The New York Times recently published “a portrait of new single-family homes” in the US in 2016. Here’s that portrait:
For those of those living in dense urban centers, this portrait is perhaps a reminder that in many other places a large single-family home can be had for about the price of a studio apartment.
Nothing in the above portrait likely surprised you, but it’s interesting to note that over half of all new single family homes delivered last year were in “The South.” Only 7% were built in the dense northeast.
The New York Times also recently looked at “international rents per square foot” using data from RentCafe. Here they are:
New York City sits at the top with an average rent of $4.98 psf. This is across all boroughs. I am surprised by how low some of these international rents are. But averages rarely tell you the whole story.
In any event, I do think that these two graphics start to speak to the economic spikiness that we are seeing across the US.
When I was in New York a few weeks ago, my friend (a New Yorker) said to me that he couldn’t imagine owning a car (he used to but got rid of it with zero remorse). He then elaborated on all of the nuisances that driving in the city produces.
There are parts of Toronto where you can feel similarly. I feel fortunate to live in one of those parts. Of course, there are other parts of this city where the exact opposite is true. It’s inconvenient not to have a car. These are typically areas where lower land costs have been exchanged for higher transportation costs.
The City of Toronto has a land area of approximately 630 square kilometers. If that’s all the land we had (the metro area is almost 6,000 square kilometers), you can bet we would think about land use and transportation a bit differently.
Take for instance, Singapore, a city-state with an area of approximately 719 square kilometers. The Land Transport Authority estimates that 12% of the republic’s total land area is taken up by roads.
Because of this, they just announced that they have lowered their vehicle growth rate (for cars and motorcycles) from 0.25% per annum to 0% effective February 2018. They can do this through their Certificate of Entitlement (COE) quota. And it won’t be revisited until 2020.
Put differently: No more cars and motorcycles until, maybe, 2020.
The Economist recently published an article called: How and why road-pricing will happen. If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that there’s been lots of talk and support over the years on this blog for dynamic road pricing.
It’s politically unpopular, but it’s an incredibly rationale way to deal with traffic congestion.
In Singapore – home of the world’s first congestion charge zone (1975) – they constantly monitor traffic congestion. As soon as average speeds drop over a three-month period, they simply raise the charge. Congestion gone.
We know this works, but for many reasons road pricing is highly divisive. According to The Economist, there are a few reasons why this is going to become a bit more politically palatable.
For one, the take from gas taxes and vehicle duties has been declining in Britain over the past couple of years. Electric vehicles will only exacerbate this trend. So governments are going to be forced to look elsewhere for money.
Secondly, traditional tolls and congestion charges are becoming increasingly ineffective. Today in central London, private-hire vehicles are said to make up about 38% of all car traffic – almost double the share of traditional black taxis.
These are cars circling around the city, picking up passengers. Blunt charges based on suburbanites entering the city in the morning and leaving in the afternoon is simply not capturing the way that many of us move around our cities today.
In other words, urban mobility is undergoing dramatic changes and the revenue and congestion management tools are going to need to adapt. If you’re interested in this topic, check out the full article here.
Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash