@surplustakes Look how many new households are going to have a place to call home.
More blocky, please.
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WINDOWS VISTA DID NOTHING WRONG
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Density bros - did we get too blocky
Tom Forth@thomasforth
Increasing density further than what is already under construction and planned is unlikely to be necessary to support the dense public transport networks, high R&D investment, and local power that is more important in making those places much better off. tomforth.co.uk/densityisdone/
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My theory about all this "Anglophone lag" stuff is that ideas/culture transmit faster across the English speaking world but that the rest of the world will probably follow suit.
Stefan Schubert@StefanFSchubert
The English-speaking world is falling in rankings of life satisfaction (The Economist)
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@DuncanStott Don't be heartless. Spare a thought for the downtrodden residents of Mayfair. They moved to Regent St. for some peace and quiet and now this?
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If you choose to live smack bang in the middle of a massive city, you accept that it inherently comes with change. Local residents can suck it up.
City Hall Conservatives@CityHallTories
Sadiq Khan continues to push ahead with Oxford Street pedestrianisation, and continues to ignore the views of local residents…
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@wight1984 The value of their land will go up.
But I think we give them too much credit. Most old folks simply abhor new stuff coming up because it wasn't there when they were kids.
It's all rationalisation and we don't need to believe it because neither do they.
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@duncanrobinson May as well do oral examinations like on the continent.
We can ask anthropic to build the bot that reviews the students and see productivity rise.
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Just do it. Students can spend the first year relearning how to write
Joe Allen@Joe___Allen
Remarkable that universities are resisting a return to pen and paper assessments. Seems like a total denial of reality.
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@PMArslanagic Why do rich parents get a discount? Just fine parents. Easy
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Parents in the UK who choose not to vaccinate their children should not be eligible for benefits.
That includes no Child Benefit and no free childcare. All children need to be vaccinated against killer diseases like Meningitis B and measles.
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@it_is_fareed Royal Docks is very nice, congrats!
Always very jealous when I am on the train to LCY.
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I’m a middle class Londoner and I live in Royal Docks. I absolutely would not want to live in Clapham or Fulham. People do live in these places. Those who bought them as “investments” have done extremely poorly out of them.
J.@_Wilsonpilled_
This market is for Asian and Middle Eastern investors, like thats up to 70% of these developments even in cheaper places like Royal Arsenal, Royal Docks, even Southall. Middle class Londoners with a brain attached would probably go to places like Clapham or Fulham
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Far from a backlash, which some people predict, I think we'd find that the vast majority of parents who don't get their children vaccinated would immediately get with the programme if it affected them materially. Most of these people are just ignorant, lazy free riders.
Phoebe Arslanagić-Little@PMArslanagic
Parents in the UK who choose not to vaccinate their children should not be eligible for benefits. That includes no Child Benefit and no free childcare. All children need to be vaccinated against killer diseases like Meningitis B and measles.
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@sallonsax They have Nano Banana 2 in Brighton, they can generate their imaginary trams just like the original post did.
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They have trams in Baghdad but not in Brighton and Hove. That's nuts.
Bhaumik Gowande@bhaumikgowande
The Capital of Iraq, Baghdad, has restarted its old tramway system to revive tourism. The country was ravage by war a decade ago 🇮🇶🚋
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@s8mb They just couldn't block it.
NIMBYs always existed. We just used to crush them.
slowboring.com/p/crushing-the…
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Important thread. Most people don't object to change when they expect that the change will improve things.
Nicholas Boys Smith@boys_nicholas
London is always being lost and re-found. Every generation harms the city that came before. The Edwardians replaced much of central London with cliffs of classically ornate Portland stone. Few complained. Shock, for example, was muted when this turned into...
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@brownliberite It looks nice. It will provide families plenty of space and many neighbours.
Some British tourist will snidely point at it and suggest many different improvements then go back to their tiny hovels and build none of them.
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You ever look at a building and KNOW it’s going to age poorly
JW 🇬🇧@FinanceTiger
🇩🇪 🇬🇧 New builds in Germany are quite different from those being constructed in the UK. They are just so perfect! I’ve asked some of its owners how much they pay for their Betriebskosten (Service Charges) they said ca €200 per month. Why is absolutely everything so much more expensive in the UK ? 😏
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@createstreets Please convince more people so I can finally afford to live there.
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What heartless lumps. Ugly & street-less.
Philip Oldfield@SustainableTall
London has built lots of flats…but few people want to buy them Since 2014, some 20,000 flats have been completed in Wandsworth. But nearly 40% of modern flats there have sold at a loss in the last 5 years archive.is/A3rfy
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@watling_samuel True, but there is a genuine local preference.
London has plenty of low-rises in the center in a way that would be unthinkable in Paris or Milan.
On the other hand Tokyo famously has plenty of low rises out of similar local preferences.
Still, build more flats please.
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Have you considered there is a "location vs space" tradeoff that means people choose between them based upon their preferences and given this central London probably wouldnt be single homes?
Tim Worstall@worstall
The English have always - but always - preferred houses with gardens. So, that's what should be built. If we hanged the planners that's also what would be built too.
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@breadandposes @AlexBalexCalexD @willuminare @BenjaminOCall I am sorry, I really think blocking hs2 to ship gravel for years is a fantasy. I do appreciate the time you've given me to argue with this though. If a new giant city does pop up, I'd be happy to move there.
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@wrong10433 @AlexBalexCalexD @willuminare @BenjaminOCall Not really- your building new city on the new rail connection hub? So your ability to control congestion to site is amazing? Your supply limit is ridiculous compared to any infill project and you can access to international prices with absolute minimum cost of transportation?
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hot take: forcibly preventing sprawl is a good thing. build up, not across. cities like birmingham and manchester are 4,500 people / km compared to 50,000 in paris proper and even 10,000 in the paris urban area. densify, improve transit, don’t turn into america.
Amazing Maps@amazingmap
A map of England’s green belts showing the protected land surrounding cities where development is tightly restricted
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@breadandposes @AlexBalexCalexD @willuminare @BenjaminOCall Big new city building means you hit congestion costs and supply limits in the local market (just think of cement) way before you hit any scale economy from halving architects
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@wrong10433 @AlexBalexCalexD @willuminare @BenjaminOCall And to explain why the total size of the comparative industries matters- knock on effect across wider economy. For example the pressure on HGV drivers wage inflation is significant part of various bin men wage disputes. Smaller total, smaller inflation spiral effect.
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@breadandposes @AlexBalexCalexD @willuminare @BenjaminOCall You generate returns by supplying the housing people need where they want them. You want to reroute that to a pet project somewhere else. Okay. But you also insist that it'll be extremely inefficient ( to the point of blocking other housing).
I don't get it. Gosplan but dumber?
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@wrong10433 @AlexBalexCalexD @willuminare @BenjaminOCall No? You'd focus on the highest output to cost ratio? My aim isn't to generate returns for developers?it's to drive down the cost of housing in this country using the resources we have to hand?
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@breadandposes @AlexBalexCalexD @willuminare @BenjaminOCall Assume, against evidence and mistaking total yearly tenders for marginal additional ones, that input supply elasticity is very low. You'd focus more on small incremental projects rather than a very large one where you have to pay the full inflation cost before any return.
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@wrong10433 @AlexBalexCalexD @willuminare @BenjaminOCall I'm confused why you feel this supports your case?
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@breadandposes @AlexBalexCalexD @willuminare @BenjaminOCall again, it is important to understand what marginal means before reading that article.
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@wrong10433 @AlexBalexCalexD @willuminare @BenjaminOCall The "construction orgy" in Italy was €46bn of tenders. In UK it was £133bn, or over 3x more. Its completely different bottlenecks
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@breadandposes @AlexBalexCalexD @willuminare @BenjaminOCall You are looking for the marginal effect of supply push, not any inflationary effect in year 2021.
However, if you truly believe in enormous input inflation risks, we should sacrifice the idea of a giant city towards more infill, rather than the other way around.
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@wrong10433 @AlexBalexCalexD @willuminare @BenjaminOCall The link you're providing shows a 20% bump in costs over two years and gives explanation of why this probably wouldn't translate.
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@breadandposes @AlexBalexCalexD @willuminare @BenjaminOCall I think this is overstating general equilibrium effects.
Even a construction orgy like the Italian superbonus resulted in something like a 5-7% cost push at most.
cepr.org/voxeu/columns/…
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@wrong10433 @AlexBalexCalexD @willuminare @BenjaminOCall Not just direct workers on site but in design and approval bottlenecks, inefficient deliveries, material production and waste.
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