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This is the second of two parts in an article about Sydney's housing crisis. [read Part 1] Part 1 delivered the "Parable of the Frozen Oranges" and covers the meaning of price and the real meaning of Sydney house prices. Part 2 gives more details about the planning failures, the role of investors, moronic proposed solutions, and the underlying reasons for the planning and housing disaster in Sydney. Some solutions to these problems are also given. House Components In this article till now I have not discussed the components that make up a house. Initially it was best to discuss a whole house, like a whole orange. If you can understand how a shortage of oranges would cause some boys to miss-out, you can also grasp why a shortage of houses would cause some families to miss-out. I mentioned how govt controlled the supply of housing by price-inelastic politically-based supply of dwelling permission and I said this was the cause of Sydney's housing horror. Now is the time to study the components of housing and find evidence to back-up my claims. Most people think of a house as being comprised of house and land. In fact there are 4 distinct components: 1) house materials. 2) house construction labour. 3) raw land - a licence from govt for exclusive limited use of land. 4) dwelling permit - permission from govt to build a house upon the specified raw land. Every baker knows that if he runs short of flour, yeast or water, he cannot bake any more bread. So too every builder knows that if he doesn't have the material, labour, land or permission for a house, then he can't build another house. Since Sydney's population is growing and the number of families is increasing, it is necessary to increase the number of houses to avoid families missing-out on independent housing. That's not rocket science so far. But for a while now Sydney has been unable to build enough extra houses and many families are missing-out on independent housing. It must be a shortage in one or more of the components of a house that is causing this shortage. Once we can identify the problem component, we can work on a solution. Which component is in shortage? I believe that the cause of the shortage is quite easy to identify. There is a shortage of govt permission. Govt, via council zoning, is simply not giving permission to build the number of houses we need for the number of families we have. Here are my beliefs:
Let us examine the components, their markets and their prices, to see if I am right. In 1970 in Sydney a typical young family might pay 4 times average salary for an average house. Land with dwelling permit cost 1 times salary, the house materials and labour cost 3 times salary. Now a similar house would cost 10 times average salary. Land with dwelling permit costs 7 times salary and house materials and labour cost the same 3 times salary. I used the AV Jennings website (http://www.avjennings.com.au/) to verify this. Many of their houses cost 4-5 times average salary, but they are much bigger and better than average houses from 1970. Building materials are supplied in highly competitive markets. Not only do materials compete against each other (eg steel vs tiles) but each material has several competing suppliers, and materials can be imported if the local market becomes uncompetitive. In Sydney there has not been a sustained shortage of building materials for decades. Building labour is also supplied in a competitive market. Although govt does license all tradesmen and charges fees, levies and income taxes on them, the market is still reasonably competitive. It is not that hard to become a tradesman, and tradesmen earn a good but fair wage for their labour. Despite an enormous rise in burdensome taxes and regulations from govt, our building industry has managed to keep house construction costs at the same multiple of salary as in 1970. This is a wonderful achievement, the result of innovation, improvements and a testimony to the success of markets. There is no shortage in materials or labour. There is no price rise in materials or labour. I declare that materials and labour are not the cause of Sydney's housing crisis. It is the cost of the land with dwelling permit that has changed since 1970. The problem must be a shortage of land, a shortage of building permits or both. Let us examine the cost of each to see where the problem lies. Dwelling permits are not sold alone. They are granted by govt to specific blocks of land. These blocks of land are then sold. There are two ways of figuring out the cost or value of the permits. You could ask a developer to estimate how much extra a block of land would be worth if it came with permission for more dwellings. Any developer worth his salt can make these estimates. The other way is to find similar land with different dwelling permission, and to compare prices. For example, let me ask you: Why does 5 acres of "farmland" in Castle hill with permission for only 1 house cost $2 million whereas next door 5 acres of residential housing land with permission for 30 dwellings sells for $10 million? Do your sums and you can figure the approximate value of building permission in Castle Hill. And when you consider that part of the "farm" value is speculative premium that it will be rezoned, you can get an even more accurate figure. By doing this we find that land has increased in price slightly but dwelling permission has increased enormously. I encourage every Australian reader to do these calculations and see that it is true in their area. Under a market regime where dwelling permission is freely available it would be that the cost of land would be the amount of money needed to persuade an existing land owner to do without a portion of their land. As population rises and wealth rises, you would expect the cost of raw land would also rise. Particularly in areas of high demand (waterfront) the cost of land would be very high. We can't do much about that. However if govt makes dwelling permits readily available then there will always be affordable housing available for young families somewhere. There has never been a shortage of land proposed for subdivision. Australia still has 100 acres of land per person. Many landowners will be always willing to subdivide if they can make a profit and will propose all kinds of subdivision schemes if there is a buck in it (which there definitely is). When you study the matter, the housing shortage is definitely caused by a shortage of permission from govt. Quite simply Australian govt has permitted fewer dwellings in our entire country than families live here. The problem is worst in Sydney. In Australia there is not one house for every family because govt does not permit sufficient number of houses. It's moronic, but true. Regulation Choke Point At some point of time between 1970 and present, govt regulations choked the housing supply and caused the housing shortage and high prices. In the parable of the frozen oranges the exact time and cause of the shortage could be pinpointed. But the situation with housing subdivisions and regulations is more complicated so we cannot similarly pinpoint the exact moment when govt caused the shortage of housing. Zoning regulations have existed for many decades before this crisis. It has always been normal (and arguably healthy) for a percentage of subdivision applications to be rejected. Some rejections are not the problem. The problem is when the regulations are too strict to allow the need for extra houses to be met. What this means is that the faster your population growth, the looser your zoning rules must be. Before 1970 there were always sufficient subdivision permissions granted to meet the needs of population growth, whereas since then there have been insufficient approvals. The difference between sufficient permission and insufficient permission is the key to the whole housing crisis Once the zoning choke point is reached there will be some clear signs that it has occurred. There will be a housing shortage and certain class of people such as low income families will no longer be able to afford housing. There will be a great rise in the price of the permission component of a house. Although we cannot pinpoint the start of the housing crisis, we know it occurred after 1970, since that is when the signs of shortage first started to show. The Role of Investors Investors who buy housing influence prices but have no effect on the housing shortage. Since the shortage is caused by the number of dwelling permits being less than the number of families, the only realistic solution is to create more dwelling permits. Basically, investors cannot do this. Only if an investor is able to persuade govt to issue more dwelling permits can this investor help solve the housing shortage. Conversely, only by keeping a house empty without tenants could the investor worsen the housing shortage. It is vital to understand that most investors have no influence on the govt permitting process. Most investors buy existing housing (buy to let) and have no effect on the housing shortage since these investors do not create or destroy any housing and do not create or destroy any families. When a buy-to-let investor buys a house, they make one less house available for other families to buy. However they also make one more house available for other families to rent. Some unthinking fools blame investors who buy existing housing for causing Australia's housing shortage. These fools seem to think that investors destroy the accommodation they buy and don't rent it out. Other fools think that the housing shortage can be solved by encouraging more investors to buy existing houses and make them available for rent. These fools seem to think that buying an existing house creates more accommodation. Of course it doesn't. Every house bought by investors is one less house that can be bought by a young family to live in. A buy-to-let investor is effectively buying the entire lifespan of a house's use and then carving it up and selling it off a month at a time to tenants. The act of cutting a pizza does not create or destroy any food. Likewise, slicing an existing house into rental portions does not create or destroy accommodation. Investors and Prices Whilst investors do not destroy or create accommodation, recent times have seen a huge rise in the popularity of housing investment and many more houses in Sydney are owned by investors than ever before. What is the effect of this on prices? If a large number of buy-to-let investors buy housing this forces a large number of families to rent instead of buy. It will be the market forces of prices that cause these families to rent instead of buy. So we can say a large number of investors will cause renting vs buying to become more attractive to a large number of families. It could be that purchase prices go higher and rents go lower than they otherwise would have been (if not in actual dollar terms). However this is not certain. If say 1000 young couples, living with mum and dad wanted to buy their own first house, but were outbid by 1000 buy-to-let investors, then clearly purchase prices would be driven up (in order to do the outbidding). Now if we assume that 200 of these youngsters are so upset by missing-out and detest the idea of renting so much that they continue to stay with mum and dad, then we have 800 extra renters and 1000 extra houses to rent. This will drive rental prices down. However if all 1000 of the young families decide to rent regardless, then the number of extra renters matches the number of extra houses and the effects on rental prices will be uncertain. If I had to take a guess I'd say that the buy-to-let craze in Sydney drove sale prices up a lot and rents down slightly, compared to what they would have been without the craze. Sadly, a large number of Australians cannot think for themselves and will believe whatever powerful elites tell them via the media. In the late 1980's the govt removed the negative gearing tax deduction on housing investment. A powerful group of liars wanted this tax change reversed and campaigned that the tax change was causing rents to rise enormously and forcing young people out of housing. The media campaign got the change reversed and created a myth about tax incentives and rental prices that persists to this day. A smart person can easily see how this myth is nonsense. Firstly statistics on rents do not show a large spike in rents in that period. Rental prices have been rising because of the housing shortage, and will rise in fits and starts. The rises prove nothing about tax deductions, especially since rent prices did not fall when the tax change was reversed. Secondly think about this, if the tax change had encouraged investors to abandon their investment and sell the housing, some other families must have bought that housing to live in. These families would no longer need to rent, and hence the fall in housing available for rent would be matched by a fall in families wanting to rent. No change. Is Housing Investment Benign? I have shown that housing investors did not create the housing crisis and probably do not affect rental prices much. However let me be clear that all this housing investment is not benign. It does have seriously bad effects on society. Investors bid up the purchase price of housing. Young families wanting to buy face two problems. Firstly since there are not enough houses in Australia some families must miss-out and others must pay higher prices to outbid the strongest losers. The second problem is that investors are buying some of the scarce houses. The investors’ buying will cause more young families to miss-out on buying via higher prices, higher prices which must be paid by the winning young families. That is bad for them. The young families that miss-out on buying must then rent, and this has emotional ramifications. Consider that many boomers bought their house when they were young. Now they buy investment property. Without the boomer, you would have a young family buy their own house and live in it. But now the boomer buys it as in investment and deprives the young family of following in his path. The boomer uses his higher income, home equity and tax advantages to outbid the young family. The boomer then allows the young family to rent the house from him. The govt gives a tax break to the boomer and makes it up by higher taxes on other taxpayers, which includes the young family. Each homeowning boomer of course controls the house he lives in, as far as colour of the walls, placement of hooks, and all manner of appliance and maintenance and renovation issues. Many investing boomers also control these same matters in the houses occupied by the next generation. How this situation can be efficient or fair escapes me. It is bound to cause waste and resentment. The older generation had long held a majority of votes, and in a democracy it has quite properly held power and got to decide via its politicians and their policies, how to treat the younger generation. We can see the choices they have made. In time the younger generation will become larger and take ascendancy. At that point the younger generation will decide how the old are treated as far as taxes and benefits are concerned. While there is plenty of potential for tit-for-tat retribution, and many boomers may get what they deserve, it gives me no pleasure to see society run along these lines. A little consideration for others would be nice. Ignorant Meddling, Moronic Schemes and the Blame GameThroughout this article the most important point I want to get across is that not every Australian family can buy an Australian house because there are not enough houses. If there are 10 houses for every 11 families then the only number we can know and should care about is that 1 family will miss-out. We cannot predict the exact house price, nor does it matter. Price will be the buying power of the "richest family that misses-out", but price is not the problem. Once we know that a shortage of houses is causing families to miss-out on a house, we must identify what is causing the shortage and how to solve it. The problem causing the shortage is that govt is not zoning enough extra dwellings. The solution must involve more dwelling permission from govt. Any proposal that does not involve this is moronic. In the parable I showed moronic ideas that shuffled money but did not get a single extra orange, and I said one of the similarities in Sydney housing was:
I cannot stress enough how these moronic schemes and ideas are causing the problem to continue because they take attention away from the real problem. 95% of newspaper articles about the housing crisis do not mention the need to get more housing. The vast majority of proposed solutions do nothing except shuffle money and would not create a single extra house. I cannot overstate how stupid that is. On the Titanic you cannot save any more people without more lifeboat seats, and in Sydney you cannot house any more families independently without creating more houses. If govt does not give permission for more houses then there will not be more houses. It's that simple. Let us run down some of the ignorant meddling, moronic ideas and ridiculous blame gaming that has occurred. Claim: The problem is that high house prices are caused by low interest rates. Since in a shortage our house prices will reflect the buying power of the strongest loser rather than production cost, this is partly true. Low interest rates have increased the borrowing ability and hence buying power of the group who miss-out on housing. These desperate losers have used their borrowing power to bid up the price of housing, causing the winners to pay more to outbid them. The claim is false because if govt permitted enough dwellings, prices would fall to production cost. Buyers might use borrowed funds to buy more expensive (to produce) houses, but need not do that. Claim: Negative gearing by investors is to blame False. Negative gearing is not the cause of the housing shortage. Negative gearing is a money-shuffling scheme that does not create or destroy accommodation, except in extremely rare cases (see below). We don't have space for a full discussion of negative gearing. But basically the case against negative gearing should be based on whether it:
Negative gearing is not the cause of the housing shortage and is not the main problem facing young home buyers. Negative gearing is a red herring. Claim: Negative gearing deduction should be grandfathered and subsequently only available on new dwellings, not existing dwellings That's not the solution either, because the limiting factor on new housing is the permission from govt, not a shortage of payment offers to the developer. Once a developer gets permission for more dwellings, he will build and he can sell without difficulty. The act of creating new housing can be attributed to the govt permission, not to the builder or the buyer (investor or not). It is true that tax incentives could bring about new dwellings where the permission is already available, but building is extremely expensive. eg you need to knock down a good house to build two, or you are allowed build on a cliff. In this case tax incentives could make the difference. But these cases are rare, the resulting dwellings would be expensive, and the process is arguably a case of malinvestment. Claim: The problem really took off when the govt halved the capital gains tax rate Basically false. Tax changes have no effect on the dwelling shortage because it is caused by a shortage of govt permission. Tax changes may have increased speculation and increased house buying prices, but did not affect the price of housing to rent. Tax changes may have sparked a fire, but the fuel for that fire is the dwelling shortage steadily building since 1970 and the fault of govt zoning. Claim: House price rises are caused by immigration Partially true. Govt is failing to permit the extra dwellings needed by both local population growth and immigration. The real fault is that our dwelling permit scheme is rigid and does not respond to demand or price. It is debatable whether our permit scheme could cope with just local population growth. Immigration certainly makes the problem far worse, prices far higher and results in resentment when rich immigrants take houses that would otherwise go to poor Australian families. Immigration should be curtailed until the housing crisis is solved, but immigration is not the problem. Claim: The problem started in 1989 when house prices first exceeded about 4 times average salary Wrong. The problem started before 1980. During the 1980's interest rates were very high which masked the high prices that would otherwise have occurred. If dwelling permits had kept up, then during the 1980's high interest rates would have driven house prices down. Instead house prices held in the face of high interest rates. When interest rates later fell to normal levels, house prices exploded. Claim: There was no problem in early 1990's because Australian household debt was at 50% of income, low by international standards of 100% This is rubbish. Firstly who is to say that 100% is the correct level? Secondly, average household debt was only low because it included debt for many houses bought the enormous price rises. Since then, the high house prices and high debt load has caused the average to rise. Now Australian household debt is toward the top of the International scale at 150%. Claim: A large first home buyers grant will solve the problem and allow every young family to afford a house. Rubbish. When there is not enough of something and that something is rationed by a market, then some people will miss-out and think "they cannot afford that something". The problem is not affordability but quantity. There is not enough of it for everyone. If you get nothing else out of my article please learn this. When dumb people see that others cannot "afford" something, these dummies think that more dollars is the solution. That does not work when the supply curve is vertical in rigid supply horror. When the foolish headmaster figured he could get every boy an orange if he gave money to the poorest boys he was making this blunder. What actually happened is that market price rose and forced another boy to miss-out. This exact same blunder was made by the Australian Federal govt when it created a first home buyers grant that gave $7000-$14000 to so-called first home buyers. The effect on prices was almost instantaneous. All houses became about $10,000 more expensive overnight. If any first home buyers did get a house as a result of the scheme it was only at the expense of other buyers who were priced-out by the $10,000 rise. Since the scheme did not create a single extra dwelling permission there was never going to be any other outcome. The result was as predictable as it was sad. Taxpayers giving thousands of extra dollars to house sellers and not a single extra family getting housed. Claim: It is the fault of young people these days who buy DVD's, plasma TV and overseas holidays. In my day we went without these things. Rubbish. DVD's and overseas holidays are now inexpensive and it makes sense to buy them. Young people cannot afford housing because it is relatively more expensive than it was in your day, because your govt has zoned too few extra dwellings. In your day govt zoned enough dwellings, and in your day you bought refrigerators and colour televisions (equivalent to today's luxuries) and could still afford housing. Claim: When I got married I lived in a caravan or shed till I saved enough for a house. Young people these days want it all now. Rubbish. Some old people nostalgically remember living in a caravan or shed, but they likely only did this for a few months when aged around 20. Now we have people aged 30 who have had to live with their parents for an extra decade. There is no comparison. Besides, today's govt does not allow people to live in caravans or sheds. It is now illegal. Claim: We need more investment in housing to solve the problem False. (see the section on the effect of investors) We need more permission for housing, not more investment in existing houses. Even if Bill Gates came to Australia with his billions he could not create a single extra house without permission from govt. We don't need Gates and his billions. We just need the permission from govt. Claim: There is a shortage of land Rubbish. There is 100 acres of land in Australia per person. Even on the fringe of the most crowded city there is plenty of land with owners eager to subdivide it for more housing. (They of course subdivide it for dollars, the buyers want it for housing). The "5 acres now" group is begging for permission to subdivide their 25 acre Sydney blocks into 5 acre blocks. No doubt some of these owners would be prepared (at a price) to subdivide into 100 house blocks thereby creating 99 extra dwellings. The reason people think there is a shortage of land is that a standard "house block" of land is now so expensive. People are not smart enough to realise it is the permission component that is so expensive, not the land itself (see the section House Components). Once you can think of permission as being a component of a house, it is easy to see that permission is where the shortage lies, not in the land. Claim: John Howard says the states are to blame for not releasing sufficient land John Howard is essentially correct. By releasing land the states provide additional blocks of land with dwelling permission, so this is one solution. However a better solution is to free-up zoning regulations so that private landowners can also subdivide and hence "release" land that way. Claim: Parents should help their children buy houses via gifts and loans of money Nonsense. Whilst these schemes may help one child buy a house they will not create a single extra house. Such schemes increase the buying power of the strongest loser and hence cause price rises which price-out other losers. Claim: It is the fault of taxes placed on developers. Every block sold by developers is taxed by $100,000 therefore this amount is added to the sale price by developers Wrong. Essentially any taxes are paid out of the windfall profit to developers and not added to the sale price. When govt creates a shortage of dwelling permits it forces house prices up to the buying power of the strongest loser. This creates a windfall profit for any developer that is granted extra dwelling permits. If govt then taxes the developer, the govt is grabbing a share of this windfall for itself. The taxes are rapacious, and are a clear warning sign. Any govt that would charge these high taxes would surely do other bad things. It is these other bad things that have caused the housing crisis. Assume a typical house block costs $400k with $110k what is takes to persuade the owner to sell and $290k being the dwelling permission windfall. Assume govt dwelling taxes are $120k, this means the developer gets a $170k windfall. If govt was to fix the real problem and give sufficient dwelling permission, then land prices could easily fall by $170k as the developer's windfall is eroded. For land prices to fall by the final $120k, govt would also have to reduce its dwelling taxes. So in typical areas where govt dwelling permission is very scarce, the govt taxes do not add to housing costs and are not the problem. But in areas where govt dwelling permission is not so scarce, eg if they zoned a huge number of units in a cheap area, it is possible that govt taxes could be the limiting factor and hence be "the" problem. Claim: There is a world-wide housing bubble caused by an epic credit expansion and concomitant low interest rates. When the boom ends as it must, then prices will fall and young people can afford homes as before. It is true that there has been an epic worldwide credit bubble and I expect Aussie house prices to fall when it ends. But this price fall will put net zero extra families into houses. A credit contraction does not create a single extra house, nor a single extra permission for a house, where the bottleneck lies. Prices will fall when a credit contraction lowers the buying power of the strongest losers. The price changes will allow some young buyers to afford housing but at the expense of other people who can no longer afford it. eg due to high interest rates. Since credit is purely financial and does not affect the number of houses permitted by govt, any credit change cannot affect the number of families who miss-out on housing. For example, if a credit contraction causes a bust that makes 100,000 houses affordable to first time buyers, then what happens to the people currently living in those very same 100,000 houses? Sydney's Planning Disaster Australia's housing crisis is caused by govt permitting an insufficient number of new houses since around 1970. But the deeper problem reaches further back than 1970. Govt regulation has been growing for a long time. It was only since the 1970's that regulation grew big enough to choke off the new house supply and cause clear distress. To really solve the housing crisis we must recognise the wider problem of govt regulation and not just cut it back a little to alleviate the symptom. If we just tinker with the zoning rules we might remove the symptoms for a while, but like cutting the top off a weed, new symptoms will soon show up. Back before 1970 govt permission for housing was sufficient, but even further back govt permission for land use was abundant. Under that long-gone regime the mechanism for locating new housing was essentially individual choice based, or market-based. Exactly where the people lived was more-or-less decided by the wishes of individuals. Now where people live is decided by govt because politically-based town planning now decides where all extra housing is built. Why did those people settle in that new town in 1850? Because that is what they wanted, they had their own reasons. Now, why did 10,000 people move into yardless McMansions in that new suburb with no train service? Because that is where govt wanted people to live, and that is the block size that govt zoned. When govt zones insufficient housing, some people must move wherever govt does zone it. Does a govt planning elite know and care better than individuals when it comes to choosing a place to live? Our society seems to think so. In fact not only housing, but all land use used to be dictated by what people found was best. Fishing towns formed near fish. Mining occurred near minerals and mining towns formed near prolific mines. Farms formed where soils were fertile, and farming towns formed to service nearby farms. Heavy manufacturing cities formed near deep water ports, etc. Living arrangements sprung up or wound down to suit conditions, not to suit govt. But over the last century a transition slowly occurred. Now all changes to land use are dictated not by what individual people want, it is now what the govt wants, or more precisely what planning elites want. Whilst there is nothing fundamentally wrong with having a govt, and some decisions are best made by govt, it is also clear that govt is not the best judge of certain aspects of our lives. I think house location is one of them. Some things are best decided by the people who know and care about their own circumstances and possess important local knowledge and motivation. For example before 1970 a young family who needed a house block only needed to make an offer to an existing land owner. You can be sure that if there was a piece of land that was well suited to take an extra house, some young person would spot it and make an offer on it. But now however, govt planners must be convinced of the merits of extra dwellings. They are much harder to persuade, because they don't need the dwelling for themselves, don't benefit from the sale proceeds, and their entire job revolves around red-tape and refusing applications. They have all kinds of paperwork and rules to follow, and they don't know the needs of the young family and may not care if young families have housing at all. In fact the record shows that they do not care about young families. Since 1970 these out-of-touch planning elites have zoned too few houses to meet the demand from young families. The Four Blunders of Govt Planners The fundamental planning flaw made by our society is, in my opinion, to embrace big govt and a "govt knows best" communist-style approach to town planning. In my opinion citizens should be given more choice and govt should take less control over housing. That's the root of the problem. Once the bad decision was taken to use all-powerful town planners, we became victims to any blunders these planners would make. The govt planners in our society have made four main blunders:
Keep these blunders in mind as we discuss how govt planners have gone about their task and the mess they have created in Sydney. The Three Directions of Growth Australia does not have a population control scheme. Since our population is increasing our govt planners must zone extra housing. Govt planners can chose from three basic directions of where to house the extra people. The directions for growth are: 1 - afar - by building new cities and towns 2 - outward - by going out and building around the fringe of existing cities and towns 3 - upward - by going up, infill building to raise the density of existing cities and towns Keep in mind that these three directions of growth all used to be handled by the market. Pre-1900 the direction of growth was market based and the market did a bit of each. Since 1900 or so growth has been directed by politically-based decisions made town planners. How did the planners perform? Did they steer growth in better directions than the market-based approach? Read my lips - No New Towns Over the last century since govt took over town planning it has not allowed any new cities or towns to form. I can't think of a single new town or city that govt has created in Australia since Canberra. This is an extremely important fact that few people seem to appreciate. Imagine that you knew a young gardener who had just taken control of an established garden. You visit his new garden and then you visit him in 20 years time and find that his garden layout has not changed one bit. He has created no extra garden beds. He has planted no extra trees, and hasn't even replaced the rusted water pipes. He has done basically nothing except jamming more plants into the old garden structure. You would think there was something wrong with that gardener. Even if the garden was perfect 20 years ago, surely the needs would have changed in some way as to require at least some significant change. That is one dull gardener! Our govt is like that gardener. It took over the town planning and inherited a town layout that was essentially market-based. Every town and city had a reason to exist and reflected citizens’ choices. But since govt took over the planning it has failed to make adequate changes. Govt has created no new cities for decades! I think we should have some. What do you think? Let me see. If we have 300 towns for a population of 10 million, how many towns would you expect for a population of 20 million? 600? 500? surely not the very same 300. But that is what our moribund govt planners give us. Such imagination, such planning prowess! They just jam more people into the old layout that best suited people in the year 1900. Nothing has changed since then I suppose. Duh. Some things can become too big and nature has a way of limiting the size of things. The world's tallest man was too tall to be healthy and he died an early death. When a beehive gets too big, the bees split it in two and go off in a swarm. But when govt planners control our housing the cities just keep getting bigger and never split. What's wrong with this picture? I think some of our Australian cities have grown too big and have become like outsized beehives. Things that are too big are inefficient and not healthy, like the world's tallest man. That's part of the problem with our country. Big govt lacks the imagination to do what should be done, like create new cities. Govt should either get the imagination to create new cities, or install a market-based system that will allow citizens and/or companies to create the cities as required. The reason that govt has not created any new cities or towns is easy to guess at. Govt employees are salaried bureaucrats not paid to take risks or solve problems. These guys can get away with being lazy or unimaginative or hamstrung by red-tape, but they might be fired if they actually do something that draws attention. Planning a new town would be hard work and risky, therefore govt planners will not choose to do this. Govt planners will not create new towns, therefore they only have two options left on where to place the extra houses: either outward or upward. Let's go out For several decades up till 1990 govt planners, being lazy and unimaginative, simply zoned all the extra housing on the fringes of existing cities, and grew our towns and cities outward. By releasing govt-owned land for sale and by allowing farms to be rezoned into housing estates, govt forced all new housing onto the edges of our cities. In a typical case such a Sydney, new housing moved out in a radius from the city centre, 30km, then 40km, then 50km from the centre. Our cities were becoming massive. When would it stop? This zoning system had several problems. Since the 4th blunder (to zone workplaces too far away from housing) placed many jobs in the city centre, this scheme required workers to travel longer and longer distances to work every day. Blunder 3 (to provide inadequate services, particularly trains and roads) meant that efficient transport was not provided. New fringe suburbs ruined the amenity of existing suburbs as all the new people jammed up the inadequate roads and trains on their way to work and play. Since Sydney planners basically stopped building railway track in around 1930, new fringe suburbs did not have nearby rail stations. Desperate rail commuters were forced to drive long distances to rail stations, overflow the tiny 1930's sized railway car parks, and wait for overcrowded trains. Arterial roads designed in 1950 (by the last half-decent govt planners) for a small city jammed up and these arteries started to flow slower than residential streets. Desperate long haul commuters took to residential streets to escape the traffic jams. The residential streets were not suited to this and the traffic upset local residents who called for a solution. The results of blunders 3 and 4 were clear to see as main roads were now slower than residential streets. How would the Sydney planners respond? When faced with such an obvious sign of planning failure would our planners rise to meet the challenge, find the underlying cause of this problem, fix the problem, and get our main roads once again flowing faster than the minor streets as they should be? Yes and No! Their "solution" ended with the main roads faster than the minor streets, but these blundering cretins did it by blocking, zagging, humping and bumping the residential streets to make them even slower than the jammed-up arteries. If that response doesn't demonstrate the calibre of our govt planners, then I don't know what will. By around 1990 this "outward" growth scheme had reached its limits (particularly in Sydney) and something had to give. By 1990 even the most stupid and blind govt planner could see that the outward growth scheme had been a failure and could not continue. The newer fringe suburbs had lousy transport to the city, and the older suburbs' transport systems had become jammed up too. The blundering planners finally had to admit that something was wrong, but they were loath to admit they were in any way to blame. Politicians repeatedly told us it was the fault of people who wanted to drive cars instead of taking public transport. Maybe politicians should provide some public transport, and perhaps try using it themselves, before saying pathetic garbage like this. (Who voted for those clowns?) When you expand a city you must expand services such as trains and roads and you must zone work locations close to the new houses. Yet blunders 3 and 4 ensured this was not done. Our blundering planners could not admit fault and hence concluded that the policy of outward growth was no good and they must try another option. There was only one direction left to go. Boxed into a corner by the failure of their previous blundering, the elite planners took the only option their narrow-minds could conceive. While previous plans deserved to be called "dumb" and "dumber", the planners felt that their next desperate plan deserved to be called "smart". The idea of "Smart Growth", of building our cities upward, was born. Let's Jam With the option of planning new towns deemed to be too hard and risky, and the option of city fringe expansion deemed a failure, the only option our blundering planners could see was to jam more people into the existing city limits and call this smart. They decided to grow the cities upward via a process known as infill building, or “Urban Consolidation”. Once the decision was taken, the "Smart Growth" bandwagon commenced. I try to avoid using the words "smart" and "government" in the same breath, but our blundering govt planners amazingly were able to get many people to passionately embrace the govt "Smart Growth" plan. Most Australians are simple folk who don't think for themselves about public issues and merely trust and vote for the major political parties. Such simple folk were easily convinced by the smart growth campaign. The campaign convinced folk that the same govt that had presided over past problems now held the future solution. They convinced folk that the govt now saw the evil causes and would now do the complete opposite as the solution. The campaign was simple: Growing a city outward is evil. The complete opposite of outward growth is upward growth. Clearly more high-rise apartments are essential. Traveling 30km to work each day in a private car is evil. The complete opposite is traveling 30km to work each day in a public train. Clearly the new high-rise should be concentrated around existing outer-suburban train stations. Sadly, most people cannot think straight, identify a simple opposite, and see all the options. The simple opposite of growing a city outward is to NOT grow the city outward, from which not growing the population is one clear option, and growing new cities is another. Properly managing the outward growth is another option. The simple opposite of traveling long distances to work in a car each day is to NOT travel long distances to work in a car each day, from which springs solutions such as traveling shorter distances to work, people working from home, or more people working fewer days, and many other alternatives. All of a sudden we were told that Sydney needed higher density living. Sydney could transform itself into a 400 square kilometre version of romantic inner-city Paris. All kinds of rationales were concocted. We were told that providing services to the city fringe was too expensive for govt. (Funny how 1960's govt could manage it on much lower taxes.) It would be much cheaper and better for people to make fuller use of existing facilities in the established areas of the cities. Suddenly our traditional houses and backyards were "urban sprawl" and bad for the environment. Environmentally-conscious citizens should live in high density apartments and leave most of Australia's 8000 BILLION square metres of area for other purposes (to be decided by elite govt planners). Our children would have lower environmental impact if they never saw and climbed a tree, but instead were taught an affinity for trees in a govt-approved high-rise childcare centre. Suddenly the problems with our overcrowded train system were blamed on TOO FEW PEOPLE !!! If only we had more people in our city then we could run an efficient, cheap, fast and clean train system like Singapore they told us. Phooey. Of course the same blundering fools who failed at low density planning were destined to also fail at high density planning. This was certain. Central to the failure was blunder 3, failure to provide services. The boomer generation seems obsessed with selling-off govt assets as opposed to building any new ones. You cannot grow a city without extra services, either outward or upward or afar. This obvious fact seemed to escape the planning elites. This blunder 3 brought almost immediate failure to the "Smart Growth" plan. Due to blunder 3 established suburbs did not have adequate services to start with. Since there was no surplus capacity to take advantage of, as soon as our planners jammed more people into the existing areas, obvious shortages occurred. Affected people got angry, and made the connection of growth with shortages. Street parking disappeared in many places. Residents who needed or wanted this for themselves forced their council to steal this public property and license it as private property via residential parking permits. Other council scoundrels installed pay parking meters, profiteering from the rigid supply horror of parking, and did nothing to increase supply. Electricity blackouts became more frequent. Roads jammed-up worse than before, and train services continued to decline. Some Sydney railway platforms started to resemble those of Tokyo, only without the prompt, fast and efficient train service to match. Besides the basic need to increase services, higher density development has many other problems. Upgrading services in an established area is extremely expensive and disruptive. Just imagine digging up a busy road to install a larger water pipe. It is much cheaper to provide water, sewerage and roads and rail to fringe greenfield development. If you've got to build extra housing for more people it is cheaper to build on a vacant block than on top of existing housing. The reason is simple. When you demolish existing housing for higher density, you must then pay the cost of the new housing for the new people and also pay the cost of replacing the housing for the existing people (whose housing you demolished). This not only applies to housing but also to much other infrastructure. It is quite simply stupid and expensive to force high density on established areas when there is the option of low density building elsewhere on greenfield sites. The Smart Growth phase in Sydney saw a shocking amount of serviceable housing, roads, pipes, and other infrastructure simply ripped-up and destroyed to make way for its higher-density replacement. That's dumb growth in my book. Not only is high density development more expensive in the conventional sense, but it carries a higher environmental impact. The "Ecological Footprint" is the best measure of the impact each person has on nature's carrying capacity, not how much land their immediate dwelling takes up. It has been found that high-rise apartments have worse environmental impact than well-designed standalone housing because of all the common area electricity use, the energy to dry clothes, and the inability to collect solar energy or water, grow vegetables, and use natural ventilation and optimal orientation. The Smart Growth scheme also met strong political opposition. High density development was opposed by local councils and local residents. Since there had been a multi-decade period in which almost all new housing went on the city fringe, a whole generation of councils and residents had grown used to the idea that their suburb need never allow extra housing. If you go hiking with Arnold Schwarzenegger you get used to not carrying your share of the load, and this is like what happened to local councils and residents. They got so used to other areas carrying the load of extra housing, they thought they need never allow any extra housing in their area. These councils and residents were livid when other people wanted to move in on their turf. Sydney Transport Sydney transport is a disaster area that merits a special mention. The blundering govt planners do not seem to know that car transport has peculiar scalability. It first scales very well, then it scales very badly. What this means is that you can double the traffic a couple of times and suffer no ill-effects. If a handful of cars on a road flow smoothly, then twice as many will also flow smoothly and so will four times. But after cost-free and easy expansion the system starts to hit hard limits until it imposes enormous costs in time and money to get any more cars on the roads. Some readers may reckognise this effect in their city. When you increase the size of a city, there comes a point when you must switch from cars, to mass-transit, or some alternative. Sydney planners did the opposite, they ceased building rail and tried to get by with scant road improvements. If you take a small city in 1970, then double the population, double the radius and double the density of drivers by sending all the women to work, then you have 8 times the distance traveled by car. Put your numbers in for Sydney, consider the scalability of car transportation, and figure the rest out. In 1960 it is fair to say that many, if not most, Sydney residents could walk to, or drive and park at, a railway station, get a seat, and a quick ride to the city. Now in 2007 after massive expansion of the city, jamming up of the roads and trains, and underbuilding railways, only a tiny portion of Sydney residents can do this. Many Sydney workers travel more than 2 hours each day in their cars. Planning blunders have created a car-dependant city that is addicted to fast-vanishing oil, where trains and public transport are a sick, overtaxed, dirty, dangerous, unreliable, expensive joke, and all the cheap-and-nasty traffic fixes have already been done. All grown up with no place to live - BANANA, CAVE, NIMBY and NOPE BANANA - Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything CAVE people - Citizens Against Virtually Everything NIMBY - Not In My BackYard NOPE - Not On Planet Earth Many factors have come together is Sydney to create a situation that seems hopeless, and which has no one simple and easy solution. The disastrous rise in the size and power of govt saw greater govt control of planning, an area big govt was poorly suited to. Big govt made so many planning blunders for so long that most citizens, quite understandably, do not want any more govt planning done near them. Moribund govt planners have not built a new town in decades. Outward growth on the city fringes was a disaster and city residents now rightly object to more of it. Upward "Smart Growth" in the city was also a disaster. Govt has apparently exhausted all its options for growing our country and has come up blank. And yet our population continues to grow naturally, and govt rabidly brings in immigrants. Young families and immigrants clearly need more housing, but the way to get it now appears most unclear. Over the last century the size and power of govt has risen, driven by a rising love of govt. Govt programs have given all kinds of things to all kinds of people, and many more people want govt to give much more to them. People now feel sure that govt can give them whatever they desire. As well as this, and quite possibly connected to it, over the last century the average citizen has become dumb, unthinking and detached from reality. This happened despite information being far more widely available from sources such as the Internet. An extreme example would be people who think milk and eggs come from supermarkets, rather than cows' udders and hens' vents. In everyday life this type of ignorance is mostly harmless but in the voting booth these morons become a clear danger to themselves and others. Morons with this level of ignorance will vote for policies that are certain to prevent themselves getting what they really want. For example these morons might vote for politicians to ban hens and cows, yet the moron really wants to keep eating milk and eggs. Or they might elect politicians to ban nuclear and phase-out coal, when the moron really wants electricity in his home. Or like in Sydney, morons elect politicians who bring in immigrants, pay a $3000 baby bonus, and choke house building, when the morons really want their children to be able to grow up, move out, and own their own home. A rise in selfishness and stupidity of the population has meant that many people think that blocking anything unpleasant near to them is a socially acceptable and viable planning policy. These people either don't know or don't care that some unpleasant things have to go somewhere. Power plants, refineries, dumps, even other people's houses must be placed somewhere. The NIMBYs want that somewhere to be somewhere else, and think this is a policy every area should follow. Communities should know that if they want to have a certain lifestyle they must accept their share of the bad stuff that goes with it. Recently in California an Australian company was hoping to build a liquid natural gas terminal to allow delivery of desperately needed gas for California's burgeoning population and energy needs. One protesting NIMBY was interviewed about the plans of this Australian company and scornfully said "why don't they build it in Australia instead?". Because California generates its electricity from gas-fired plants. Its existing gas supply is facing decline whilst population and electricity demand increases. An LNG terminal at California is a possible solution. I don't influence Californian planning decisions yet I know these facts. The protesting NIMBY tries to influence the decision without knowing these facts. In Sydney NIMBYs, BANANAs, CAVEs and NOPEs can see the results of badly-planned growth and they now want it stopped, particularly near them. It may be desirable to stop Australian population growth. But the way to do this is by slowing immigration and/or reducing local birth rates. If you slow immigration now, then you need less housing from this point onward. If you slow birth rates now, then you need less housing in 20-30 years time. This might be good policy, but you don't wait until the next generation grows up and then strangle the supply of housing. That's moronic and cruel. The idea that a society can raise children and then deny them housing is preposterous, yet many older Sydney residents feel that this must be done to maintain the character of their suburbs. Some justify this by claiming they are doing it "to stop profiteering by greedy developers". Greedy developers aren't the problem, the problem is stupidity causing a housing shortage. Developers are just providing essential housing to the grown-up children and immigrants brought in by the older generation. What makes it profiteering is that govt made building permission scarce, expensive and highly profitable, instead of abundant and cheap like it used to be and should still be. Today's developers have been given approval for some truly awful dwellings. I wouldn't want these near me either. The real problem is that govt has not approved enough better alternative dwellings elsewhere. It is not the developers' fault. Maintaining the character of an area is a nicety, but the idea that suburbs should remain static is moronic, like a garden that never changes. The policy of denying housing to new families shows an appalling disregard for the young generation. And think about the practicalities of it all. Young adults in their 20's and 30's are now forced to live with their parents because extra housing can not be built. How does this maintain character? Now we hear scathing comments about "Adultescents" or "Kidults". These words didn't exist before the housing crisis forced young adults into an extended childhood. Is that maintaining the character of the area in which we live? Think about other practicalities such as where they are going to park their cars. If you have got 4 adults with 4 cars living in a 1970's house with a single garage, where do you park all the cars and still maintain the character of the area? Two in the front, two in the back, I suppose. Sorry I forgot. They should sell the cars and all catch public transport. The Infrastructure Drought One of the most perplexing questions about our society in the last 30 years is how come the size and cost of govt has risen so much and yet the level of basic services has fallen so low? I'd guess that in the last 30 years taxes have doubled and basic service levels have halved. I reckon it is that bad. How could this have happened? Here are a few possibilities:
Those few possibilities might explain why govt is taking so much more from us and giving so much less to us, but is there another explanation? If the role of govt is to collect taxes from us in order to provide services to us, how could this tragedy occur? Do the above points explain it well enough? Perhaps not. Perhaps there is another explanation. What if the role of govt is not "to collect taxes from us in order to provide services to us" but this is just a lie they tell us. What if our govt has become like a farmer who keeps us like animals for his own benefit. If the farmer can collect twice the eggs and give half the feed he would do so, wouldn't he? That would explain a doubling of taxes and a halving of services. Perhaps somewhere along the line we voted in a govt that sees us as animals to a farmer, as slaves to a master, or serfs to a Lord. Just something to think about. It might be a good idea to vote out govts that view citizens in that way. The Solution The solution to Sydney's and Australia's housing crisis is for govt to be less restrictive and ensure that it approves sufficient new dwellings to meet the demand for extra housing from young families and immigrants. This is the solution. Evidence of success would be the price of housing falling to traditional levels, and children being able to grow up, move out and buy a house, at the traditional age. However, I explained all the details and the history of planning blunders and some of the underlying sentiments to show how hard it will be for the solution to occur. Society must decide if the purpose of its housing, of its housing "market", is to provide shelter to people, or to take money from people. A market is the best way to do this in either case. A fair market could efficiently provide best housing for people. An elitist market, such as today's Sydney housing market is effective at taking money from one group of people and giving it to another group. The main thing is to re-establish a market-based mechanism for deciding where people live. This means that individuals would decide where they want to live, they would buy land there, and govt would then follow the people, permit dwellings, and provide services there. A market-based solution does not imply a free-for-all where govt has 0% involvement, but govt must have less involvement in planning because govt has proven to be incompetent at planning. I can't predict where growth would occur under a market-based solution, because a good market reflects a bit of everybody's wishes, not just my wishes or that of elites. There would probably be a bit of each type of growth, some afar, some outward and some upward. I guess that most growth would be afar, and that Sydney's size would shrink as it faced competition from new cities that were better and cheaper to live in. But I could be wrong. Since Australia has a massive backlog of service building to do, we cannot expect a rapid improvement in services. In fact new housing could be expected to make some shortages get worse before they get better. Market Solutions All of my solutions to Sydney's housing crisis are market-based solutions. I like to see markets with: 1) more citizen control and less govt control 2) more equality and less elitism 3) more simplicity and less complexity Sadly, society currently is full of market factions, market myths and market dogma that work to prevent us from using the best markets. By thinking for ourselves about markets, instead of parroting dogma, we can select and adjust our markets to create the best markets for our situation. In the final sections I have tried to give several market-based ideas. These suggestions are supposed to be practical steps in the right direction and are not claimed to be an ideal market solution. The current Sydney housing situation is a market with much govt control, much elitism and much complexity. My suggestions are simple steps away from this, not an ideal. Forget the dogma and keep in mind that bad markets or "politically-based" schemes will only reflect the wishes of elites, whereas good markets will reflect the wishes of all people. Infrastructure and Services and Smaller Govt Govt must get back to basics and become more efficient and spend a higher portion of taxes on actual services and a lower portion on waste. Services, particularly rail and roads, but also water, sewer, schools, hospitals, parks and even shopping centres, must be improved dramatically in all areas to catch up with the increase in population. The bloated size of govt is the main problem facing modern western society. It is like a huge parasite that is choking the life out of society. Govt has become very large in the last 30 years and it is still increasing in size. We can rapidly solve the problem of Sydney's unaffordable house prices by changing our zoning regulations. But we cannot create great housing and social outcomes without solving this problem of big govt. I don't know if we can reverse the trend gradually, or if a complete crisis of confidence in govt is needed to do it. Either way I don't see this problem being fixed quickly. The solution is to remove many areas of govt and to privatise other areas. But when I say privatise I mean using a competitive market mechanism to return control to citizens. Nowadays the word "privatisation" has been hijacked by elites. Govt elites take a bloated wasteful govt monopoly and hand it over to crony elites who turn it into a slimmed-down cruel profiteering private monopoly. That's not the kind of privatisation we want. In the long run, govt should not have so many employees. But since firing them all at once would be traumatic, instead we should slowly move many govt employees from wasteful paper-pushing, into useful front-line work. For example a meddling hospital administrator paid $140,000 could be retrained as a nurse and his pay gradually reduced to that of a nurse. A railway marketing liar who writes glowing reports about the trains, could be retrained as a useful train cleaner. Those blundering railway managers who have spent years failing to install Singapore-style ticketing could be retrained to sell old-fashioned tickets on the platforms. Subdivision and Building Approval Mechanism I am disgusted by all govt planners and the disaster they have created. Firing them all immediately is an option, but a kinder solution is possible. It must be made clear to the govt planners that they are a failure and are to blame for the shortage of decent housing, transport, working, shopping and other arrangements in Australian society. I would give all govt planners an immediate symbolic cut in pay. Govt planners can be given one last chance but must be put on notice that if they don't lift their game dramatically they will lose their jobs. As a first step I would demand that all planners move to a standardised process. All local planning departments currently do their own thing and approve or reject as they like. All planners should instead assess every application and give a score out of 100, where 100 equates to the level where approval would have been given under the old system. Local planners should be forced to be consistent, and should be taken to court if they give different points for similar applications. Council planners should only give points to applications, and not approve the application. A central authority should decide how many points are needed for approval. For example, if not enough extra dwellings get approved in a 3-month period, then the authority can drop the approval threshold to 98 points. This would mean that every previously rejected proposal with 98 points or more would be automatically approved. The central authority would be given the task of ensuring that the number of approved dwellings matches the number of families. New Towns Declare a housing state of emergency and immediately start a system that will create new towns. For starters get govt planners to build 2 new small cities somewhere. Also put out tenders for 2 or 3 private consortia to create new cities. In doing so, we want some mechanism to capture and share the gain in land value from this. I don't have faith in govt to build new towns, but in this crisis situation I would support them trying it. If it goes wrong it will be a further reminder to the public about the incompetence of govt. If it goes right, then I will get a pleasant surprise and many people will get pleasant cheap housing. The housing crisis is so severe that we have little to lose. Govt planners have turned Sydney into a giant badly-planned city. Even if they go on to create a new small badly-planned city, it will probably be better than Sydney, so there is little to lose. NIMBY Solution We need to invent some fresh schemes to combat NIMBYism. When NIMBYs are successful in banning something unpleasant near them, they in effect impose something unpleasant on other people. We need some schemes that impose a cost on the NIMBYs to reflect the cost they impose on others. This is the "chooser-pays" principle, as used in the best type of market. NIMBYs remind me of the story of the Little Red Hen, where all her lazy friends found reasons not to help make the bread, but were very willing to help eat it. The Little Red Hen taught her friends a lesson by denying bread to those who didn't help her make it. A typical NIMBY doesn't want a powerplant or a dump anywhere near him, but still wants his lights to come on, and his garbage to be taken away. NIMBYs must be taught the lesson that they cannot expect to enjoy a lifestyle if they won't participate in the unpleasantries that enable that lifestyle. NIMBYs also remind me of a naughty child who refuses to eat the parts of his meal that are good for him. Such a child either doesn't know or doesn't care about healthy eating. He wants to have only the pleasant stuff and nothing unpleasant to eat. NIMBYs either don't understand that unpleasant stuff is necessary, or do know and want to force it on others. Either way NIMBYism is socially unacceptable and unworkable. Perhaps we can deal with NIMBYs in the same way we deal with naughty children or lazy friends. A naughty child might not be given any icecream until he has finished eating his vegetables. Likewise a NIMBY could be deprived of electricity until he has approved the construction of some generating capacity. One type of scheme that could be used is shown by this example. Consider a power station. All residents are surveyed and asked would they want a power station near them on the promise of first priority for electricity. All answers are tallied and the power station is placed near the fewest objections. If too many object then the power station is not built. When power runs short and load shedding is needed, the answers to the survey are used to determine where the power is cut. Those areas where residents most objected to the power plant are the first to lose electricity. Rather than devise and employ complex surveys, we should look for simpler market-based schemes that will combat NIMBYism. The fairest market-based system for land would involve land users not buying land outright, but paying a charge that varies, both up and down, when other people do things that affect the value of the land. Under such a scheme NIMBYs who force a bad thing to go somewhere else would then suffer a higher charge, whereas the people copping the bad thing would be compensated with a lower charge. The scheme is fair and can be win-win. For example, rich people are prepared to pay for luxury land free of bad things, and poorer people are happy to live near some nasties, if they get the land cheaply. Under the ideal of such a scheme, the concept of a NIMBY practically ceases to exist, as govt becomes market-driven and strives to place all infrastructure in such as way as to maximise total land value. The point of mentioning NIMBY's is that we have a problem. If selfish and/or stupid people buy land they will then exert political pressure to site value-reducing infrastructure elsewhere, and value-enhancing infrastructure nearby. NIMBYs are a significant factor in land use and so a solution is required. This could be an education scheme to reduce stupidity and selfishness, a wide-ranging land value charge, a complex survey system, or something else. But something needs to be done about NIMBYs. |
