Stop Applying Induced Demand to Housing!

[@benjaminshinar9509]

induced demand for housing definitely exists. if housing were cheaper, more people would move out of living with their families earlier, more people would live alone and not with roommates, and more couples would start having kids earlier. which are all things society considers as positive outcomes.

[@isaacliu896]

similarly, people that drive on new roads enjoy some benefit from it, otherwise they wouldn't do it! it's the social costs of the new roads (pollution, less space for other things, etc) that we don't want

[@SweBeach2023]

More people would also feel a greater degree of alienation, more elderly would be left to fend for themselves, more energy and resources would be required to maintain and build said resources, a higher need for transportation would be created etc.

[@hylje]

No, society does not consider those good outcomes. Society comes up with the flimsiest excuses to make them impossible to achieve. Commuting is a virtue.

[@Nixdb]

@@SweBeach2023 Regarding alienation - the young people I talk to feel alienated because they can't invite their friends around to their parent's house easily, so they can only socialise by going out, which can be expensive. If they could afford to move out, preferably into a flat with a couple of friends, they would be much more socially connected and build better social skills.

[@cautera3403]

@@SweBeach2023counterpoint to you and @hylje is that with cheaper high density housing it would be much easier for extended families and friends to afford to live near each other. Easier to still move out of your parent’s attic but still walk 10 minutes over for Sunday dinner or babysitting. It’s easier to have the quiet and luxury of having a 1 bedroom but meet your friends within 20 minutes walk at a bar without worrying about driving. If diverse housing was available and cheap, it would be easier for elderly empty nesters to downsize from their large house. They wouldn’t be pinned down by the necessity of holding onto their house(land) shaped retirement investment and the lack of options to be near their existing community. I think many people would still be alienated because Industrial/post-Industrial capitalism just does that, plus algorithmic digital media. But I think reversing the trend of physical isolation/stuck-ness would probably help.

[@FuncleChuck]

My city, Indianapolis, decided to absolutely blast a CANNON into its foot by selling its on-street parking to a corporation. Now they can't even reduce or remove the parking spots without paying an insane price, because they sold it way too cheaply and have to pay it back at actual value. The state has also functionally banned Light Rail, and expects all busses to turn a profit (something they'd NEVER force a new road to do)

[@NihongoWakannai]

But you see busses have operating costs whereas roads are completely free after they've been built! Oh no it's been 20 years and our roads are all decayed? We're gonna go bankrupt from all the repair costs? Who could have possibly seen this coming!

[@halycon404]

@@NihongoWakannai Infrastructure isn't supposed to turn a direct profit. Infrastructure is supposed to earn indirect profits. Roads make more money than they cost to upkeep, just not directly. It's all the commerce across the roads which is taxed that wouldn't exist without the roads. Busses don't turn a profit in operating costs, they turn a profit by generating market income on tax. This is basic economics of infrastructure 101. It's what infrastructure makes possible over it's lifetime that pays for it, not the infrastructure itself. Anyone arguing that infrastructure must pay for itself directly is being disingenuous. Every time the argument of rebuilding old infrastructure comes up the actual argument isn't that it costs too much, it's that we can't afford not to. Loss of infrastructure means the loss of all economic use of it. Everything which relies on it goes away. The pricetag of fixing it is minuscule compared to the overall economic loss.

[@NihongoWakannai]

@@halycon404 congratulations on completely missing the entire point. Wonderful job.

[@Krill_all_health_insuranceCEOs]

Chicago did the same thing. I am not sure why we enjoy suffering and pain so much but we keep electing these absolute brain-dead corrupt sold out psychopaths who want to hurt not help the public they claim to love so much. Our politicians are uniquely psychopathic and criminal in the western world imo. It's quite an achievement really. I do wonder if this will ever change. Corporations own everything. Big business owns politicians like a violent pimp owns what he sees as his property. Pretty sad. Honestly, willingly selling any public public asset to a corporation should be seen as an absolute career killer, what's an official ban on ever running for any public office again, and a minimum prison sentence of six months. Every politician no matter their stripe, color, or creed sees themselves as willing property and an absolute servant of big business with zero moral obligation to the general public. I have no idea when or if this is ever going to end.

[@Krill_all_health_insuranceCEOs]

​@@NihongoWakannai I don't understand- I thought his explanation was important, relevant and intelligent. What's your issue?

[@rajdeepkundu3623]

7:51 Another reason why this argument falls apart. In the absence of cars ideally one can walk, cycle, ride the bus or metro... But in the absence of built housing, people have no alternative - they'd be homeless!

[@rishithakur7186]

Exactly the extreme logical fallacy with such a comparison between road lanes and housing…

[@381delirius]

Currently in the absence of car, we're landlocked in NA suburbs without a chauffeur. and those who are wheelchair bound may be in deep since wheelchair vans are 3x the cost of the original base vehicle.

[@antontsau]

in absence of housing they make the megapolis better, LEAVE!

[@timogul]

Being homeless is basically the same as walking or cycling in that analogy though, and buses and metros would be like shelters.

[@rhysrail]

The comment makes sense if you don’t look at it literally, I wouldn’t say the comment is saying cars are nice same as houses are meaning that even if sometimes it’s hard cars are useful

[@Schrodinger_]

Tearing down bike lanes to build car lanes to "ease congestion" is like tearing down townhouses or condos for single family homes to "ease the housing crisis". It does the exact opposite. It replaces a more efficient, denser solution to the problem with a sparser one that accommodates fewer people.

[@saamohod]

Bike lanes won't substitute car traffic. But busses and trains will. However public transportation will remain dead in North America as long as it is considered a service for losers.

[@ElchiKing]

@@saamohod Bike lanes can substitute car traffic, at least in dense urban environments where typical trips are short distance. In fact, the bike often has the most reliable travel time. Sure, it won't be as quick as a car in the best case scenario, but it won't sit in traffic during rush hour either.

[@jameslawlor7446]

Unbelievable that Ontario is considering expanding a 12 lane highway. The ultimate expression of "just one more lane bro" ! Not to mention the obvious diminishing returns: Going from 2 lanes to 3 : 50% increase in capacity. Going from 12 lanes to 13: only 8%

[@willardSpirit]

Just one more lane, bro. Ah yes, the solution to ease congestion is to increase more cars on the road?

[@alexander53]

it's getting embarrassing at this point

[@sonarun]

Truly one of the dumbest things. Ontario, man. Also, ripping up bike lanes? For real?

[@carltongannett]

its a thirty minute commute from the leftmost lane to the right lane

[@davidty2006]

how about they replace that one massive traffic light junction thats causing all the traffic to back up with a roundabout?

[@POINTS2]

Transportation and housing can be looked at the same way. We need more high capacity solutions. This applies to transportation (less cars and more trains, buses, and bike infrastructure) and housing (less single-family homes and more duplexes, apartments, and condos).

[@cmmartti]

Yes, and the entire reason that cars aren't a viable solution to transportation in cities is that they are inherently low capacity. Induced demand is a problem for cars because cars are inefficient and cannot scale to high capacities. Induced demand is not a problem for public transport and bikes because those _are_ highly efficient and can easily be scaled up.

[@canuckasaurus]

The condo market is dead. We haven't built any substantial amount of them in Calgary in a decade, due to oversupply, and now Toronto is facing the same issues. Condo sales are overwhelmingly driven by investors, and they are a bad investment now, with declining valuations and many months worth of inventory just lying around. If I look around me, prices have exploded for single family, townhouses, and duplexes, and people are still buying those. Few people want to buy condos anymore, and nobody wants to build them.

[@bimasetyaputra8381]

Its mostly because its harder to sell condos 25 years doan the line when compared to single family houses, since you can still sell the land even if the house has rotted away. The problem circles again to housing being used as an investment

[@cautera3403]

Private cars are the detached single family houses of transpiration. Desired and luxurious, but so inefficient spatially that they should be avoided in urban areas.

[@haydenlee8332]

This is a very good point. I also thought that cars : single-family detached houses buses : duplexes & town houses trains : apartments & condos and thus the "just build more lanes" wouldn't solve traffic, just as "just build more single-family houses" wouldn't solve housing. And as far as I am aware of, not a single urbanist channel says cities should build more single-family detached houses. They all wanted multi-family housings, which is consistent with their advocacy of public transit (based on the above analogy)

[@esgee3829]

i had a dream that some small town in the netherlands with a wicked sense of humour built an 18 lane bikeway just to mock canada then plastered toronto with marketing messages telling them to get off the highway and come visit. best sleep ever.

[@ASDeckard]

The best part is it would only be like two (car) lanes worth of space.

[@elkyubi4281]

I would be funny to experience being in a traffic jam there

[@EmanuelBorsboom77]

That kind of exists in the town of Soesterberg, which has a 45 metre wide bike lane. If you assume a generous 2.5m width for a bike lane, that's 18 lanes. @BicycleDutch has a video about it: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gpvTo56FpdegnZY

[@duckface81]

@@ASDeckard closer to 8

[@bjay8295]

Hello, I wanted to comment that this video felt like a missed opportunity to talk about public goods. What you were describing was similar to the issues with public goods, but without the framework we have to describe them and how housing is not one. In economics, public goods are goods and services which are both non rivalrous and non excludable. Roads are common-pool good, meaning they are rivalrous but non excludable, thats why they tend to be overconsumed (that is what congestion is). Housing on the other hand is a complety private good, meaning it is rivalrous (my consumption of my house means someone else misses out on the house) and excludable (I can close the door to my house and prevent people from using it) which is why it doesn't suffer from induced demand. Public goods are usually an economic argument for state intervention and tolls on highways are a measure to make roads excludable, to "combat" overconsumption. Hope you find it useful and I suggest reading about public goods, as I think they are key to understanding things like transport and cities in general.

[@keeblebrox]

That's a great introduction to the concept of public goods, thank you. Are you willing to share any authors or books on the topic you feel helped illuminate it?

[@foobar9220]

Public goods is indeed a good point. But this has nothing to do with induced demand and a lot more that the winning strategy with respect to public goods is to behave like a douchebag. You will reap more of the good, while the costs will be spread to everyone. This is why the commons of old (and still in many developing countries) suffer from overgrazing. However, driving does not really work like that. You get the same end result (going from A to B) and there are substantial costs on driving, both immediate and visible, and some less so. People may be able to ignore the cost for depreciation, but time is a cost as well and very visible. If something takes 20 minutes by car and 10 by bike, only few people will drive. The issue is that reality is quite the contrary. Driving, even with traffic, is often by far the fastest option. Not just in the US, in most of Europe as well. Moreover, driving is often much safer than mixing with cars. Not just in cities, but especially in rural areas. Urbanists love to talk about how biking at an arterial is bad...now imagine biking on a rural road with cars coming from behind at 100-120km/h...

[@rhysrail]

I personally things motorways should all be privatised as then they are private goods and the benefits will pay off the negatives or the company will go bankrupt, this means we would still have motorways but they would make money rather than cost money

[@foobar9220]

@@rhysrail This might work for highways and at larger cities. But it definitely will not work in small towns and rural areas. There are simply not enough drivers to make a privatized road work at somewhat reasonable prices. Keep in mind that people in rural areas already have very high cost for mobility, as they do actually rely on the car. Given the distances (though that can be alleviated a bit with electric bikes) and the lack of safe cycling infrastructure, there are little alternatives to driving. Transit also does not work if there are only few people.

[@peterryrfeldt8568]

Limited access roads are artificially excludeable, that's what tolls are, just like TV

[@Carsonist]

The main distinction is that housing is good and driving is bad.

[@BIGBLUBLUR]

This you? -> 🗿👑

[@gumbyshrimp2606]

Driving is good, actually

[@Throwaway-ix2pe]

@@gumbyshrimp2606Almost objectively not. Burning fossil moves just to fucking move is pretty silly if you ask me

[@Sam-w5v]

​@@Throwaway-ix2peI personally enjoy driving

[@Throwaway-ix2pe]

@@Sam-w5v That is cool I do too. I’m dear near 500hp and will be over that with an intake a tune very soon I love doing pulls and driving a nice car. This does not mean every single time I want to get out my house I have to contribute to destroying the planet, and even if I get an electric car contribute to a process that is killing children who are mining for rare metals. In North American nearly all of our societies are based on public transit which has been demolished for highways. It is ok if you like driving because I do to we just have to not impose driving on nearly every individual in North America

[@hydronpowers9014]

Driving itself isn't bad. Single family homes itself isn't bad. Only limiting people to a single option then spamming it all over will leads to drastic problems.

[@vlada]

Problem is some people think that urban hellholes are appealing or are the only areas people live in.

[@bullettime1116]

​@vlada only problem is some people think being landlocked in isolated asphalt deserts is somehow appealing and the only way to live

[@kalgore4906]

@@bullettime1116it’s the best way lol I love how all these weirdos wanna get rid of roads but just love to order sex toys from Amazon

[@bullettime1116]

@kalgore4906 i want the need for cars to not be binary, I was born in the suburbs and sure as hell want to leave it when I get the chance to. People conflate less cars with no cars

[@kalgore4906]

@@bullettime1116 that’s what you weirdos want lol I have a construction business that literally couldn’t function without cars so forgive me when I get a little heated when some balding white dude wants to take the food out of my family’s mouth

[@spaceremains]

I keep hearing this brag about Toronto having the most cranes in the sky building endless condos, but the infrastructure is not keeping up. Driving around the city is so terrible right now that I've decided to permanently give up my car and use my bicycle as much as possible. It beats traffic and it beats TTC delays, emergencies and the dreaded short turn. I am the captain now.

[@nick2555v6]

I'm glad you found a better way! I don't think the condos with like 0.2 parking spaces per unit are the cause of the traffic lol. It might have something to do with the massive sea of single family homes with 2-3 cars each that has expanded a ton recently at the edges of the gta

[@spaceremains]

​@@nick2555v6 It's brilliant new buildings are being built with minimal parking now. I think all infrastructure is bad! I wasn't even thinking about the roads on that one. I live in an older building downtown that has a nearly empty 3 story parking garage and 0 bike racks.

[@keeblebrox]

Becoming fed up with the TTC streetcars stuck in car traffic is what pushed me onto a bike over a decade ago. I haven't seriously looked back since.

[@EdwardM-t8p]

And now Doug Ford has screwed you guys over, forcing you to put yourself in danger by having to compete with cars on the road or to put up with the daily crush on the TTC subway or infinite delays on the busses and streetcars that are stuck in auto traffic.

[@EvelynSaungikar]

Each of those condo projects blocks at least one lane of traffic while it is being built. This, plus the utterly useless Ontario line project, and the long overdue infrastructure works, are causing the majority of traffic issues.

[@Alex-od7nl]

Roads are an expense, buildings are revenue. If a city builds too many roads at the expense of buildings, then its revenues will decline. But unfortunately, in most N.A. cities the formula is for suburbanites to drive in and out of downtown areas for work or entertainment reasons, so if cities do not sacrifice buildings for roads, then businesses do not get the suburban traffic which they rely upon for increased revenue.

[@TommyJonesProductions]

If we stop subsidizing the suburbs, they will collapse on their own and people will move beck to civilization.

[@Greeniykyk]

Ever heard of commuter rail? There are other, better ways to transport people from one place to another, at the same times five days a week, than by cars.

[@Alex-od7nl]

@@Greeniykyk You are making the mistake of applying logic to irrational thinking. For example, what sense does it make to drive to a bar, or spend two hours a day sitting in traffic? None, but try telling someone this is crazy, and you will likely get laughed at.

[@NeiyMaritz]

​@@Alex-od7nl yeah sadly people are just to ignorant, theyll rather pay thousands of dollars in gas, insurance and maintenance a year just to be able to drive 3 miles everyday. Those people think that you want to abolish cars and force them into high rises but we want just a bit of change

[@northernmetalworker]

Let me guess, a 15 minute city is the ideal solution?

[@barryrobbins7694]

The most expensive housing is in metro areas that are walkable, bikeable, and have good public transit, because there is not enough supply to meet demand.

[@gasmaster8437]

In the United States maybe induced demand does apply to housing, because 75% of land is zoned for single family detached houses (low capacity/difficult to expand) and mortgages are subsidized/guaranteed/have tax benefits (not "free," but they price is highly distorted).

[@EdwardM-t8p]

And roads are built to open more land to development, or were. Now it's the roads are expanded to catch up to the development which only encourages more developments further out!

[@LudicrousGotRizz]

Same in Canada

[@Myrtone]

I wonder if it is because single family detached houses (often single story) with gardens are more popular among families with children than other housing options.

[@economicprisoner]

@@Myrtone No: because if it was by demand, building multi-family housing would not be illegal. Racism plays a part in it. Readlining was used to enable the "white flight" to the suburbs, while at the same time preventing Black families from owning their own homes.

[@gasmaster8437]

@Myrtone If it was so popular they would still be predominant even with more relaxed rules about what you could build. Right now they are "popular" because everything else is illegal on 75% of land.

[@haydenlee8332]

If we were to apply induced demand to housing, we'll need to divide them into multiple categories just as transportation has been divided into multiple categories. Thus, let's suppose for example: cars = single-family detached houses buses = duplexes & town houses trains = apartments & condos *All the urbanists channels advocate for more dense housings than less dense ones for the cities.* Not a single one I am aware of is saying "just build more single-family detached houses" to solve housing, which would be the equivalent argument of saying "just build more lanes" to solve traffic

[@vlada]

Because all these people think that living in urban sh*those is the ultimate. While many people still dream of a house with yard for the kids and no syringes and condoms on the sidewalk. The urbanist channels think that their hip downtown life is something everyone should experience.

[@adam346]

another concept: high cost of housing is directly linked to the number of people willing to commute... increase housing, decrease cost and you will have more people moving to Toronto instead of clogging up the roads.

[@MrBirdnose]

@@adam346 I think the inherent costs of building tall buildings on expensive land mean they will always be out of reach for most. The only time cities have been affordable was when they were so crime-riddled that most people didn't want to go near them; as soon as the crime was under control rents skyrocketed.

[@adam346]

@@MrBirdnose you are going to have to be more specific... like, in the prohibition era? 60's? 70's? 80's? Just so I know you are not just goin on a a feels bit... My comment was more in line with "turn Toronto into Tokyo 2.0" than "build moahr single unit houses!!!" where high-speed rail combined with a very cavalier attitude towards housing and institute a 30 yr tear-down for any single-unit house built within city limits... that'd fix the issues of clogged roads to a degree.

[@MrBirdnose]

@@adam346 70s to 80s. At least in the US cities were cheap to live in during that period because you'd get mugged on a regular basis.

[@adam346]

​@@MrBirdnose oh, you just mean gentrification... it's a problem but hardly the core of it. NIMBY, poor city planning or egregious requirements to build mixed-use, single housing developments, refusing to invest in high-speed rail, short-term rental market boom (AirBnB), lack of rent controls, lack of any rebates for renters and massive rebates/tax exemptions for mortgages all lead to higher housing prices each one likely on par with that of gentrification.

[@shauncameron8390]

@@adam346 Better than the blight and decay that preceded it. LOL. Rent control exacerbates the housing crisis with near 0% vacancy rates and inevitably higher prices for whatever isn't under rent control.

[@TheSkyGuy77]

The issue is that induced traffic comes from expanded SUBURBAN residential areas. People _ARE_ traffic. Edit: Please do NOT come over here, talk trash, and then accuse me of having an attitude.

[@2639theboss]

People are traffic....hm.....youre not the marketing manager for the state of Qatar by chance?

[@Dukenukem]

@@2639theboss Seems like you are mixing terms, those people you are thinking about are called "cargo". "Trafficking" is the thing you do with "cargo".

[@grsafran]

Don't forget politics.

[@grsafran]

​@@Dukenukemsemantics really. Come on dude it's not the words that matter here, it's the message.

[@beyondEV]

The main reason is: There is no affordable housing, where the jobs are (and shops). Dense Housing within walkable distance to jobs or excellent public transport (only really affordable, if you have dense housing concentrated along public traffic axes), is the only solution. Over here in Switzerland, Public Vote just vetoed a moderate expansion (only 2 to 3 lanes, in just a few places) of the highway system. We already have excellent public transport. The main reason that we still have "to many cars on the road" is: Swiss cities have only 0.5-2% empty apartments (and you pay the high rent yourself, while you can offset travelling with to work from your tax bill). While, the total number has gone up massively (3.5-4.8 mio units in 23 years), a lot is replacing homes in villages, with houses with more units. And while they all do have by north american standards good public transport, you generally are still much faster by car. The is little congestion overall, maybe 5 min here and there (except on friday, guess it's the germans driving home for the weekend), but that is mainly due to people simply driving 60 mph, tailgating like crazy. Mostly they do pay a lot of attention, so accidents are much rarer than what one would expect. Real Solution: Tax Driving harder and force the use of that money to create more "social (= affordable) housing.

[@AlecMuller]

As someone who lives in a rural area, I would *love* to see effective congestion pricing. As it is, I just avoid cities completely, or accept that I'll need to waste time looking for parking & figuring out how to use an unfamiliar public transit system, or being stuck in traffic. Far more people would use buses if car-drivers couldn't externalize their costs, and with more bus-users, they could offer higher-frequency service.

[@AnotherDuck]

Here in Stockholm we have congestion pricing for the inner city. Pretty much everyone outside were against it, and people inside were for it. Thankfully, the government listened to the people who actually live in the affected area. And now it brings in a good amount of money that's used for metro expansions, a road around the city, and other things.

[@josephfisher426]

@@AnotherDuck It needs to be a VERY viable city. I'm sure Stockholm qualifies.

[@mariannerichard1321]

Although sometimes "one more lane" do fix the problem, it's usually fixing an issue of merging then unmerging lane on a short distance. There are usually some fine tuning to do with trafic fluidity, but at one point, there's no way around changing mode of transportation for a more efficient one. As for Toronto precisely, the main problem is not they need more lanes, it's housing close to downtown is impossible for 99% of the population. They need to move always farther, and use ever more length of road to move around daily. There needs to be options for young families between the 1 bedroom studio downtown and 1+ hour away exurb detached house, at a price the median young couple can afford. Less commute means less need for one more lane. And then, obviously, at a certain point, you need to start using mass transit seriously. Tokyo, London, Paris or New York wouldn't work without the various rail transit. Sure, not everyone use them, but the one that do leave room for the others. 500 students on buses and trains is 500 cars out of the trafic, and 500 parking spaces more on the campus. Then 500 students housed on the campus ground is 500 places left in the transit and car trafic.

[@janekmazur5985]

Just build more lines! They are underground. Dont take parking spots. And you could push so many people into one train. I am talking about metro lines of course.

[@pcongre]

we could do that ...or we could learn from other cities' mistakes and just give back the city to the majority of its citizens

[@root_314]

@@pcongre wat

[@searchingfortruth619]

I think building codes need to stop being so prescriptive and restrictive. Let the market guide what needs to be built: that only works if you let that thing be built!

[@ebrothen]

Underground train lines are extremely expensive. They cost hundreds of millions (or, in the US, a Billion!) per mile to build. A city bus costs about half a million to buy and runs on existing roads. So much cheaper, faster to implement, and easier to change routes as needed.

[@ulterior_web]

Trains don’t need to be underground to be great, see Tokyo IMO transit should be used as a tool to allow more people to live/work in close proximity to a dense city, but if the city itself isn’t even dense yet it probably makes sense to focus on densifying.

[@sardendibs]

There is a point to applying induced demand to housing if you focus on the major cities. Increased availability paired with general urbanisation will attract more people to key cities and thus perpetuate the problem. Increasing availability will increase demand in the major cities, because in the post-industrial age a lot of people want to move to the major cities for white-collar work opportunities, cultural iife etc. The arrival of these people itself creates new job opportunities, and makes the city more appealing culturally etc., and thus there's a feedback loop, and "the beast" grows larger. And the larger it is, the more of a pull it has. I dubbed it the "metropolitan effect" in an article I wrote about it, based on a study made at the London School of Economics about how increasing supply also increases demand (which I have forgotten the name of, I'm afraid).

[@mdhazeldine]

I'm also from London, and I was about to say something like this (but less scientifically).

[@isaacliu896]

Induced demand is good for the people that get to enjoy a new road, and people that get to enjoy new housing!

[@Zalis116]

That effect can also introduce political distortions, where the urban majority loses legislative chambers to the rural minority. Urbanites wind up in a small number of compact districts that they win by overwhelming margins, while rural dwellers are spread out in more districts that they win by smaller, but still decisive margins. It's even worse in the US, where partisan mapmaking for state legislatures and the US House of Representatives can lock in these trends, and the Senate gives equal representation to all states regardless of population.

[@ccederlo]

My understanding of his point is that we need to 'stop applying induced demand to house...' _as an argument to reject more, various and high density housing._ Yes, if a city continuously improves and prospers, then yes, more folks will want to live there.

[@anthonygood1335]

Jevon's paradox

[@MDFification1]

Have you considered that induced demand is just not a very good concept? You can only induce an inelastic demand. Driving a car is an elastic demand but transport in general is not. Housing is not. In both cases, there is far more demand than is actually being realized - more people want to get from their home to the places where there's work and shopping than currently can (because of the terrible decision to build suburbs) and more people want a house than can currently afford one. This creates the illusion of demand being "induced" when it already existed, it just didn't have an avenue to be expressed.

[@TheAirborneKite]

Induced demand is just a case of people being unable to distinguish between "demand" and "quantity demanded". In fact, there's probably a stronger case for true induced demand (an upward shift of the demand curve) for housing than there is for roadways. All things being equal, some people prefer to live in a busy place, but no one prefers to drive on a busy street. The reason housing is expensive in NYC is because people want to live there: the reason that people want to live in NYC is not because they want to live near The Empire State Building, it's because they want to live near other people, and NYC has a lot of those. So if you take a 5,000 person town like the one I live in, and conjure 500,000 units, the short-run impact is that prices fall as landlords struggle to find tenants. The long-run impact is that what was once a small town where there was one main employer and two restaurants is now a small city that has diverse options for employment and leisure. That makes it a more appealing place to live, shifting the demand curve up. Theoretically, this could increase rents, but crucially it does so by making the housing more valuable, not just more expensive. There's no corresponding story for roadways, or at least not a simple one. You have to say that widening the road causes more driving (+Quantity), which causes more sprawl, which makes driving more appealing (shifted curve). But there are more steps involved and, again, the shift is a result of making driving more valuable.

[@joshuahillerup4290]

Ottawa did used to have massive rush hour congestion with almost entirely buses downtown, but the LRT basically fixed that, as full of problems as it is

[@kevinbarnes218]

Ottawa O

[@gibusgaming]

What? OC transport ridership is down from pre-pandemic levels due to it's unreliability. With the governments back to office mandate has caused a ton of congestion on the 417 both ways, the O-train didn't fix Ottawa's congestion WFH did.

[@LudicrousGotRizz]

It has too many problems

[@joshuahillerup4290]

@@gibusgaming I'm specifically talking about how it was along the two downtown streets with all the busses before the LRT opened during rush hour

[@jasperli]

@@gibusgaming you’ve never been stuck on a bus moving through centretown on Slater or Albert in rush hour pre-LRT and it shows. The LRT literally DID solve the specific problem of buses converging & clogging in Centretown even if its reliability is dubious & its servicing pattern is questionable.

[@Schlabbeflicker]

The entire conceit behind "induced demand" logic is that fast-flowing traffic is the end-goal of traffic infrastructure in and of itself, rather than the largest creation of value in terms of commute time reduction. You might as well be saying that you are achieving good public health by making hospital visits so difficult and expensive that people no longer schedule appointments, thus reducing wait times. It's horrendous economic logic.

[@TheAirborneKite]

Thank you! People who choose to not make a trip because the roads are too congested are also stuck in traffic, they're just stuck at home instead of on the road. The purpose of a road is to convey people to their destination faster than the time at which they would be indifferent to making the trip at all. The purpose of a road is not * To have high throughput * To go fast * To be uncongested Its performance must be measured by how much total time it saves people vs indifference.

[@Lord_zeel]

@@TheAirborneKite Nobody is arguing that we just ignore the problem though. Rather, we are advocating for solving the problem in ways that aren't stupid. Roads are too low density to solve the need for transportation in a major city, they take up too much space. Building "one more lane" is insufficient and building a dozen more might be enough but now you had to tear down all the places people wanted to go TO. Instead, you need to invest in high-density solutions that provide the needed transportation but take up far less space. Busses, trains, cycling lanes, etc that allow more people to move around without sacrificing all the land to do it.

[@TheAirborneKite]

​@@Lord_zeel Sure. I have nothing against space-efficient transport infrastructure - I don't drive myself, actually. The issue is that people often act like roads are a magical exception to the laws of supply and demand, but "induced demand" is seriously just ordinary microeconomic demand. It's fine to argue that "roads are space inefficient" or "driving has a high negative externality" or whatever. But when people argue that building/widening roads is a pointless exercise because of induced demand, all they're really saying is "there's no point building another lane, because people are just going to drive on it", which just demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the purpose of roads.

[@hugoguerreiro1078]

​@@Lord_zeelthe problem I have is that a lot of people who complain about induced demand don't just want more efficient solutions, they're more interested in stopping people from driving. Some even go as far as to say that cars should be banned, or that only EVs should be allowed. A lot of these people are radical environmentalists pretending to want to fix the problem of congestion when all they care about is eliminating the use of fossil fuels, even at the expense of people's quality of life.

[@allthe1]

People babbling like there are no alternatives to cars. Meanwhile there are no alternatives for housing, you can't build homes any way you want, it'll get demolished.

[@MusikCassette]

the equivalent to trying to solve congestion with building more lanes in housing would be, to try to solve housing crises with building mcmansions.

[@MrSunrise-]

...which is exactly what we are doing in Canada.

[@cautera3403]

Private cars are the detached single family houses of transpiration. Desired and luxurious, but so inefficient spatially that they should be avoided in urban areas. Buses are townhouses. Trains are apartments.

[@SigFigNewton]

@@MrSunrise-the point is not to meet the basic needs of a population, it’s to attempt to maximize profit for a few

[@SigFigNewton]

You’d think governments would know by now to subsidize housing just as they subsidize food.

[@MusikCassette]

@@SigFigNewton the thing is, it is important how you subsidize housing. And even more important what kind of housing you allow.

[@Darth_Insidious]

Induced demand with housing does apply, but the outcomes are almost universally good. More people living in a city makes the city wealthier, especially if housing is built dense enough to be walkable and people shop at local businesses.

[@50gramsof]

Been thinking govts must be so hooked on tolls it disincentivizes improving public transit after a recent road trip to Cali

[@HugoPerez]

The main difference is that people should be entitled to housing and transportation, regardless of how rich or poor they may be. People should not entitled to operate and store their private vehicle in public spaces, appropriating valuable land that could otherwise be used to build things that actually matter. It's all about priorities.

[@GogonYero]

Why in Canada not massive busway like jakarta ?

[@delftfietser]

A bicycle is a private vehicle. So no bike racks or lanes in public space? Some priorities you got.

[@HugoPerez]

@@delftfietser Does bicycle infrastructure matter? If so, then make it a priority like I mentioned.

[@kylejohnson6775]

No bike racks or lanes at the expense of housing, no. But they take up so much less space that it's dramatically more practical to incorporate bike storage and lanes without costing your ability to build housing. You're right, most of the same basic logic of cars applies to bikes, with 3 key differences: Bikes take up so much less space that it is a tiny problem compared to car storage and transportation. You could turn every existing road into a bike road and every parking lot into a bike parking lot, and you'd have room to double the population of every city in America without running into serious congestion issues, because they need so much less space than cars Bikes weigh so much less that it's quite difficult to kill someone or seriously injure them in a collision. And they're so much smaller that it happens less often. And they barely damage roads compared to cars because they weigh so little, so they cause almost no physical harm to cities. Bikes don't cause noise or air pollution. So they don't harm human health either. They're a net benefit, if anything. Low impact cardio exercise. So, on the surface they're the same, but in practice they're dramatically different. It's like comparing a pet cat to a pet horse. You can draw some surface level comparisons and apply similar logic, but in practice they're very different.

[@HugoPerez]

@@kylejohnson6775 I literally agree on everything you mentioned. This is a video about housing and how “induced demand” doesn’t apply to it. Nobody is arguing about whether or not we need more bike infrastructure. Obviously we do. It’s part of the “transportation” we are all entitled to. We’re entitled to transportation, not to the storage of our personal property on public spaces. It’s obviously nice to have if we can afford it, but should never come at the expense of housing or public transportation. And of course bikes are way more flexible than cars and can fit more easily in public spaces. Again, why are we arguing?

[@dylanluhowy]

It’s all tied to car culture and the illusion that cars are a ticket to freedom (freedom to be tied to a depreciating asset, freedom to need parking, freedom to be stuck in traffic, etc.) The younger generation isn’t enamoured with personal car ownership the way we GenX and Boomers were. I think car culture may finally be due for a significant decline over the next 20 years.

[@SweBeach2023]

Cars are still freedom. Today I went to buy 50 kg of concrete. Please tell me the best way to do it if not by car? Too far/heavy to transport using bike or public transport. Not sure if any taxi would accept sacks of concrete as luggage or me dressed in a very dirty overall as a customer. Having it shipped? Sure, if it wasn't for the fact I yesterday didn't know I needed it today.

[@dylanluhowy]

@ Seriously? You call the building supply store and get it delivered. They use their own truck and drop it off at your door, same day. I have a 3/4 ton pickup but I still get things delivered whenever I can. No time wasted driving there and back. I can keep working on something else while I wait.

[@mazterlith]

​@@SweBeach2023The example you gave seems like a specific use case, which yes, a personal car would let you do that. Most of the hours for most people who live in suburbia or downtown is not spent for getting concrete, it's for groceries or going to a place, both of which are to do on a bicycle as long as they are close enough. I like having the freedom to chose different travel options when I dont really need to use the car.

[@mazterlith]

​@@SweBeach2023And to be clear, I dont think that there is anything wrong with your choice to use a personal vehicle to transport your concrete. Most of the issue I have is that in regions with enough people, bicycling or mass transit should be a viable option to get to another part of the city.

[@solangecossette1374]

I'm pretty sure they meant to say "multiple bags of concrete"? 50 kg of concrete is no heavier than a 120-pound girlfriend riding with you on your bike. That being said - if you are getting multiple bags of concrete for a job - rent the van the hardware store has available. Unless you like replacing your suspension struts, coilsprings and mounts... Or you forget the bags in the flatbed and it rains... Lets just say I learned from experience.

[@Sceptera]

Housing is basically the biggest reason for longer and further commutes. Honestly building housing is important but the legislation is EXTREMELY important. For example something like SELLING (not renting) at least 40% of new housing to people whom actually work in the area for a rate related to the work wages in the area, not just selling to the highest sale price or to non-resident speculators.

[@yankee3698]

While you do have some points there I think there is still a bit of truth to the idea of applying induced demand to housing. I am German and not so familiar with the situation in North America. Nevertheless here in Germany we have a housing crisis in big cities. Rents and prices for flats have gone up considerable in big cities while smaller towns are dealing with vacancy and decay. People are moving into the bigger cities which have better infrastructure, better job opportunities etc. Political response is basically just "built more housing in the cities". This lowers prices temporarily and then more people move into the cities. This in term causes smaller towns to die even faster and close services (transportation, medical services, shopping) which in term makes it even more attractive to move... I can see that this can be seen as similar to induced demand.

[@jphjphjph]

People seem to think smaller cities can't be improved. Or that we're limited to building gross architecture. Why can't another Paris or Venice be built today? The people want traditional architecture / traditional urbanism.

[@cautera3403]

Hasn’t this general phenomena of rural to urban migration been happening for centuries in every industrialized country? Isn’t the problem that there isn’t sufficient economic planning to establish a job market in smaller towns? It’s not like when young people are forced to remain in rust-belt villages because the metropolis is unaffordable, jobs magically appear to make them prosper. It seems like the problem is that the government has fumbled (intentionally or out of shortsightedness) rural deindustrialization?

[@yankee3698]

@@cautera3403 Not sure if your questions are directed towards me. Just to make sure: I do not see any obvious errors in you reasoning and I do not see that this contradicts what I wrote in my comment in any way...

[@lakrids-pibe]

This channel is so sensible and calm. It's lovely.

[@SaveMeAzathoth]

An issue not considered here is that housing supply is unfortunately consumed not just by people needing to live somewhere but also as an investment vehicle. A cycle of high prices leading to new construction being primarily purchased by investors willing to leave units empty instead of purchased for residence driving prices higher may be seen as comparable to roadway induced demand. Housing construction can still be ineffectual without policies that will either deter investors or encourage investors to make the properties available on the rental market so that they still function as housing.

[@BrandonSchleifer]

I think the problem with "induced demand" is that it implies that the demand wouldn't be there if you didn't induce it. Induced demand only happens because the pre-existing demand hasn't been satisfied.

[@josephreynolds2401]

"If you build it they will come" worked in Field of Dreams, though 😉

[@Lord_zeel]

Right, what you are inducing is how that demand manifests in utilization. People need to get around, if you build a road they will drive on it, if you build a train they will ride it. The demand exists for transportation in general, and how you fulfill that demand determines what people do. You induce demand for roads by building them because they serve the demand for transportation, but you should not take that to indicate that you need more ROADS just that you need more transportation. And if the amount of transportation you need is extremely high, you ideally need to choose a way to provide it that is efficient enough that it doesn't take away half the land in your city.

[@omnipi]

Ding ding ding

[@samuelbock8550]

Y’all’s shit is so good dude. Criminally underrated urbanist channel.

[@موسى_7]

The best urbanist channel

[@ccederlo]

My understanding of his point is that we need to 'stop applying induced demand to house...' _as an argument to reject more, various and high density housing._ If a location continuously improves, grows in desirability and prospers over time, then yes, more folks will want to live there = "induced" demand (good thing)

[@SigFigNewton]

Reducing the quality of life of most in order to see your real estate appreciate

[@Personnenenparle]

Fixing housing would also fix traffic. People cant live close to their job.. So they have to commute

[@loogabarooga2812]

Wow weve come full circle. I found this channel when I was first digging into housing crisis and I googled "does induced demand apply to housing" and it led me to the last video. Great work as always!

[@hens0w]

no the demand for housing in the UK and Canada is entirely manufactured. Its completely with in our PMs power to stop.

[@rajdeepkundu3623]

Another reason why this argument falls apart. In the absence of cars ideally one can walk, cycle, ride the bus or metro... But in the absence of built housing, people have no alternative - they'd be homeless!

[@famitory]

and more to the point the alternatives (tents, RVs, vans, home depot shacks) are basically illegal since there is no commons anymore and all property you could possibly make your home on is owned by someone else.

[@shauncameron8390]

@@famitory Namely either the government or some random investor.

[@incredulouschordate]

As usual, your video is precise in dismantling a misconception. Thanks for hitting it out of the park once again!

[@rhysrail]

It wasn’t a misconception but rather a statement, personally I would say it was showing that just because things are more efficient than cars it doesn’t mean that cars are bad, and I wouldn’t say a response to that is to privatise motorways as then it is self balancing as with houses with you get what you choose to spend your money on

[@incredulouschordate]

@rhysrail I was referring to the misconception they addressed in the video -- that "induced demand" means that you can never meet the demand for something, and the more supply you create, the more demand there will be to infinity

[@rhysrail]

@@incredulouschordate oh I thought you meant about the comment in the video

[@InflatableBuddha]

The major problem with the housing markets in Canada and the US is that they're fueled by speculation from corporations and wealthy individuals (e.g. REITs in Canada). If it were a 1:1 relationship where a family or individual owns one home or one unit, cities could probably build or acquire enough to keep pace with population growth. When wealthy individuals or corporations buy anywhere from dozens to thousands of homes, it drives up the price whether they rent them or leave them empty. The supply/demand mechanism only partially explains the problem.

[@alexdunphy3716]

Our population growth(type and level) are completely unsustainable in Canada though and are inevitably leading to these increases in cost. We simply don't have the capacity build enough housing and infrastructure to house and transport an additional half a million people per year

[@jonmcclung5597]

You guys are the best urbanists on KZbin, hands down!

[@test40323]

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. The price of continue building more highways to accommodate suburbanites who don't work where they live is more congestion and heavier tax burden to maintain those roads in the future. ask yourself, how does a suburbanite get to ttc? how much worst congestion will be when hybrid or remote work return to the office...doesn't the abandoned food courts in downtown toronto offers an indication of the potential? more insanity?

[@ASDeckard]

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." So if you try to find a job, it doesn't work out in the first week, you should just...... stop looking for a job? Sounds like a successful way to live your life. That is a famous quote often misattributed to Einstein, who died long before anyone ever said it, let alone said it himself. It actually comes from the Radical Feminist and Lesbian Segregationist Rita Mae Brown, when trying to justify her wacky and extremist positions of civil rights (specifically her position of actively taking them away from straight people until Lesbians get them too). You see, it's madness to keep trying to do the same thing over and over (peaceful civil rights protest) and expecting a different result.... so you need to turn to terrorism to get your rights. If people were honest about the quote, where it came from, and what it's implications are, we'd almost never hear it. Literally just the Hamas supporters and RadFems, truly the most diabolical alliance.

[@chillin_like_bob_dillan6499]

Caught me off guard to see my hometown pop up at 1:34 to show off our massive highways and urban decay that gutted downtown❤️

[@inesalveano1356]

Min 5:29 where you speak about "more accesible".... maybe that's the point. Landlords (and corporations that profit from properties) do not want prices to reduce...

[@Simonvbaal]

I like your videos normally, but you are completely missing the point here. The point is that they are similar because of network effects for housing. The more people live somewhere, the more opportunity it has and the more interesting it is. Therefore, people will be more likely to move to your city, the more populous it gets. So building more housing will most likely not make it cheaper to live there. That depends on a lot of parameters of course, but you don’t mention this at all in your video.

[@nathangamble125]

Counterargument: Increased supply of housing *can* induce demand from property investors, even if it doesn't induce demand from people who want to live in the new housing. China has this exact problem, of having a huge housing bubble, as investors have bought empty housing despite China's declining population. Much of this housing is low-quality "tofu dreg" apartments that have been built in the middle of nowhere, purely for the sake of investments, rather than for people to actually move into. People may be basing an argument against building more housing on their observation of the harmful effects of doing this in China, or similar investment bubbles in other countries. Counter-counterargument: This is mostly not applicable to the USA and Canada, which are both growing in population, so building more housing is much more likely to be beneficial in the long term, even if it could induce a housing inverstment bubble in the short term. If a lot of people need homes, and even more people will need homes in the near future, building homes for them is just common sense.

[@micahdesilva1685]

I have an undergraduate degree in economics, and while I agree with most everything in this video, I have to pick at your last point. I strongly agree with your point about induced demand being caused by a lack of marginal cost for road use, but if tolls are used to impose a cost and raise funds for transportation, those funds should primarily be used to fund new road construction, rather than mass transit options. In analogy to the housing market, housing prices are higher in "congested" areas where housing demand relative to supply is higher, but the profits created by these higher prices accrue to the owners of the congested real estate. High profits in congested areas incentivize new construction and greater density, and are often used to fund new construction (either directly, or indirectly through loans against expected rental income). For tolls to be effective, they must follow the same principle by using toll revenues from congested areas to invest in additional lanes, alternative routes, or other solutions that increase supply and decrease congestion along that route. This will lead to an expansion of supply in high-congestion areas that is financed by the users of those routes - win win!

[@Urbanhandyman]

I'm very curious to see how New York City's Manhattan congestion pricing program performs beginning in early January, 2025. According to the MTA website, " Congestion Pricing will dramatically reduce traffic in the Congestion Relief Zone, transforming the area from gridlocked to unlocked. Less traffic means cleaner air, safer streets, and better transit." This program could have huge implications for Canada and the United States if it's shown to be effective in curbing vehicle traffic as well as funding expansion of public transportation (the stated goal of the collected toll fees).

[@zen1647]

Oh, it's back on? Last time I heard it was canceled/postponed. Awesome if it is back on!

[@Urbanhandyman]

@@zen1647 They killed it for a while but it's back on after lowering the toll fees. A car driver will have to pay $9.00 during peak time, $4.50 for motorcycles, $14.40 to $21.60 for buses and trucks. Off-peak charges will be much less.

[@nlpnt]

@@Urbanhandyman I wonder if it's applied to public buses as well. I only go into NYC about once a year but when I do it's on NJT.

[@ThirdWiggin]

@@nlpntno it isn’t applied to buses

[@Urbanhandyman]

@@nlpnt I doubt it will apply to public transportation buses since the entire idea is to reduce private vehicles and build up public transportation. I could be wrong.

[@Schenkel101]

I never thought about correlating the capacity of housing and traffic. Single family homes are cars (and houses with outrageous yards are light trucks), townhouses are bikes and pedestrians, and apartments are public transit. The comparison draws itself. Also, in the ocean, cars are like boats, motorbikes are like jet-skis, and pedstrians are like bathers. And like in city traffic, accidents also happen at sea. Don't let someone's happiness die at the beach.

[@Andre-qo5ek]

one caveat i didn't hear. with more housing we need to ensure the other infrastructure keeps up with the new demands.

[@LucarioBoricua]

And it's a lot! - Utiliites: water, electricity, telecommunications (ex. Internet), waste management, wastewater, storm water, fuel delivery (ex. gas lines) - Public services: health, education (schools, universities / colleges, libraries), security (firefighting, police), government offices (ex. DMV, taxes, welfare programs)... - Commerce: retail, offices, hospitality, restaurants... - Amenities: parks, plazas, museums, stadiums, arenas, theaters, protected natural areas near the city... - Transportation: roadways, railways, air travel, aquatic transport (seaports, ferries, etc.) non-motorized transportation (cycling / walking), parking...

[@rlwelch]

But a lot less per person if the housing is dense!

[@Andre-qo5ek]

@@rlwelch for sure, economy of scale. the distribution of a strong towns, city beautiful , permaculture approach is a lot cheaper when distributed across a dense population that shares the same enthusiasm for the projects.

[@cautera3403]

@@LucarioBoricuaa lot easier to finance all that when you have a higher ratio of taxpayers per square foot of infrastructure

[@CrownBoron]

​@@LucarioBoricuaAll of that is cheaper/actually sustainable with denser housing and a higher ratio of taxpayers per square meter. With suburbia, all that infrastructure makes them a ponzi scheme that the rest of us subsidize.

[@Sullyville]

Great points. Its actually true that you could build enough lanes to "solve" traffic, its just that you'd need, like, 100 lanes, which is spatially impossible! On the other hand, thousands of more units are not actually impossible to build to "solve" the housing demand crisis. In fact, building a 100-lane highway would have extreme negative externalities for the city, while building more, dense units would generally have mostly positive externalities (increase in business, vibrancy, etc)

[@Novusod]

Driving isn't free. It is pretty expensive just like housing and is subject to the same market forces of supply and demand. Both have their limits. But in general when an inflection point is crossed building more housing does not solve the housing crisis. No city has ever built there way out of a housing crisis. If more housing equaled lower prices than New York City would have the cheapest housing because it has the most tower blocks. Even with high capacity 50 and 60 floor tower blocks the prices never came down. They went the opposite direction. New Apartments in New York cost millions of dollars. This is because the more housing you build the more it induces demand. The demand induces faster than you can build. This phenomenon can be see in any city building simulator game like Cities Skylines. You can just build and build and build until you fill the entire map all the while the prices just go up and up forever. The only way to lower rents is though rent controls. Not supply side economics.

[@shauncameron8390]

Rent control = shortages and inevitably higher rent for units not subject to it. Thanks to high building and land costs.

[@Lord_zeel]

It might be more apt not to say "induced demand" but "latent demand" - that is, the demand for the thing is already extremely high but the currently limited capacity keeps the utilization in check and makes it impossible to measure the demand if it is larger than the capacity. This demand may not even be conscious, there might not be a bunch of people thinking "I would drive to X if there was another lane" but if there is someone who would in fact do so then their demand exists in a latent capacity. The problem comes from the fact that, for roads, the latent demand may be so large that it would be impractical to ever meet it. If you have to give up 50% of the land area in order to offer enough capacity for all that latent demand, clearly you are doing something wrong. Instead, you have to meet that demand in a way that provides higher density - bike lanes, busses, trains, streetcars, etc. Because the the latent demand is for transportation, not for any particular form of transportation. The same person that would drive to X if there was another lane would also likely take a bus to X if there was a fast and efficient bus route available. In other words, "induced demand" is what happens when there is a latent demand for some general thing like "transportation" and you fulfill it with some specific solution like "a new lane" which induces people to choose THAT solution because it is available. Applying this to housing, you will find that there is a latent demand for housing and it isn't whether or not we provide more housing that will effect demand, but the kind of housing we provide. If you build a suburb of single-family houses you will induce demand for those houses out of the latent demand for housing. If you build a high-rise with apartments, same thing. But just as a train is denser than a road, an apartment building is denser than a suburb. Higher density is more efficient both in terms of how much demand you can fulfill with the same area, and because it allows for more economical use of utilities and services. As such, you absolutely CAN apply induced demand to housing. It's just that high-density housing is already the solution, while suburbs are the problem. It would be silly to say that building an apartment building is going to "induce demand" the way widening a road will, because widening a road isn't like building a high-density apartment building, it's like building a handful of single-family homes. The latent demand exists irrespective of what you build, but what you build will induce people to use the solution you provided. When the latent demand is that high, picking low-density solutions is just bad math and will inevitably not work. So we have to be smart, and build the solutions that pack the most capacity into the smallest footprint. That means that in areas where we need a lot of housing, build taller buildings with more apartments and in areas that need a lot of transportation build trains and bus routes that can move more people in less space. Save the single family homes and roads for sprawling rural areas.

[@Randomorph]

Excellent video as usual, but there is one major issue with this comparison that this video misses. Even with horrible car-centric infrastructure, the alternatives to driving are still there, and worst case, you avoid making some trips you would otherwise make to avoid bad congestion, dangerous conditions, or poor service of the alternatives. The alternative to having enough available / affordable housing is widespread homelessness, which is currently going on in much of the western world. Also honestly, one of the major solutions to homelessness is also getting corporations out of owning homes as a commodity, and applying penalties to unoccupied homes. There are more unused homes in the US than homeless people, as one example.

[@MegaLokopo]

If there way only one housing market induced demand wouldn't apply, but when there are many many different housing markets induced demand does exist. To say it doesn't you are claiming that no one has ever moved to a cheaper house or apartment solely because of price.

[@MegaJellyNelly]

Well, there are definitely people who buy or pay the rent for an apartment for their kids who don't live so far, to go to university. This takes away housing from the market in university cities. I don't think this is as bad of an issue in Canada, probably also not in the U.S, but it happens often in the Benelux region of Belgium

[@aarons3008]

Thanks!

[@christjeezus]

5:11 The presumption that giving away housing for free would create shortages assumes that people would take more housing than they need. Most people don’t think housing should be considered a luxury good. If we limited free housing to one per person/family, how could there be a shortage? The supply/demand theory of housing only works in the context in which we accept that some people will simply be homeless because they can’t afford housing while others will gobble up more housing than they need. This is the current model under capitalism and it’s failing terribly, causing housing prices to eat away at people’s quality of life.

[@lacdirk]

A more relevant argument on housing is that you can not make new housing affordable without destroying the value of existing housing ... unless the new housing is substantially worse than the average existing house. So either you build substandard housing, or you collapse the value of real estate. I think that we should come clear on the fact that we can't solve the housing crisis in a fair way (i.e. not by building substandard housing) without crushing real estate valuation. That is not just because the consequences of that real estate crash need to be carefully mitigated to avoid a more serious version of the 2007-2008 financial crash, but also because it indicates we need to tackle other financial aspects of real estate in order to make housing affordable. Examples there are Chinese and Japanese real estate markets, which both suffer from huge oversupply of housing and high prices for even substandard housing in "desirable" locations.

[@unwatchedspacebum]

the really insane thing is that some people have homes or apartments that greatly exceed their need simply because they can afford it and then fill it with additional crap they also don't need because they can afford that garbage. We have a huge problem in the developed countries with the idea that paying taxes is a bad thing or some kind of punishment, it should be viewed as a privilege, something you are honored to do because you live in a time and place where you are not beholden to the whims of a warlord or monarch and your excess wealth can be used to uplift those who do NOT have what you already do instead of surround yourself with a steady stream of baubles and trinkets, the overwhelming majority of which will end up in a trash heap decomposing back into the various components they were sourced from that is the modern day joke of futile consumerism

[@kevintao1735]

As always, your videos are always so dang logical and matter-of-fact. That, and the lack of snark is why I love this channel! These would be the first I point someone to to learn about urbanism.

[@ivanalexandrovichchernyshe7126]

My take: roads and transit induce demand because expanding them brings convenience which attracts users. The same argument will work for housing, if the housing is a resort hotel in Cancun - these developments built one of the most famous tropical resorts in North America in what was previously nowhere. But most of the time, most people move for jobs and just get housing near that job. Thus, the only function of most housing is to fulfill a need that comes from job creation. It doesn't in and of itself create a convenience that attracts people, the people who'd live there are already attracted by the job, and so the induced demand argument fails for most housing.

[@MegaLokopo]

The real solution is to redo zoning so you don't have housing on one side of a city, and everything else on the other side of a city. You need zoning to be mixed. And it isn't just small shops that need to be mixed, everything needs to be mixed.

[@kentfrederickireland]

The fact that this has to be made to explain this is disturbing.

[@squiddler7731]

I imagine induced demand would be a problem for housing if we build new houses the way we build new roads: done in way that take up the most space possible with nothing but single family homes with massive lawns, and no measures in place to prevent landlords from buying them all up and pricing them in ways where they're left vacant most of the time.

[@stevemiller7949]

You two are doing a fabulous job. Thank you.😊😊❤

[@jeffafa3096]

Just wanted to mention that high capacity residential areas don't have to be bad places to live either. It's all about how you design the area and the connectivity to other parts of a city or even other cities. I personally live in a high-density residential area in a city in The Netherlands, but I love living here, because the entire neighborhood is just very well designed, and I have access to everything I need without having to own a car. What makes a good place to live is safety, interconnectivity and aesthetics. Everyone wants to live in a safe place, where they don't have to worry about burglaries, vandalism or other problems, and where children can play outside without the parents having to fear them getting run over by a car or something. Everyone wants to live in a place where you have access to basic necessities, healthcare, education and entertainment without having to worry too much about if you're even able to reach these facilities. And everyone wants to live in a place they see as beautiful. However, when a neighborhood is well designed, it can provide all of this simultaneously. It might even take some re-designing of the city as a whole too, to provide that interconnectivity. Cities shouldn't be afraid to break down the old if you are going to build back better.

[@purplelord8531]

in the end, the reason the masses won't understand nuance is that it's not our job to. but to function with that mindsets requires a trust in academics and engineers,(and a willingness to put public funds toward public good) things that are sorely lacking in the US and Canada

[@tann_man]

Ew gross. No. Everything said was untrue

[@EdwardM-t8p]

Since a previous generation of academics and engineers screwed the pooch with auto-centric infrastructure and urban planning... now we can't get out of the vicious circle they put us into!

[@purplelord8531]

​@@EdwardM-t8p no. the 'suburban experiment' was an experiment. when it became the norm, it was the people who benefited the most that argued the most for it. the people who could tell us that the experiment failed were shuffled into the background a big part of pushing being car-centric was for economic benefits. domestic industry *is* a good thing, but it has simply turned out that there are more cons than pros. car-centricism WAS a decent bet for our future when we could hardly imagine what car-centricism would look like! hindsight is 20/20. saying urban designers and engineers 'failed' is laughable.

[@purplelord8531]

@@tann_man how?

[@vamoscruceros]

1:51 This is a great point. When the price is below the equilibrium, demand for the good or service will exceed the supply.

[@electric_leo1630]

Unless your county has an immigration problem… Which Canada has.

[@monkev1199]

The entire crux of the problem in the UK. Infinite demand but finite supply. So prices go vertical.

[@hens0w]

@@monkev1199 line go to the moon

[@dps8629]

People often hate the public transit system because of how long it takes or being near people that make them nervous. Don't see why there can't be a private bus industry that you pay a subscription to that is more specialized and requires certain criteria like membership that is void in lieu of criminal records.

[@موسى_7]

Privatised public transport isn't competitive with driving. Public transport only works when it's public.

[@markthomasson5077]

Seemed talk more about traffic than housing. The main issue in UK is that housing is considered more an investment. So many live in much larger homes than they really need.

[@stefanc4520]

2:20 Roads are a public service that we've already paid for with tax dollars, it's not a business but a service the government provides the ppl. Also the 401 is that congested BECAUSE the 407 has a toll. If you added a toll to 401 or removed it from 407 you'd see that they will average out.

[@ZapSnap]

It's absolutely the same thing, you just see one as good and the other as bad

[@anonnymouse2402]

Congestion is purely due to travel distance. The only long term solution is to shorten the daily commute, either by living closer to work, or working more from home.

[@babyblooddistilleriesinc3131]

The keyword here is "scalability". Increasing lanes in a high-way is tied to diminishing returns. Adding a lane in a highway that already has 2 will increase capacity by 33%. But a fourth will increase it by 25% and a fifth by only 20%. Assuming that the cost of adding a lane is the same each time then you run into a situation where adding relative capacity to a high-way becomes more and more expensive, aka diminishing returns. If you had a rail-corridor instead you could literally double capacity by doubling the amount of trains, this is tied to constant-returns instead. Not to mention the fact that adding more lanes is infinitely more complex and often much more expensive than buying trains. Developing transit or housing will also obviously lead to its own induced demand. The actual difference is that car travel doesn't scale up the same way.

[@موسى_7]

Why is your username Baby Blood Distilleries? Are you a supporter of abortion?

[@williamhuang8309]

It would probably decrease a lot faster than that. While it may be sensible to assume that adding each new lane simply adds a definitive amount of capacity (1500-1800 vehicles per hour) to the total capacity, in reality, people don't use all the lanes on a stupidly wide highway equally. People tend to bunch up on the lanes where there are onramps and offramps, and if the highway keeps getting widened, merging conflicts and lane changes get much much worse which makes capacity worse. Forcing cars to cross more lanes means worse traffic flow. But with public transit, capacity can be easily managed and is much more scalable. For example if a metro is running short 4 car trains, adding 2 carriages to make 6 car trains and increasing capacity by 50% doesn't come with the same capacity limits as cars merging across each other as it's way easier to get passengers to use all the carriages of the train compared to forcing drivers to use all lanes. And running trains more frequently actually helps metros to run more efficiently as platforms are cleared faster since there's less buildup of people waiting for a train.

[@Shauna-d8r]

I'd rather be comfortably stuck in traffic in my car than ride a bus

[@TheGIGACapitalist]

To be fair induced demand does somewhat apply to housing in that a larger supply will lower prices and people might be more incentivized to move there.

[@TheAirborneKite]

That's just demand - if you supply more of something, people will consume more of it. "Induced demand" is either (a) a counter to the idea that demand for road use is totally inelastic or (b) a form of special pleading to argue that there's no point building roads if people are just going to drive on them.

[@paxundpeace9970]

One issue is that going beyond 2 lanes in the travel direction the benefit isn't as large. Going from 2 to 4 lanes does not double capacity. It does increase capacity by less then 60%. Building even wider requires even more complex planning with express lanes ramps and underpasses. As soon asbyou hit an intersection it get's even more difficult and wait times longer.

[@Newbyte]

Fantastic video. I really appreciate your approach to communicating these issues.

[@Skinnerian1904]

Another thing is that in a situation with high traffic congestion, many people who are taking the bus already own a car, but circumstances make transit more easy to use, particularly if you're going to be sitting in traffic anyway. If congestion goes down, suddenly using a car becomes a far more appealing option. This creates a user-base-in-waiting, where the second the congestion is lifted, there's immediately more people ready to use it, virtually over night. With housing, that lead time is waaaay slower, often with people still on yearly or multi-year leases that they are often going to complete before entering into an expanded housing market.

[@MrBirdnose]

To be clear, I don't think building more units is bad. Just don't fool yourself that it will make them affordable. The number of people who want to live in popular cities like NYC or San Francisco is essentially limitless. You could add another Manhattan to Manhattan and it would still be unaffordable.

[@MrBirdnose]

I'm currently looking at leaving my job and moving out of a beach community in California because no matter how many homes they build, there's always a rich guy waiting to buy it up as a vacation home. Prices only go up.

[@OhTheUrbanity]

@@MrBirdnose I don't know what you could as "affordable" in an absolute sense but doubling the housing in Manhattan would absolutely make it more affordable than it is now. And more people living there would take pressure off other boroughs.

[@MrBirdnose]

@@OhTheUrbanity I'm not so sure. Look at what they're building now -- pencil towers that aren't even meant to be lived in -- and investors are still snapping them up. I don't see how you ever get ahead of that kind of demand. There's just too much money sloshing around.

[@tempest_dawn]

another point that you didn't mention is that if someone chooses to drive rather than not, they are taking space on the road - a limited supply, where making use of it necessarily removes some. in your examples of folks moving to a larger apartment or moving somewhere more convenient like . . . their old place then goes back on the market - they're not unilaterally removing supply, they're also making another unit available, and this kind of movement on the whole contributes to market liquidity

[@dr.eldontyrell-rosen926]

The problem with building large amounts of housing is that it depresses the spectacular real estate boom. Corporate real estate is powerful enough to prevent any progress.

[@موسى_7]

I disagree. Corporations benefit from being allowed to build more housing because they can afford to pay to build. It's old homeowners who lose when housing gets built, because they bought their house to be an asset and not a residence, and they cannot afford to invest in building more housing on newly freed land.

[@MrBirdnose]

@@موسى_7 What seems to happen in the US is any time prices dip even a little, building stops. Developers got bit by the housing bubble popping in the 2000s and none of them want to build into another falling market.

[@dr.eldontyrell-rosen926]

@ No, I meant government providing public housing like we used to before conservatives privatized everything

[@MrBirdnose]

@@dr.eldontyrell-rosen926 Never worked out very well in the US. Dunno why, but public housing here always turned into dangerous, poorly-maintained ghettos.

[@amacot656]

I think that induced traffic is a theory that apply only on road that are currently jammed or have heavy volume. As pointed, in rural area you have smaller street yet no traffic and on 8 lines highway it's jammed. the better solution is to reduce the overall volume at the rush hour. But for the core of the video, we are already in shortage/overpriced situation... just ''adding a line'' of houssing could actually be a excelent temporary solution to releive the current pressure as a better solution is implimented.

[@lunatixsoyuz9595]

It's quite insane that people even think that building more housing is bad. More housing is always good. Unlike transport, housing is a basic necessity that has no alternatives. You can live a good life without commuting, even without living on a farm and instead in the downtown. But you can't even live poorly without a home, and without a home, you can't even start trying to get the necessities of an independant and fulfilling life. After all, who'll hire you if you can't even take a shower before your job interview, or even work a at home job without a home to work out of?

[@AlefeLucas]

Problem is, the author of the video doesn't see city density as a problem as seems to be in favor of city density growing indefinitely. More and more people and business moving to the same city while small towns don't have any job available. I don't think this is a good solution. What tends to happen in a big metropolis is that only the rich can afford to live nearby their workplaces while the poor have to live far. With public transit you don't fix that permanently. It's more efficient if everyone can live 15 minutes to work and not take a bus commute that takes 2h (that used to be my routine here in Brazil and still is of millions of people).

[@isimerias]

Slightly tangential to the main point of the video, but I do think that we’re at a point where mass production of housing (commanded by the government) really is our only hope at this point. Even if we opened the regulatory “floodgates” (which in itself probably wouldn’t be great. many regulations are there for a reason), it doesn’t seem like developers have the capacity or desire to quickly ramp production.

[@JoyClinton-i8g]

New York Times: From April 2020 to July 2023, the city lost almost 550,000 residents, or more than 6 percent of its population. Where is the empty housing? Induced demand --- people already living in NYC expanded their footprint to take the available space.

[@cloudyskies5497]

Definitely agree on toll roads and highways. Back when I was driving, I loved my pike pass. I'd very willingly pay the toll to be able to zoom to my destination.

[@IncaSteppa420]

housing is a fundamental need so it does not really subscribe to the same rules than most other activities / goods

[@poochyenarulez]

Which rules are you referring to?

[@tann_man]

It's a private good. It follows the rules of goods.

[@shauncameron8390]

But it's still a privilege just like living in the popular, trendy city you can barely afford.

[@streamofthesky]

You forgot investors. Investors would be the cause of induced demand. If a city is seen as in demand to live in and more housing is built, corporations and foreigners will see it as an investment opportunity, to buy them as rentals. And then as landlords can intentionally leave units empty to force prices to stay high.

[@shauncameron8390]

Partly due to tenants' rights as it's cheaper to leave the unit empty than rent to a bad tenant resulting in high maintenance/repair and legal costs.

[@Coromi1]

The solution to overcrowded cities is to bring jobs, leisure activity offers, doctors, good schools and culture to under crowded areas with good government policies. The solution is not to build high rises until only millionaires will get a glimpse of the sun or of greenery.

[@JG-nm9zk]

you highly underestimate how much people hate moving

[@jwfcp]

The toll road at 2 minutes in isn't an example of tolls working, rather toll failing to work. It was built to be used, yet people are not using it, that is failure. Its like the levee race, where each town along the river builds a higher and higher wall to keep the water out, but because no one is setting aside fields for the flood to be ablated by, the water just keeps getting higher and higher and so do the walls.

[@groundzero_-lm4md]

the 407 is also privately owned therefore its in the best interest of the company to maximize possible tolls.

[@usernameryan5982]

Oh my gosh, no it’s not? You think that in order for a road to be used, it must be congested? The reality is the exact opposite. Tolls are usually set at the minimum price to prevent congestion which means the maximum users can use the road unlike a congested road where flow stops and capacity plummets. If all roads were tolled, more people would be able to use the road and buses would never be stuck in traffic. It would revolutionize transportation.

[@yukaira]

the 407 is privately owned and is one of the most expensive toll roads in the world

[@jwfcp]

@@groundzero_-lm4md Yeah, which is a counterproductive incentive, since now no one uses it. The normal highway is clearly the preferred mode of funding and using this stuff. Punishing people won't punish them out of using cars, it will punish you out of office. They use cars because society is deliberately engineered to have ridiculous commutes to maximize fossil fuel company revenues, go back to mixed use zoning so that people can live near their jobs and also be able to shop without being held hostage by car ownership, then congestion will plummet.

[@jwfcp]

@@usernameryan5982 I didn't say congested, is DISUSED. No, adding a toll does not mean that a bus is magically summoned into existence. Public transportation only functions where there is sufficient density, which many areas simply to not rise to the level of. Zoning reform is how congestion is alleviated. If you don't need to go to the big box store for everything, and you can just pop in for milk at the corner store, thats one less trip to make.

[@JustaGuy_Gaming]

The other issue is more often than not the Govt pays for roads, tons of money from the Federal government is just given to states as long as they build highways. Which creates jobs and improves travel within their states, there is zero reason to ever turn down said projects for States even if it's not really helping traffic. On the other hand The Government often works against building homes. Putting out tons of restrictions and red tape that drives the cost of building up, which is passed down to the customers. There are already tons of homes, apartments etc in America built brand new an sitting empty. Because no one can afford to live in them after they took 10+ years to build.

[@yukko_parra]

"we don't have 18 lanes of trains anywhere in the world" train stations with more than 18 platforms: what are we then?

[@J-Bahn]

Often very nice places to be, unlike a major highway interchange

[@user-xi1il1lr3k]

A train station is more analogous to a parking lot, not a highway

[@vinny-is-here]

​@@user-xi1il1lr3k Most parking lots have a lot more than 18 spaces.

[@Ricktofenable]

That’s essentially a train parking lot

[@ThirdWiggin]

The entire NEC isn’t even quad tracked!

[@xymaryai8283]

there is no viable alternative to housing. there are, more viable, more efficient, more capable alternatives to driving. we just need to prioritise them.

[@shauncameron8390]

Not really as they're not that reliable.

[@larrypilcher3791]

Car ownership is an addiction, not a necessity. Decided to use Micro-mobility plus Public Transit. Works for me happily. Suburban sprawl plus traffic are a modern day plague conspiracy.