Incentives feel good, and probably don’t hurt much, but they probably don’t help much either.

There are a few problems with that thought process. First of all, the idea that we’re going to rely on “lower quality” housing for our affordable housing is missing the point. We don’t want to create a situation where you have to move into a shitty old house to get affordable housing.

But that’s moot, really. A situation that you describe, in which landlords have to actually LOWER rent because of over supply, is NOT good. People seem to have this impression that if only we could over supply the market, then everything would be affordable. That’s very naieve. While this would be nice for renters in the short term, it would be very BAD for the city’s economy and development. Projects wouldn’t get started, city reveunes would fall, etc.

So, if you want both a vibrant economy that provides a market stimulus for good growth AND safe and decent housing for all income types, you’re going to have to have a variety of different subsidies and other tools directed at incentivizing developers to do the right thing. This is especially true with land prices being what they are, rising construction costs, a thirst for better design, and an increasing (and legitimate) desire to incorporate greener elements. All of those add up, and there is increasingly less and less room for affordability in your typical project. Dan had it right on: incentives are needed.

I agree wholeheartedly.

And I’d also say that we aren’t going to maintain ~9B people after population plateaus and declines. Why? Resource constraints (mostly cheap energy, and water) may not allow this population maintenance. If we can’t get cheap solar/wind/whatevah to replace oil, then we can’t maintain current population levels, let alone 9B.

So this begs the question about whether we’ll have a hard landing or a soft landing [3 links embedded] to level human population after the decline.

We’ll have a hard landing if the large western first-world countries approach the problem with a continuance of the hyper-individualism found there today. I won’t pretend to know what will happen, but EO Wilson answered the question “how many people can the earth support” by stating “if they consume at Japanese and American levels, about 500 million”.

I’ve said for a while now that some places will depopulate when oil (energy) and water (climate) become restricted. Seattle will not. Denver, the Front Range, the Intermountain West, and a good chunk west from 100 to the Sierra-Cascades will. My little ex-town will completely depopulate.

Folk will need some place to go. Most won’t be concerned about a three-car garage and a big yard. But we need to get there from here.

Outfits like Liveable Seattle aren’t helping, and sadly again whack-a-mole must be played, as a considerable fraction of our society still isn’t paying attention. What will get folks to pay attention before its too late? That is our job: how to get folks to listen. Some of us, however, must make those places for the future right now, as it takes time. The Liveable Seattle folks, for whatever reason, can’t picture the future. That is the task ahead.

Likewise, nobody that I know of is claiming that density is necessary for livability. What I would claim however, is that it is, most likely, going to be necessary for survivability. So a backlash against density for whatever reason is basically suicide. A city full of beautifully designed townhouses, extensive lush open spaces, and not a shadow cast by a tall building aren’t going to make it any more livable when the planet is burning up.

The common ground that has to be reached is that we’ve got massive problems to solve, we’ve got very little time to solve them, and it won’t be painless. Some people will lose their views! Cry me a fucking river.

I doubt Paris would fit Livable Seattle’s definition of livable – there aren’t enough single family homes. BTW, that’s why they can achieve high density with relatively low building heights.