Quote:
Originally Posted by ChargerCarl
Yes, old buildings depreciate over time. But if you don't allow their re-development an ever growing scarcity premium wipes out this depreciation many times over. This is why NIMBYism is so profitable to homeowners and landlords. They reap huge gains with very little additional investment over time.
The result: San Francisco.
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Its a fine line. The dynamic in SF is completely different than the one in Chicago and I dont think its a useful comparison. SF is geographically small to begin with, and people generally like the city for what it is today. Its always been a semi-desirable place, but not to the absurd degree it is today thanks to tech salaries. Do you demolish the charm of SF to accommodate everyone who wants to live there? What if, lets just say for a thought experiment, the number of people that would want to live there is 3 million. Can the city ever support every person who wants to be in such a tiny space? Would they even still want to once it resembles a district in Hong Kong? I think thats pretty debatable.
The other issue is the general decline in quality of architecture for residential structures over the past century. They may be structurally better, but from an aesthetic standpoint, they are pretty awful. Of course this is a broad brush, but with new code regulations, parking requirements, and cheaper building materials, it basically guarantees it will be uglier and less human scaled. And the odds it will have flourishes that buildings from the 20s had, I think is now something reserved for luxury properties of today (real brick exterior, hardwood, terra cotta, built ins, etc). These things are what recently have given our cities their competitive advantage: their uniqueness to the bland, characterless tract home suburbs. We squander that at our peril.
I remember what fascinated me about old northern cities at first, and it was first and foremost their age. The Sunbelt was new and sterile. Walking among homes and trees that were still standing after 100 years, the vegetation and the architecture almost melding into one. It was, and still is a thrill. Maybe there was a faded painted advertisement on the side of a building for a newspaper that went out of business 50 years ago...it tied you to history. Every corner was a new discovery. I worry when we lose that. It cant be faked. And i see it as a competitve advantage to be cherished, again, esp when there are parts of the city that need the rebirth so much more.