Talzon70

This lady honked aggressively at me on my bike until I stopped to wave her past, then refused to continue forward and blocked a bunch of traffic behind her, but it's "cyclists" that are the problem.

Context:

• Travelling west from St Charles St to Memorial Cres.
• I was going the speed limit before the aggressive behaviour made it unsafe for me to continue.
• I safely stopped on the side of the road and waved them past.
• There was no oncoming traffic and plenty of room, but they refused to continue past me and threw a tantrum about me not using the bike lane instead.
• The bike lane in that area is only about 600 m long (66 seconds at my original speed) and on the wrong side of the road

The reason for this post is the surprising number of Georgists on this sub who seem to think LVT will magically solve the housing crisis without zoning reform. Many people in this sub even go further, arguing that liberalized zoning will make the problem worse because of increasing land values and land rents.

This argument is really flesh out in Patrick Condon's recent book Broken City, which I reviewed in another post over on r/urbanplanning: [Broken City: Land Speculation, Inequality, and Urban Crisis (and circular reasoning)](https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/1er2vyh/broken_city_land_speculation_inequality_and_urban/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_

My review of Broken City by Patrick Condon:

TLDR: I'm not sure it was worth the money I paid for the book.

The central thesis of this book is that speculative investment in land is the main cause of the housing affordability crises that have plagued English speaking nations around the world. Unfortunately, in his enthusiasm to make this argument, Condon is outright dismissive of other potential causes of declining affordability. Condon routinely dismisses widespread criticism of development restrictions negatively impacting affordability made by a wide spectrum of observers, including many economists, without giving that point of view the examination and/or rebuttal it warrants in any bo

I created a spreadsheet of endorsements and vibes. It's not as standardized and high quality as some other lists, nor is it comprehensive, but you're welcome to take a look at my quick and dirty notes.

My top priorities are: housing, transit, active transportation, environmental sustainability, climate change, and economic inequality. I see all these issues as inherently linked.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vR55vXD8u9lkqVs47SwPbzedLaMCwohdgxzUgrS6Vdc9vxShcuyCTayqUOKPka68njEkoXzkDQGEMuo/pubhtml

Disclaimers:

• This is just my opinio

Everyone in the whole world wants to live in Victoria. That's why Toronto and Vancouver and the small town of 20,000 people I grew up in all have a housing crisis. It's because so many people are trying to move to Victoria that many of them are missing by thousands of kilometers.

Furthermore, everywhere else is garbage. Nobody likes mountains and access to amazing views out of their front window. Nobody likes living next to a beautiful lake or only a short drive from some of the best skiing and snowmobiling in the world. Everyone loves the temperate climate of Victoria. Nobody likes snow and nobody likes the hotter weather offered in places further South.

People are lining up to live

I decided to have a look at the data, because every time people start talking about housing affordability, someone inevitably starts claiming that we are building tons of housing. I've always disagreed with that claim, largely because every time I've looked at housing starts it has been below population growth.

However, I had never really looked deep into the data, partly because the CMHC data portal sucks if you want to look at multiple years, for some reason. While exploring the data, I realized people don't usually live alone, so I decided to also control for household size.

Results:

[Housing Construction Shortfall Estimate for Victoria CMA for 2011-2021 Based on CMHC data (2011-202

Housing is a perfect storm, I'm not willing to take anything completely off the table as a cause, because it's a multifaceted issue.

There's obviously a real supply shortage in major urban centres, due to low-density car-centric development and restrictive zoning. See this video on the Missing Middle from Not Just Bikes, or basically any other urbanism channel you want. Heck, even just take a drive around your city and look at all the single family homes in places near the city center that should obviously be townhouses or low rise apartment buildings.

That said, there is also good reason to believe there is an asset bubble fueled by credit, which is direct