| Even with removing regulations, you still have a limit to how dense a city can be. > The authors ask the obvious question: if homebuilding is a competitive industry, then why don’t prices fall to the cost of building a home? Well in dense cities, it's all about the land value. Every country has seen increase in rent and property values in their largest city. Meanwhile value in rural area and not attractive cities is also dropping in many parts of the world. Is this because of regulation? Probably not as it is happening in various countries with different law and policies. It's probably more about where people want to live and the centralization of economy to only a few large cities. In Europe to get the best jobs you have to move to London, Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam. Those cities are getting more and more expensive. In the US, SF, Seattle, New-York (and I miss others) see the same phenomena. So limiting this to "that's a regulation" issue looks pretty narrow sighted. If your model doesn't work, change the model instead of trying to change the world to suit your model. |