I think you’re right, in a way? On the one hand, it had never seemed to me that there was some sort of deranged focus on building more for the sake of it. It’s more like “where I live, five years ago prices were €10k per square meter, now it’s more like 15k, and while my parents built wealth by buying their home, I’d literally need to spend the price of a brand-new car to buy just the toilets with no home attached”. In that sense, we need to build more. Or to convince all the people holding €15k/sqm homes to just pretend their homes are now only worth half as much. The latter is, of course, a far better option, and I think that’s more or less the idea behind your comment? But, as you know full well, if I ask my dad to pretend his home is worth only half of what he’s paying it for with his mortgage, or if I ask my uncle to pretend the money for his retirement is only half what he thought it was, they’ll say no! Building more isn’t great, because prices will remain high-ish at best, and because it can make our cities noticeably less livable unless it’s very well done (and certainly, make our cities quite different from what they now are). But I can’t think of any other way of doing it?
I think you’re right, in a way? On the one hand, it had never seemed to me that there was some sort of deranged focus on building more for the sake of it. It’s more like “where I live, five years ago prices were €10k per square meter, now it’s more like 15k, and while my parents built wealth by buying their home, I’d literally need to spend the price of a brand-new car to buy just the toilets with no home attached”. In that sense, we need to build more. Or to convince all the people holding €15k/sqm homes to just pretend their homes are now only worth half as much. The latter is, of course, a far better option, and I think that’s more or less the idea behind your comment? But, as you know full well, if I ask my dad to pretend his home is worth only half of what he’s paying it for with his mortgage, or if I ask my uncle to pretend the money for his retirement is only half what he thought it was, they’ll say no! Building more isn’t great, because prices will remain high-ish at best, and because it can make our cities noticeably less livable unless it’s very well done (and certainly, make our cities quite different from what they now are). But I can’t think of any other way of doing it?