[maeln]

> Looks like politicians all over will do everything in their power except actually building more apartments.

This is the wrong way to frame this issue. A lot of cities like Paris and Amsterdam have this issue with short-term renting. "Build moar" is just not really an option for these type of city.

Firstly, the constructible area of the city is limited. So build, but build where ? You can expand horizontally, but this creates challenges with public transportation and other public services. And it can be slow since it means having to expel industry and agriculture further to rezone area into constructible home/office area. So the other option is to build up, which means destroying potentially historic building, changing the skyline and viewpoint. This would be bad for tourism (and people who live here might not like it either), since this is a big reason why people even come to visit.

In the past, cities had simple way to deal with this. With zoning and hotel licences, the city could have a real urban plan on how it wanted to evolve and how much space it wanted to dedicate to tourism vs industry vs offices vs homes. But AirBnb came and just said "fuck that" and bypass complitely the licence système and or building and operating permit usually needed for tourism. Greed and capitalism took advantage of that and the number of place to rent or buy descreased significantly in favour of short term tourism rental, making living in the city slowly unaffordable.

Building more is not that simple. AirBnb respecting the law is a simple solution. It won't complitely solve the issue of the availaibility of affordable home, but it sures as hell help.

[bluGill]

> means destroying potentially historic building, changing the skyline and viewpoint

Get over it! Seriously, most buildings are not historic. By trying to make them all historic you ensure they are all lost and the few that really are historic can't stand out for the history they represent. Save what is really history, but not everything.

Similarly, the skyline will change. That is life. Accept it. You do not own the view, it is the combination of everyone, and not everyone agrees with you so why are you forcing your preferred view on others?

[namdnay]

if building up is bad for tourism, it kills two birds with one stone: more housing and less tourists who want airbnbs. so slowly build up until you stabilise the tourism at the level you want!

[maeln]

Locals in cities do not necessarily like high rise neither. And tourism brings a lot of money and jobs. People won't really like making their city uglier and losing their jobs just to have more housing.

[concinds]

> Locals in cities do not necessarily like high rise neither

It's a lot more selfish and malicious than that. They want to remain housed affordably, so they support rent control, but they don't care about the city being affordable in general or for anyone not already living there. Often they outright oppose it (because those moving in would be ethnic minorities or poorer, with concerns about crime), but they disguise their racism with ridiculous aesthetic preferences about "skylines" and "shadows" and "neighborhood character", block highrises, block most construction, and you end up with rent controls for current residents but years long wait lists. Working 100% as designed.

What locals in attractive locations really want is to restrict supply, because the majority are homeowners and want to preserve their paper net worth. They caused the problem, benefit from it and don't want it fixed.

[CalRobert]

The Netherlands has lots of land dedicated to meat production that could be repurposed for housing. It’s also surprisingly low-rise, with rowhouses the norm.

[jpalawaga]

except your argument as to why "build moar" isn't an option is basically "we acknowledge the population is booming, however, the vibes are more important than providing housing."

Sure, everyone wants their particular city to be frozen in time for cuteness and nostalgia reasons. However, it sort of assumes that the sociopolitical environment is also frozen (it isn't).

so instead you end up with voters voting against densification because, essentially, "I got mine."

p.s. i'm not sure that places that banned/heavily restricted airbnb experienced a meaningful decline in rental prices (e.g. new york, san francisco, vancouver, etc). it's basically a distraction from failed policy.

p.p.s. new york is one of the most popular tourist destinations and incredibly built up, and doesn't seem to have issues with tourists wanting to visit. tokyo too. and these also still have their quintessential historic/preserved areas, too.