Comments on: Sprawl and preferences

By: Josh G.

Josh G. — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 05:14:35 +0000

Michael: “One alternative, life with less physical stuff, streets full of people and shop windows to look in, and a transit system that’s clean, comfortable, frequent and properly priced at marginal cost, is simply outside the experience of a lot of the understandably angry voters in US suburbs, especially in the West.”

A lot of these “understandably angry voters” think, and not without good reason, that if America tries to force denser development, they’re going to wind up with “less physical stuff” but without all the nice amenities that might make up for that.

By: CharlesWT

CharlesWT — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 20:36:58 +0000

One way to slow the spread of suburbs onto farm land is to greatly reduce or exempt farm land from property taxes.

By: Bernard Yomtov

Bernard Yomtov — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 15:49:31 +0000

Michael,

I see. Thank you.

By: Michael Robinson

Michael Robinson — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 15:15:22 +0000

All this is good, but I want to mention another way in which sprawl is subsidized, which oddly doesn’t seem to get mentioned much. Consider the builder could divide a parcel of land to either build row-houses, or single family dwellings with land area equal to the size of the house. Unless purchasers are willing to pay as much for the land as they pay for the house, the builder is selling half as many units for less than twice the profit and is therefore making less on the single family units than on the row-houses. The builder will do this if the law forbids him from building otherwise, but in that case the law is effective requiring that he give away free land if he wants to sell houses. The upshot is that yes, people will buy in the suburbs if it comes with free land, but Yglesias’s claim is that they will buy less in the suburbs if the subsidized free land isn’t given away.

By: Andrea Knutson

Andrea Knutson — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 03:44:05 +0000

It is really very simple. Everyone wants to live in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Housing prices prove it. No one leaves unless they can no longer make it up the stoop. The real estate people befriend the elderly so that they will be the first to know of their decline or death.

Four story buildings split up in any way mathematically possible, lots of subways, a park, lots and lots and lots of restaurants.

Just copy it; they will come.

By: Brett Bellmore

Brett Bellmore — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 00:31:56 +0000

Just be careful you don’t elevate your hypothetical “preferences if people agreed with me” over revealed preferences. That way lies an infinitude of excuses to run roughshod over other people while imagining you’re only doing what they’d want if they were more rational/informed. It’s one of the greatest ways to numb the conscience man has ever invented.

By: uberVU - social comments

uberVU - social comments — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 23:46:13 +0000

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By: Michael O'Hare

Michael O'Hare — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 22:30:57 +0000

Anything that displaces food cultivation (biofuels, or housing/roads/etc in farmland) induces a chain of crop displacements because food demand is fairly inelastic, ending in some conversion of wild land (forest and pasture) somewhere to cultivation. The carbon stocks (soil carbon, roots, and above-ground plant materials) are burned or decay, releasing a big puff of carbon dioxide that is caused by the non-food use of the original land. More here http://www.aibs.org/bioscience-press-releases/100311_more_maize_ethanol_may_boost_greenhouse_gas_emissions.html .

If we charged developers who buy a farm and build housing on it for this carbon discharge a tax of $20 per ton of carbon they cause to be released this way, it would total about as much as the land price.

By: Bernard Yomtov

Bernard Yomtov — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 21:57:30 +0000

if there were a $20/ton carbon tax, and we counted land use change, the land price of suburban housing around most cities would double.

I wonder if you could clarify this. I’m afraid I don’t understand what you are saying. Thanks.