> Once you can build higher the costs diminish since most of the cost is opportunity cost of the parcel of land it's sitting on, not the building itself. A real rise in supply will counteract rising prices. You can build 8x 100m^2 apartments for way less than 8 million.
It's not that simple. Higher buildings need to be stronger, and they need elevators.
The are absolutely areas in the city that could have higher buildings, but plenty of areas in the city already have them. There are plenty of large apartment blocks in West, North, Buitenveldert and Bijlmer.
Inside the Ring, sure there are areas that could have higher houses, and I'm not necessarily opposed to that, but it's not going to gain as much extra houses as you think. Up to 4 floors, having no elevator is considered acceptable. Higher than that, by current rules, you really need an elevator. Do you want to have people walk up the stairs for 6 floors? Or make all the houses smaller to make space for an elevator?
There are trade-offs involved. It's not simply a matter of taller houses therefore more affordable houses.
I believe by the current plans, they intend to build high rises on Zeeburgereiland, but I've seen a very convincing argument that you can house just as many people there with lower buildings. The gain isn't as big as you'd expect.
In the Bijlmer, they're explicitly moving from large apartment blocks to low single-family houses. I don't know what the reasoning behind that was exactly, but I suspect some lessons were learned there. Maybe people actually do prefer lower houses. They're fairly affordable, and people actually get to have a yard, which is a rare luxury in Amsterdam.
I don't see the need to pack as many people as possible in the city. The city has to remain livable, and as far as I can tell, the city is doing a really good job at that. They do try to fill up all the unused spaces in the city, like de Omval 20 years ago, and Zeeburgereiland now (I'm still surprised they built IJburg before putting Zeeburgereiland to use).
It's not really a bubble when it's based on real supply and demand. The city actively tries to reduce speculation with measures like the one from the article, but because it's such a nice place to live, lots of people want to live here.
I don't see any reason for Amsterdam to become a backwater, and there already are plenty of jobs in Rotterdam. There are other towns around Amsterdam being built up, like Almere, Hoofddorp and Purmerend. Of course the Amsterdam will keep looking for places to create new houses, but opportunities for that will remain limited.
> Higher than that, by current rules, you really need an elevator[...]
You're really making my case for me :)
Of course there's trade-offs involved. The point of deregulation is that instead of us or some council meeting having to decide say if 4 floors, 5 or 6 is OK for a walk-up, people can just vote with their money.
And yeah, I'd argue that there's plenty of people who given the choice between paying an extra couple of hundred a month and a shorter commute would be fine with walking up 1-2 extra floors.
But the point is I don't need to be right. If it's deregulated and nobody builds 5-6 floor houses without elevators we've lost nothing, but if they do we've produced a lot of value for them just by getting out of their way.
> I don't see the need to pack as many people as possible in the city. The city has to remain livable[...]
> It's not really a bubble when it's based on real supply and demand.
It's based on an artificially restricted supply, which is politically motivated. The city's only needing to micro-manage the market it's already ruined because it started out with intervening in it. There's plenty of cities that historically have grown in size, density and population while real estate prices have stayed level or even gone down.
> Of course the Amsterdam will keep looking for places to create new houses, but opportunities for that will remain limited.
I 100% agree that it very likely will stay that way. I'm only making the point that it's almost entirely an artificially created problem.
It's not that simple. Higher buildings need to be stronger, and they need elevators.
The are absolutely areas in the city that could have higher buildings, but plenty of areas in the city already have them. There are plenty of large apartment blocks in West, North, Buitenveldert and Bijlmer.
Inside the Ring, sure there are areas that could have higher houses, and I'm not necessarily opposed to that, but it's not going to gain as much extra houses as you think. Up to 4 floors, having no elevator is considered acceptable. Higher than that, by current rules, you really need an elevator. Do you want to have people walk up the stairs for 6 floors? Or make all the houses smaller to make space for an elevator?
There are trade-offs involved. It's not simply a matter of taller houses therefore more affordable houses.
I believe by the current plans, they intend to build high rises on Zeeburgereiland, but I've seen a very convincing argument that you can house just as many people there with lower buildings. The gain isn't as big as you'd expect.
In the Bijlmer, they're explicitly moving from large apartment blocks to low single-family houses. I don't know what the reasoning behind that was exactly, but I suspect some lessons were learned there. Maybe people actually do prefer lower houses. They're fairly affordable, and people actually get to have a yard, which is a rare luxury in Amsterdam.
I don't see the need to pack as many people as possible in the city. The city has to remain livable, and as far as I can tell, the city is doing a really good job at that. They do try to fill up all the unused spaces in the city, like de Omval 20 years ago, and Zeeburgereiland now (I'm still surprised they built IJburg before putting Zeeburgereiland to use).
It's not really a bubble when it's based on real supply and demand. The city actively tries to reduce speculation with measures like the one from the article, but because it's such a nice place to live, lots of people want to live here.
I don't see any reason for Amsterdam to become a backwater, and there already are plenty of jobs in Rotterdam. There are other towns around Amsterdam being built up, like Almere, Hoofddorp and Purmerend. Of course the Amsterdam will keep looking for places to create new houses, but opportunities for that will remain limited.