Jonny5
Senior Member
A question pondered and an argument that that "build build build" and YIMBY philosophies only use up scarce land supply while also inducing further demand (much like new highways induce more traffic) and that in-turn causes rents to rise, not to fall.
Libertarian Economist Tyler Cowen debates it and concludes it is unlikely, but also notes Seoul would be a possible example as density has been allowed to increase there relatively unfettered but rents have never gone down on a real inflation basis, they have in fact only gone up even at more accelerated rates that match accelerated building.
Either way, it's an interesting idea to ponder. Maybe the province needs to use a heavy hand to hard disperse growth out of the GTA. Do we need new mid-size cities? Should we try to focus on making Peterborough and Windsor more like Mississauga (names picked at random for examples only, it could be any small Ontario city vs. Mississauga) than focusing on more extreme mid-high density in downtown Toronto? Is Kitchener-Waterloo an example of this in progress?
What follows from the idea that new construction raises rents?
A perpetual economic growth machine! Big if true!!
www.slowboring.com
Libertarian Economist Tyler Cowen debates it and concludes it is unlikely, but also notes Seoul would be a possible example as density has been allowed to increase there relatively unfettered but rents have never gone down on a real inflation basis, they have in fact only gone up even at more accelerated rates that match accelerated building.
Does more construction raise rents? - Marginal REVOLUTION
Matt Yglesias has a long post on that question, recommended albeit gated. Matt’s take is hard to summarize, so I will provide a somewhat different view, though one that is still pro-YIMBY though with a different slant. Without loss of generality, we can assume that sometimes “more building”...
marginalrevolution.com
Either way, it's an interesting idea to ponder. Maybe the province needs to use a heavy hand to hard disperse growth out of the GTA. Do we need new mid-size cities? Should we try to focus on making Peterborough and Windsor more like Mississauga (names picked at random for examples only, it could be any small Ontario city vs. Mississauga) than focusing on more extreme mid-high density in downtown Toronto? Is Kitchener-Waterloo an example of this in progress?
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