

This is an interesting book about the history of it all: https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801479878/zone...

[bombcar]

The US is pretty bad if you force yourself to remain in the same area (which, to be fair, most people do).

But the US is large and there are places where housing really isn't the issue (but there can be other issues, too).

[davidw]

That's changing quickly though. Most of the cheaper places did 'cheap' via sprawl, and that's kind of low hanging fruit that you need to move beyond in terms of housing options, sooner or later.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/housing-cr...

[bombcar]

Combining increased demand with reduced supply has caused a huge "pig in a snake" scenario, which is going to readjust suddenly (arguably it already has around here) where built supply is starting to outstrip demand.

[gr1zzlybe4r]

That's kinda what I was saying

The US has places that you can live cheaply if you're able to arbitrage a remote job. It doesn't look as good if you're not able to work remote.