[voisin]

> Planners do important work moulding how our cities grow.

Lost me at the first sentence. Let me fix it:

“Planners follow the flavour of the day while committing the same sins over and over, their failures recognizable only in retrospect once replaced with a new (also faulty) paradigm based on centralized planning. Despite their repeated failures, as an industry or field of study they show no contrition and continue to act as if they and only they know what’s best.”

[philips]

I have personally been involved in a few planning and “traffic engineering” issues where I live. And although this comment is heavy on the sarcasm it is very reflective of my experience.

As a whole planning departments seem unable to defend decisions with relevant data and instead rely on indefensibly old manuals and standards. Some of which themselves use indefensible statistics- particularly traffic manuals (lets plan our roads based on a survey of a similar road in Atlanta in 1994!). Or worse municipalities follow each other in circles and trends.

This would all be fine if the downstream effects weren’t affecting investment with a floor of tens of millions dollars.

I don’t know what the answer is but Parking Reform, Strong Towns and Not Just Bikes are my north stars on this stuff. Do you have any others?

[voisin]

I am not actually intending to be sarcastic at all - I think the entire industry is morally bankrupt. I am a real estate developer (re-developer actually - specializing in heritage buildings and other complicated adaptive reuse projects), so I deal with planners, committees, official plans, zoning by-laws and the building code daily. It is painful to see indefensible requirements being thrust on projects - even those projects (like mine) that the municipality seems predisposed to desire (saving old buildings, intensifying the core, etc etc).

What’s worse, is to watch governments now rush to “fix” the mistakes that they are solely responsible for by punishing people - retroactively changing the rules - and costing average folk their savings. I refer to Canada specifically which made it so challenging to build housing for 40 years that we have a massive scarcity and housing crisis that is being “fixed” by taxing / fining people for having a second home.

[Workaccount2]

> by taxing / fining people for having a second home.

I don't see the issue with this? The profits in Canadian real estate are not on the back of some new found resource. It's entirely an effective wealth redistribution from have-nots to haves.

If you have property, the vast amount of value in it is strictly from the fact that it is artificially scarce. To get into the "haves" you have to pay an artificial tax in the form of a grossly inflated price.

[AnthonyMouse]

> I don't see the issue with this?

Consider the incentives the government has created here.

You can't build new housing, or it's extremely expensive because it's limited to specific lots and then you have to buy out whatever happens to be there even if they don't want to sell, and destroy a 5 story building in order to build a 10 story building, doubling costs while halving the increase in housing. Housing is thereby expensive.

So you tax people who own housing. Well, that doesn't lower rents, because there are still the same number of people who need somewhere to live but now fewer people to invest in new construction because it's less profitable with more of the money going to taxes, so that lowers supply even more and rents increase to cover the new taxes.

This an undersupply problem. You don't fix it by taxing suppliers.

[tmnvix]

> This an undersupply problem.

Every time I go looking for statistics to back this argument, I come away underwhelmed. In most cases I see little change in the ratio of dwellings to households over the past few decades.

Take a look at the first figure (HM1.1.1) in the following document - particularly those for the US, Canada, Australia, and NZ (all countries with prominent housing issues).

https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HM1-1-Housing-stock-and-cons...

On the other hand, I think there is a strong argument to be made for increasing underutilisation of housing (more second homes, short term rentals, etc).

[AnthonyMouse]

> Take a look at the first figure (HM1.1.1) in the following document - particularly those for the US, Canada, Australia, and NZ (all countries with prominent housing issues).

These are country-wide numbers. The obvious problem is that there is existing housing in Detroit but demand for housing in San Francisco.

It's also somewhat self-defining. If millennials are forced to live with their parents because they can't afford their own home then this is counted as one "household" when there is demand for two.

> On the other hand, I think there is a strong argument to be made for increasing underutilisation of housing (more second homes, short term rentals, etc).

There isn't anything inherently wrong with short-term rentals or second homes, they're just another type of housing demand that requires supply to increase to compensate. Until it isn't allowed to.

[bongodongobob]

Taxing people who own multiple homes and taxing people who own apartment complexes are two completely different things and shouldn't be conflated.

[AnthonyMouse]

You do realize that if someone can avoid the tax by renting it out then they'll just rent it out to a friend for a nominal amount to avoid the tax?

[8note]

The owner of a second home isn't a supplier though, they're a hoarder

[AnthonyMouse]

But how are you proposing to distinguish them? It's all too easy to rent out a property on paper.

[jahewson]

No, no, the government interjecting themselves into housing and creating an artificial scarcity, to aid their favoured voters at the time, is the problem. The idea that the solution to this is not to have the government step back but to have them become even more involved by redistributing this wealth distortion to their new favoured voters is a further level of madness.

[voisin]

This is my point above 100%. The government has been the sole source of these problems and now is desperate to solve them, steamrolling people without compensation.

The same, in my opinion, with inflation. Inflation has been caused by government monetary policy being too loose for three decades and effectively neutering its anti-competition authorities, but now they are getting tough on grocers as if the grocers are both the sole cause of the problem (false!) and that they made the problem in a vacuum (false!).

I have historically been extremely liberal, voting Liberal or NDP (even more liberal than the Liberals for those outside Canada) my whole life. The last few years of seeing our Liberal government fumble the ball so badly and point at everyone but the government itself (left and right governments of the current and past!) has made me realize the truth of the Reagan quote “government isn’t the solution to your problems, it is the source of your problems”.

Hayek’s Nobel speech on the pretence of knowledge is as accurate as ever.

[all2]

The grossly inflated price comes from where though? I'd put it to you that a ban on usury where real estate was concerned would crush land values over night. Easy money (cheap loans) allow speculation, and speculation is one of the primary drivers of land value.

[epistasis]

A far bigger driver of speculation is scarcity. Without that scarcity, loans would do nothing to drive land value.

Tight zoning is the primary driver of real estate value, because it further increases the scarcity of land. It makes small homes worth absolutely insane values.

Further, though eliminating cheap loans will limit the amount that people can pay for the real estate, it also reduces the ability of people to pay, so every person is back to the same place with scarcity. So though eliminating loans may change the face value of the cost of housing, in real terms, eliminating loans does nothing for ordinary's people ability to obtain housing where they want it. Only increasing supply by removing overly restrictive zoning will actually improve the material conditions for people.

All that said, we should definitely eliminate financial products in the US like the 30 year fixed rate mortgage, a government creation that does inflate prices, while reducing the ability of people to move. But we should get rid of it primarily because it reduces the ability of people to move by trapping them into the home they were in when mortgage rates were low.

[voisin]

What you call usury is also a government caused problem. It’s almost like 30+ year amortizations and ultra low interest rates… weren’t good for affordability. But now everyone but the government itself is the cause of this issue (in the government’s humble opinion). Blame immigrants, developers, AirBNB, investors… anyone but government! And if you must blame government, blame some other level of government!

[all2]

Tbh, I think you nailed it. Policy largely drives the system in a law avoiding society.

[BenFranklin100]

What is your opinion on the recent SCOTUS decisions declaring that forcing developers to pay for community improvements qualifies as a taking? Do you see this having a material effect on housing development?

[voisin]

I am Canadian so haven’t followed this decision, but I 100% support banning municipal governments from funding pet projects with fees on developers. It’s a major component of any project’s cost structure and absolutely flows through to the end buyer or renter. Landlords aren’t just absorbing these costs because the demand for housing exceeds the supply so house buyers/renters are price takers and ultimately shoulder the tax/fee.

[BenFranklin100]

Worse, the fees reduce new construction, thus limiting supply and raising rents on existing units. It's bad public policy regardless of its legality.

[alistairSH]

Do you have a link to a summary? I missed it, if it ever made the front page news.

IANAdeveloper… if a developer is otherwise within code/zoning, SCOTUS is probably correct. If they’re asking for zoning changes, there should be room for negotiation on nearby improvements.

[voisin]

> If they’re asking for zoning changes, there should be room for negotiation on nearby improvements.

The problem is that in many areas (of Canada at least), zoning bylaws are horribly outdated and inconsistent with municipal priorities. But municipalities don’t have an incentive to change them because if they allow things to be done “as of right” with modern zoning, they can’t shake down developers to fund their pet projects. So everything is a negotiation, which again adds uncertainty and cost.

Governments need to get out of the way and let developers build, or accept that they are the source of the housing scarcity.

[AnthonyMouse]

The takings clause was ratified in 1791. Unless the current zoning restrictions predate that, there is an element of cheating to imposing a restriction and then "negotiating" to remove it in exchange for something that would otherwise be a taking.

[carbocation]

News article about it: https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/supreme-court-ruli...

[BenFranklin100]

This is the ruling, thanks.

[screye]

Any profession whose communities disagree on the very building blocks of their discipline is not a science, but an art. Urban planning, architecture and economics toe that line.

Over the last century, economics has build some of the necessary concensus to move closer to a science and architecture has moved closer to art + compliance, leaving the rest to civil engineers.

But global urban planning communities remain at each other's throats, and if anything, have diverged even further.

Traffic engineering is a joke because Uber and Google Maps run better traffic simulations than any planning committee in the country. The science has been available to those who want to find it. It's avoidance by planning groups (not blaming the engineers so much as the overall organization) evokes the incompetence/malice comparison from Hanlons razor.

The Urban planning outcomes of the anglophone vs the rest of the 1st world might as well be spitting in each other's faces. Given similar policy goals, cultural values and weather....one of them is wrong.

And I know I have placed my bets.

[tmnvix]

> I don’t know what the answer is but Parking Reform, Strong Towns and Not Just Bikes are my north stars on this stuff. Do you have any others?

I think you might like this planning talk given in the 90s. One of my favourite videos on youtube and quite hilarious at times:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMvwHDFVpCE

[k99x55]

The Lively & Liveable Neighbourhoods that are Illegal in Most of North America : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKIVX968PQ

The Suburbs Are Bleeding America Dry | Climate Town (feat. Not Just Bikes) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfsCniN7Nsc

[alistairSH]

In my experience, local planners usually try to do what’s right/best/useful. And then end up hamstrung by state law or state DOT. I’m in Fairfax County, VA FWIW.

I’ve seen them be quite proactive with plans near the Metro extension. But then VDOT does dumb shit like failing to build out multi-modal transit to meet the vision of the local planners.

[Angostura]

What's your preferred solution? Laissez-faire development?

[davidw]

I think some of the discussion in this book - written by a former planner - is pretty sensible around what we should be doing:

https://islandpress.org/books/arbitrary-lines#desc

By getting planners out of some of the unnecessary minutiae of their jobs, they can, well, actually plan for things. Ensure that we have good street grids, land set aside for parks and schools that are harder to retrofit into a pure 'anything goes' system, and also try to do some planning to keep genuinely noxious uses away from where people live, rather than "keeping apartments away from the 'nice' neighborhoods".

[renewiltord]

Whatever Tokyo is doing is nice. I liked it. Mixed use is fantastic.

[voisin]

Yes. I think the canonical fear that there would be nuclear power plants next to daycares is nonsense and that private developers acting in their own interests would manage to identify market demand, experiment in fulfilling that demand, and the result would be the creation from the ground up of best practices for creating vibrant communities - until market preferences shift. And when those preferences shift I think private developers would be far quicker to adapt than central planners.

I find it wild how much the west abhors eastern communist central planning and then adopts it for the very fabric of its communities.