This is a great idea and has potential to help with the problem of overcrowded urban centers.
It is impossible to keep adding people to the same space while giving everybody much room for their money. Trying to cram a generation of millennials into the same area as a wealthy cohort of boomers and rich immigrants predictably makes home prices go up.
All the ways of lowering property prices usually imply killing the economy and putting people out of work. Home prices usually end up going down only because people are made not to be able to afford them. This is incredibly destructive and it only allows more people to live in the same space when they are forced to move in with their parents.
Increasing supply or nudging the new generation to go in areas with more potential for spacial growth not only allows the new community to be built to the image of its own people but building and growing the infrastructure of a new neighborhood or revitalizing a dying town creates jobs for the people that go there. These jobs would be filled by people who can actually afford to live where they work and potentially profit from property value growth with less chance of a bubble pop because prices would not be starting from so high
The best thing governments could do to help with this situation would be to encourage some of the institutions and jobs relevant to new generations to move out of overpriced, overcrowded centers. They could foster jobs creation in centers with more low cost space and less chance of spacial overload. They could maybe move some public jobs there to help jump start the migration. This would also put some downward pressure on the prices in overcrowded places until we reach some kind of equilibrium.
I say stop trying to cram everyone in the same volume. Let the older rich generation keep the expensive quarters they've spent their life building and allow new generations to create our own communities, in our own space, from choices guided guided our own tastes.
Any solution that doesn't help spread jobs out to cheaper less overcrowded regions are going to hit the volumetric limits of the laws of physics eventually.
It is impossible to keep adding people to the same space while giving everybody much room for their money. Trying to cram a generation of millennials into the same area as a wealthy cohort of boomers and rich immigrants predictably makes home prices go up.
All the ways of lowering property prices usually imply killing the economy and putting people out of work. Home prices usually end up going down only because people are made not to be able to afford them. This is incredibly destructive and it only allows more people to live in the same space when they are forced to move in with their parents.
Increasing supply or nudging the new generation to go in areas with more potential for spacial growth not only allows the new community to be built to the image of its own people but building and growing the infrastructure of a new neighborhood or revitalizing a dying town creates jobs for the people that go there. These jobs would be filled by people who can actually afford to live where they work and potentially profit from property value growth with less chance of a bubble pop because prices would not be starting from so high
The best thing governments could do to help with this situation would be to encourage some of the institutions and jobs relevant to new generations to move out of overpriced, overcrowded centers. They could foster jobs creation in centers with more low cost space and less chance of spacial overload. They could maybe move some public jobs there to help jump start the migration. This would also put some downward pressure on the prices in overcrowded places until we reach some kind of equilibrium.
I say stop trying to cram everyone in the same volume. Let the older rich generation keep the expensive quarters they've spent their life building and allow new generations to create our own communities, in our own space, from choices guided guided our own tastes.
Any solution that doesn't help spread jobs out to cheaper less overcrowded regions are going to hit the volumetric limits of the laws of physics eventually.