The Scarcity of Nice Places
Nov. 17th, 2021 05:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis article talks about the scarcity of nice places. Some thoughts ...
* Lack of amenities is a real and serious problem. Just as one example, greenspace improves health, but poor neighborhoods have much less of it.
* Gentrification is a real and serious problem. The nicer something is, the more it costs, and that forces out people who can't afford it. This problem is so bad that some cities have basically emptied themselves of poor and middle-class people because it costs so much to live there. Given this, improvements read as threats to home and survival, so that makes people fight them. If they can only afford to live in shitty places, then they must defend the shittiness that makes those places accessible to them, because it deters predatory rich people.
* In order to make improvements without displacing current residents, you have to find ways of blocking the hikes in everything from rent and home prices to costs in local stores and restaurants. This is difficult at best and often impossible. One approach is to make citywide improvements; if all areas have working streetlights or intact sidewalks, then they will be no financial distinction because of their presence or lack.
* The article's suggestion that we build lots of nice things and places is valid in that this would reduce competition and thus prices. Building new ones is good. So is revitalizing nearly empty old ones. It's when you try to improve shitty places where all the poor people have crowded in for lack of better options that you run into serious problems. So cities also need to build lots of new affordable housing -- about three times what we currently have in order to cover the demand.
* Lack of amenities is a real and serious problem. Just as one example, greenspace improves health, but poor neighborhoods have much less of it.
* Gentrification is a real and serious problem. The nicer something is, the more it costs, and that forces out people who can't afford it. This problem is so bad that some cities have basically emptied themselves of poor and middle-class people because it costs so much to live there. Given this, improvements read as threats to home and survival, so that makes people fight them. If they can only afford to live in shitty places, then they must defend the shittiness that makes those places accessible to them, because it deters predatory rich people.
* In order to make improvements without displacing current residents, you have to find ways of blocking the hikes in everything from rent and home prices to costs in local stores and restaurants. This is difficult at best and often impossible. One approach is to make citywide improvements; if all areas have working streetlights or intact sidewalks, then they will be no financial distinction because of their presence or lack.
* The article's suggestion that we build lots of nice things and places is valid in that this would reduce competition and thus prices. Building new ones is good. So is revitalizing nearly empty old ones. It's when you try to improve shitty places where all the poor people have crowded in for lack of better options that you run into serious problems. So cities also need to build lots of new affordable housing -- about three times what we currently have in order to cover the demand.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2021-11-18 07:06 am (UTC)