How do cities deal with strong population growth?

Humes fork

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Humes fork
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In Stockholm where I live, on average a bus load of people is added to the population every week. There is a lack of apartments in Stockholm, which means that they are bought and sold at fantasy prices (supply and demand). Lots of people in Sweden want to live in Stockholm, and I can certsinly understand why.

So I wonder, how is it in big cities globally, say New York City and London? These two are the most globalized cities in the world, and globally speaking a lot of people desire to live there. They are also major cultural and economic centers in the world.

I found some stats for New York City and I see that it is still a significantly growing city. I wonder, how do they manage the issue of apartments and persons? Are they very expensive there too?
 
Your stats show that NYC population has grown about 3% in a decade. That's not a whole lot. According to Wikipedia, the population of London is about 10 percent below what it was in 1939.

In contrast, Stockholm's population grew a lot faster--about 13 percent over the last decade.

If it would help make more room, lots of us in America would be happy to have your Moomins move here :)
 
Humes fork said:
In Stockholm where I live, on average a bus load of people is added to the population every week.
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That few? That's insignificant.

I found some stats for New York City and I see that it is still a significantly growing city. I wonder, how do they manage the issue of apartments and persons? Are they very expensive there too?
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In Manhattan, apartments are fantastically expensive.

The secret is suburbs.
 
Melbourne's growing at 1.3% per year, the fastest growing city in Australia. We are both increasing inner city density, and opening more suburbs in three main growth corridors. Works okay as far as I'm concerned.
 
PixyMisa said:
That few? That's insignificant.
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Yeah, a bus a week seems like a very small number. What's that, like 40 people or so? About 2000/year?

In the 1990s and 2000s Clark County Nevada (Las Vegas) was adding as much as over 100,000 people per year. Or about 48 busses/week if it's a 40-person bus.
 
lionking said:
Melbourne's growing at 1.3% per year, the fastest growing city in Australia. We are both increasing inner city density, and opening more suburbs in three main growth corridors. Works okay as far as I'm concerned.
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You're not concerned about water shortages?
 
Santa Barbara is possibly a case study in the use of a desal plant in the face of a drought. In the early 90s, we were in a SEVERE drought. I remember a picture of the local lake that is the principal source of our fresh water. The permanent intake was on dry land (literally) and temporary hoses were used to pull the little water that remained into the water supply system. We were in seriously deep doo-doo.

So the city (and state) authorized the emergency construction of what at the time was the largest desal plant in the USA. As you can imagine, the costs were huge but what choice did we have? Operational testing was conducted for three months, ending in March of that year (1991?). Then we had our "March Miracle". Record rainfall in that month refilled the reservoir (Literally. The dam eventually overflowed there was so much rain).

The plant was mothballed and eventually decommissioned. Major components were sold to Saudi Arabia. As you can imagine, the city took a financial bloodbath. Now the facility is a hollow hulk infested by rats and the homeless. In light of newer desal technologies since that time, any recommissioning would essentially require rebuilding the whole damn thing.

Desal requires huge amounts of electricity; I hope there is sufficient excess capacity in the grid to run your facility. And I hope the costs don't bankrupt the good citizens of Merbourne including, of course, the renowned lionking. :)

Good luck.
 
timhau said:
They're not theirs. The Moomins are ours.

:FINLAND:
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Well I know where the Moomins were born, but I thought they counted as part of Sweden's high immigration rate.

Anyhow, in line with the well-known Nordic social welfare systems...shouldn't both Finland and Sweden want to share with us Moomin-deprived Americans?
 
Cities don't deal with growth, markets do. In fact the policies of cities are often counter-productive when it comes to growth. For example making it difficult to get building permits, rent control etc. all can cause shortages and/or pricing bubbles.
 
NewtonTrino said:
Cities don't deal with growth, markets do. In fact the policies of cities are often counter-productive when it comes to growth. For example making it difficult to get building permits, rent control etc. all can cause shortages and/or pricing bubbles.
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Sorry, but you seem to have your ideological blinders set to kill. Cities without proper planning were inefficient messes. Even today we can see the effects of planning cities around cars or around public transit. Take Detroit as an example of what happens when you leave it up to the market to design a city.
 
NewtonTrino said:
Cities don't deal with growth, markets do. In fact the policies of cities are often counter-productive when it comes to growth. For example making it difficult to get building permits, rent control etc. all can cause shortages and/or pricing bubbles.
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Tsukasa Buddha said:
Sorry, but you seem to have your ideological blinders set to kill. Cities without proper planning were inefficient messes. Even today we can see the effects of planning cities around cars or around public transit. Take Detroit as an example of what happens when you leave it up to the market to design a city.
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I suggest you are both right. There needs to be good planning of a city. This is best done before it is built. Once a city is built it is hard to fix bad road design. Try to straighten some of London's inner city roads! But Melbourne in Australia has some great city roads. These were designed before the first people moved in. Not bad for early 1800s. Then the good planning needs to be maintained. The wrong type of red tape, such as what NewtonTrino is suggesting, may stop good things from happening.
 
Tsukasa Buddha said:
Sorry, but you seem to have your ideological blinders set to kill. Cities without proper planning were inefficient messes. Even today we can see the effects of planning cities around cars or around public transit. Take Detroit as an example of what happens when you leave it up to the market to design a city.
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Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahaha - good one! As a major transportation hub (and later car industry center) Detroit was a thoroughly planned city from the early 1800's to the 1930's, when it hit over 1.5 million in population.

OTOH, the decline of Detroit from the 1950's to today has certainly been market based as automobile owners exercised their freedom to live elsewhere, namely the suburbs where they enjoyed a lower cost of living, low crime and good schools. It would take some kind of dictatorship to make people move back there no matter how well you plan to make it over.
 
Startz said:
Your stats show that NYC population has grown about 3% in a decade. That's not a whole lot.
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By way of comparison, the Toronto metropolitan census area has seen its population grow by 9.2% in just the last five years. (The population went from 5,113,149 according to the 2006 census to 5,583,064 according to the 2011 census. Growth from 2001 to 2006 was also 9.2%, and from 1996 to 2001 the population grew by 9.8%. There's a national census every five years in Canada.)
 
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PixyMisa said:
That few? That's insignificant.
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Maybe, but it's not a terribly big city to begin with.

If I'm not mistaken, a lot of people in Stockholm don't move out from their parents' basement until they are 28 or so. We have a severe lack of dwellings in this city.

PixyMisa said:
In Manhattan, apartments are fantastically expensive.

The secret is suburbs.
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I see. But does NYC really has a center and suburbs? My impression was that it was divided into five or so boroughs, none really being more central than the other.
 
If you're Atlanta, you just ignore it completely for a good solid twenty years until there are so many cars on the road that traffic just stops and you live in your Subaru.
 
Humes fork said:
Maybe, but it's not a terribly big city to begin with.
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Considering the city proper or the metro area? The metro area seems to be pretty substantial - around half the size of Sydney (where I live).

I see. But does NYC really has a center and suburbs? My impression was that it was divided into five or so boroughs, none really being more central than the other.
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Manhattan. There would be suburban hubs as well, but Manhattan is the center.
 
SezMe said:
Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahaha, indeed.
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Um, just what is your point - that Detroit's tax base and population have dropped drastically and for good reasons?

415799367_e30574fee0.jpg
 
balrog666 said:
Um, just what is your point - that Detroit's tax base and population have dropped drastically and for good reasons?

[qimg]http://farm1.static.flickr.com/170/415799367_e30574fee0.jpg[/qimg]
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Population drop for major cities is... perfectly normal. Especially during that time period. Not saying there is no other reason, but the rise of suburbia is a universal thing.
 
Corsair 115 said:
By way of comparison, the Toronto metropolitan census area has seen its population grow by 9.2% in just the last five years. (The population went from 5,113,149 according to the 2006 census to 5,583,064 according to the 2011 census. Growth from 2001 to 2006 was also 9.2%, and from 1996 to 2001 the population grew by 9.8%. There's a national census every five years in Canada.)
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To put that into perspective:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai#Demographics
The 2010 census put Shanghai's total population at 23,019,148, a growth of 37.53% from 16,737,734 in 2000.[4][58]
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That's an increase of more than six million in ten years. Which averages to more than 1500 people per day.
 
One of the ways that Shanghai has dealt with that phenomenal growth rate has been through the expansion of it's subway system:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Metro
As of 2012, there are 11 metro lines (excluding the Shanghai Maglev Train), 278 stations[note 1] and over 434 kilometres (270 mi) of tracks in operation,[5] the longest network in the world.[7] The Shanghai Metro delivered 2.101 billion rides in 2011,[8] the fifth busiest in the world. It set a daily ridership record of 7.548 million on October 22, 2010.[2][3] The system continues to grow, with new lines and extensions of old lines currently under construction.
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Also of note: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Metro#Future_expansion
and: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Metro#History
Which tells us that as of 2000 there were only 2 lines in operation. Now there are 11. By 2020 they plan to have 20 lines in operation.

In spite of all this, road traffic has still gotten worse in the 7 years that I've been here. But that's due not just to the increased number of people, but also the huge surge in people buying cars in China.
 
Humes fork said:
So I wonder, how is it in big cities globally, say New York City and London? These two are the most globalized cities in the world, and globally speaking a lot of people desire to live there. They are also major cultural and economic centers in the world.
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The growth of London was deliberately halted in 1935 when the Green Belt planning laws were introduced. This effectively prevented anyone from building dwellings in a large swathe of countryside surrounding London. When the M25 orbital motorway was built in the 1980s, largely passing through the green belt, it put a further "line in the sand" which prevents London from ever getting any bigger.

I grew up in a town called Caterham, which sits on the North Downs, in the green belt. I could go north from my house and it was city all the way to central London, and south from my house out into the glorious Surrey countryside. I am very thankful for those green belt laws.
 
Humes fork said:
In Stockholm where I live, on average a bus load of people is added to the population every week. There is a lack of apartments in Stockholm, which means that they are bought and sold at fantasy prices (supply and demand). Lots of people in Sweden want to live in Stockholm, and I can certsinly understand why.

So I wonder, how is it in big cities globally, say New York City and London?
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In Moscow, the same thing happens as in Stockholm.

Apartment prices are increasing.
 
Tsukasa Buddha said:
Sorry, but you seem to have your ideological blinders set to kill. Cities without proper planning were inefficient messes. Even today we can see the effects of planning cities around cars or around public transit. Take Detroit as an example of what happens when you leave it up to the market to design a city.
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Detroit's problem is not strong population growth. His point is valid; a lot of cities, in a desire to prevent "rent gouging" (i.e., charging the market rate) instituted rent control. No surprise, this discourages new construction of apartments as landlords don't like rent control and as it happens, neither do lenders on apartment complexes (because if the complex's expenses increase dramatically and the landlord can't increase rents to cover the increase, then the risk of default rises significantly).

The main way cities should deal with strong population growth is to allow greater heights in buildings and ditch rent control. Combine that with a requirement for some minimum percentage of "affordable" (subsidized) housing.
 
Brainster said:
Detroit's problem is not strong population growth. His point is valid; a lot of cities, in a desire to prevent "rent gouging" (i.e., charging the market rate) instituted rent control. No surprise, this discourages new construction of apartments as landlords don't like rent control and as it happens, neither do lenders on apartment complexes (because if the complex's expenses increase dramatically and the landlord can't increase rents to cover the increase, then the risk of default rises significantly).

The main way cities should deal with strong population growth is to allow greater heights in buildings and ditch rent control. Combine that with a requirement for some minimum percentage of "affordable" (subsidized) housing.
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That last bit is important, unfortunately.

I'm one of those Vancouverites with revenue properties - I own 6 units aside from my principal residence. I stopped buying revenue property almost a decade ago when the numbers no longer worked out. (they failed the "one percent rule") It may turn around at some point, but it'll take decades probably.

Here's where Vancouver went wrong: we *did* recognize there was an inventory shortage and rezoned upward. Plenty of condos got built. On paper, more than enough for renters to shift to buying, for new Vancouverites to buy in. But the prices just kept going up and people in the first home buying demographic were falling further behind with their down payment savings and starting to give up.

The problem was that the market has become global, so developers were building to offshore preference. Luxury condos in the $1-$10 million range. They were sold before the blueprints were dry, the developers worked with offshore real estate agents and investors to operate the projects from Asia. And most were never occupied, just sitting there as investments. That was the 'market solution' in Vancouver - build for Hong Kong billionaires to park as offshore hedges against a Communist takeover.

Vancouver has introduced a couple of tweaks to their vertical rezoning: a ratio of starter pricepoints in the project, and a penalty for unoccupied properties. Prices have dropped about 15% in two years. There's light at the end of the tunnel for the next generation.
 
geni said:
Favelas are not "dealing with".
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I saw favelas first hand in the 80s. I saw those same neighborhoods again in the 2010s. My conclusion is that favelas are very much "dealing with". I think it's a mark of American privilege, that so many Americans no longer know how to recognize effective and profitable "dealing with".
 
blutoski said:
That last bit is important, unfortunately.

I'm one of those Vancouverites with revenue properties - I own 6 units aside from my principal residence. I stopped buying revenue property almost a decade ago when the numbers no longer worked out. (they failed the "one percent rule") It may turn around at some point, but it'll take decades probably.

Here's where Vancouver went wrong: we *did* recognize there was an inventory shortage and rezoned upward. Plenty of condos got built. On paper, more than enough for renters to shift to buying, for new Vancouverites to buy in. But the prices just kept going up and people in the first home buying demographic were falling further behind with their down payment savings and starting to give up.

The problem was that the market has become global, so developers were building to offshore preference. Luxury condos in the $1-$10 million range. They were sold before the blueprints were dry, the developers worked with offshore real estate agents and investors to operate the projects from Asia. And most were never occupied, just sitting there as investments. That was the 'market solution' in Vancouver - build for Hong Kong billionaires to park as offshore hedges against a Communist takeover.

Vancouver has introduced a couple of tweaks to their vertical rezoning: a ratio of starter pricepoints in the project, and a penalty for unoccupied properties. Prices have dropped about 15% in two years. There's light at the end of the tunnel for the next generation.
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Obviously Vancouver is a hot market; in general unoccupied real estate is a bad investment because real estate taxes and insurance mean your cash flow is negative even if you bought without debt.

Planners can get pretty creative once they allow buildings to go skyward. I remember years ago taking night school courses at a building on Park Avenue in New York City. In exchange for allowing the developers to go higher, they got them to make the first four floors a high school and the next four floors affordable housing.
 
Going back to the OP, historically they simply don't.

When housing demand outstrips supply then the usual consequence is that the less well off will end up living in overcrowded and substandard housing. Slum landlords have been a constant feature since the Industrial Revolution at least. It's a feature of the free market.

There have been periodic attempts by (typically left-leaning) governments to address this through rent controls, minimum accommodation standards, the construction of social housing or a combination of some or all of these. These attempts are decried as undermining or skewing the free market and are usually reversed at the first opportunity by abandoning rent controls, loosening housing standards and sale of public housing.
 
The Don said:
Going back to the OP, historically they simply don't.

When housing demand outstrips supply then the usual consequence is that the less well off will end up living in overcrowded and substandard housing. Slum landlords have been a constant feature since the Industrial Revolution at least. It's a feature of the free market.
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As are slum tenants. I consulted for a 501(c)-3 back in the the day, converting for-profit apartments into affordable housing. I remember one project we took over with 300+ units, had up to 8 stories. Because of the height we were required to replace every fire extinguisher, inside every unit to get the certificate of occupancy.

Six months later, after lots of other improvements, we reinspected the property and over 200 of the 300+ units had completely discharged their unit fire extinguishers.
 
Brainster said:
The main way cities should deal with strong population growth is to allow greater heights in buildings and ditch rent control. Combine that with a requirement for some minimum percentage of "affordable" (subsidized) housing.
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The reason why housing (and other assets) are unaffordable, is because the Federal Reserve has been destroying our money, and allowing elites to buy everything for nothing. Your solution is dumb.
 
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