Should European housing politics be Americanized?

irdc

The issues around zoning are not comparable. For one, here in the Netherlands we have plenty of density and not a lot of missing-middle, but still a giant shortage. The problem here was never zoning, it was a lack of building.

watwut

That is weird article. Suburban zone nobody really cares about exists in some places therefore Europeans should make it big polarized political issue on the assumption that any suburban zone is the reason of all issues. But like, did that polarized angry rhetorics actually solved the American issue?

xienze

Funny how everything worked pretty well, zoning restrictions and all, until public policy shifted towards papering over population decline with mass migration. An immigrant needs a house _today_, a baby needs their own separate housing unit in roughly 20 years. One approach towards population growth flattens the housing demand curve considerably, and it's not the one we're pursuing any longer. That's what's changed.

felooboolooomba

> European policy debates often become Americanized because of the American domination of social media. No it doesn't. And America doesn't dominate social media in Europe, except repeated administration scandals, paedofiles and history's largest pedo ring cover-up.

yladiz

Am I understanding that the solution proposed in the article is to allow more dense building in suburbs/outskirts of cities in Europe? This doesn't solve the actual problem that many European cities face, which is a housing shortage in the actual city center, where people want to live; there's generally not that much a lack of housing the further you get outside of a major city center in Europe, and people don't want to live outside of the city center because, well, they want to be in the city.

secretsatan

Could it be the author only read english articles? The assertion that no one in europe speaks about housing shortages does not reflect my experience. There are no countries in europe who’s native language is english, and all online discourse would be in european languages. ( apart of course from the uk, but the author makes the distinction)

tim-tday

You must be truly desperate to come to us for help. We have basically the worst housing outcomes you could ever hope for.