Jonathan O'Brien

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Jonathan O'Brien

Jonathan O'Brien

@jonobri

Lead @yimbymelbourne // Chief @inflectionptswk // Boundless (2027, Pantera Press) // Emergent Ventures // [email protected]

Melbourne, Victoria Katılım Temmuz 2013
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Jonathan O'Brien
Jonathan O'Brien@jonobri·
Australia faces three major crises: housing, energy, and productivity. Boundless is a book about how we might confront these great problems of our time, and it’s coming out in 2027. Co-written with the excellent @HowardFMaclean and published by also-excellent @PanteraPress.
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Jonathan O'Brien
Jonathan O'Brien@jonobri·
@Joel_Huz The YIMBY movement is mostly focused on densifying existing suburbs. I think greenfield can be fine so long as infrastructure costs are paid—currently it’s very highly subsidised, which distorts preferences and tradeoffs. Recommend New Zealand Initiative + Alain Bertaud on this.
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Joel
Joel@Joel_Huz·
@jonobri Any reading suggestions on the subject would be appreciated.
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Jonathan O'Brien
Jonathan O'Brien@jonobri·
It's hard not to be a patriot 🫡🫡🫡
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Andrew Messenger
Andrew Messenger@MessengerAndrew·
@jonobri There's been an absolutely catastrophic collapse in Brisbane's unit market for some reason
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Dom
Dom@db_econ·
So you can't do facadism, and you have to be respectful of the existing design, but if you design an adaptive reuse that is so good you can't even tell it's new, the planners also think that's bad ?
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Jonathan O'Brien
Jonathan O'Brien@jonobri·
@SydneyYIMBY The fact that your TOD FAR is 2.5 while Nightingale builds 5.5 down here is so damning
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Jonathan O'Brien retweetledi
Sydney YIMBY
Sydney YIMBY@SydneyYIMBY·
Melbourne builds more units than Sydney and has kept prices flat since COVID. The problem is not that units here “don’t stack up” - it’s that we’re not permitting them in the places where they do stack up, or only permitting them to be half as tall, or burying them in paperwork.
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Jonathan O'Brien@jonobri

It's hard not to be a patriot 🫡🫡🫡

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Jonathan O'Brien
Jonathan O'Brien@jonobri·
@AbsentHog The big limiter in these areas is heritage. By virtue of being the core—they built out earlier, and so are older. That's the next frontier, mid 2026.
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offline hog
offline hog@AbsentHog·
This is an underrated key YIMBY point - one we keep losing on, even if we get mid rise zoning by trans stations and townhouse spam rules Its super important to allow a lot of intense land use in cities! Especially in the center! That's the most valuable bit
Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias

Some of this designated “small scale residential” is *extremely* close to the central business district. The benefits to the city in terms of growth, jobs, and tax revenue of allowing big condos & apartments here is large.

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Sydney YIMBY
Sydney YIMBY@SydneyYIMBY·
“Developers won’t build into a falling market” Well they’re doing it in Melbourne! Those prices are down by 20% in real terms vs five years ago.
Sydney YIMBY@SydneyYIMBY

Melbourne builds more units than Sydney and has kept prices flat since COVID. The problem is not that units here “don’t stack up” - it’s that we’re not permitting them in the places where they do stack up, or only permitting them to be half as tall, or burying them in paperwork.

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Steve
Steve@SteveMihajlo·
@jonobri @yimbymelbourne People like you are the reason this state will decay. You fight to lower the living standards of people based on your ideoligy. One day you will punished for it you terrible human being
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Leon
Leon@l___d__s·
@jonobri @cmkusher Agreed. I also think that aesthetics aside 4-6 stories has ~no negative and many positive externalities basically anywhere, and _both_ near transport hubs and the CBD the balance is in favor of 10-12. Nonetheless I don't think "markets" is a good response to the OP
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Cameron Kusher
Cameron Kusher@cmkusher·
At the risk of being labelled a NIMBY I legitimately don’t understand why anywhere away from the city centre and surrounds (which should be much more dense) needs to have that sort of height unless it is a legitimate new CBD (like Parramatta in Sydney). 6-8 storeys is surely tall enough as you move further away from the centre of the city (not just Melbourne but any city). Some of these heights, should they get built are going to stick out like a sore thumb. abc.net.au/news/2026-03-1…
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Jonathan O'Brien
Jonathan O'Brien@jonobri·
@l___d__s @cmkusher Right, but you can't just say "nowhere except the CBD needs more than 6-8 storeys" as if cities are static things that do not change over time based on a billion unpredictable factors. Just like you can't force 6 storeys in Sunbury, you can't viably cap Brunswick at 6!
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Philipp Heimberger
Philipp Heimberger@heimbergecon·
New Acemoglu et al. paper: AI may boost short-term decision quality but can erode the learning incentives that sustain collective knowledge in society, creating a risk of long-run knowledge decline or collapse.
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Keşfet

@chugginloads69 @yimbymelbourne @Joel_Huz @MessengerAndrew @db_econ @AbsentHog @BhagsNStonks @SydneyYIMBY