It's not just about having less, it's also about paying more for less.
Constant property ramping by the BBC back in the early 'oughts was the main reason I cut the cord and never looked back. They're about the only big player in UK media with no commercial interest in doing it (no ads from the property sector), but even so, they just couldn't control themselves.
At the same time, families got smaller, stay-at-home spouses (i.e. "free" upkeep) became less common, etc. Add in population growth in popular areas and the recent trend to smaller housing makes a lot of sense.
It's not addressed in the article, but one of the big factors should be that having the massive living spaces we do now is not sustainable. If we want to curb climate change to 2 degrees, we need to get our emissions down to 2 tons per person per year by 2050, which means heating and cooling a large living space will need to become financially difficult. I predict we will see increasing demand for tiny and micro houses as legislation and economics catches up to the severity of the problem.
Small nitpick, but it's estimated that global population will peak at approx. 8.7 billion before starting to decrease. See: https://www.cnbc.com/id/101018722
People typically have fewer kids as their society develops. Average age in the developed world is almost double of places like Africa. There is some evidence that slowing or decline in population is a reasonable expectation.
Also, from Wikipedia:
Low estimates suggest a decline
Moderate estimates suggest a plateau
High estimates suggest constant increase
Time will tell, and estimates suggest that the earth can comfortably support ~10bn
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I don't think housing prices have much to do with population increase, but more to do with urbanization (as well as increasing wage gaps).
People are flocking to existing cities, and the more center you are the higher prices are.
This pushes people to the outskirts, which become more urbanized, which spreads urbanization through the same cycle.
>Lastly, the planet has trouble with us now... It's terrorism to suggest that 10 billion is just fine.
Calling it terrorism is a bit absurd.
It's totally possible (and even likely within our lifetimes), but that doesn't mean that there aren't huge logistical issues to overcome for it to be comfortable.
One of the main problems is that the world population is so widely distributed. We can already feed and house everyone, we already have more resources than what would be required... they're just not distributed appropriately (some due to hoarding, some due to supply chain barriers, political borders, etc).
It is because I didn't say it was "just fine" I said "can" as in "is possible" — which is objectively true.
...and even if I did say it was "just fine" it wouldn't be tantamount to terrorism because I was pointing out something that is very likely inevitable.
I'm not invoking 3 billion people by assuming one day they will exist.
I don't know if anyone's ever told you this, but you're being outwardly shitty when you have no reason to be. You're just throwing the word terrorism around disingenuously to get a rise out of people.
Your only point is that the suggestion of the earth supporting 10bn people is akin to terrorism (which you later amended to "intellectual terrorism"), which I'd argue is objectively disingenuous... and completely pointless.
This conversation has reached the point of unproductive a while ago.
I'm sure you'll try to bait me back into it, because you fit that MO, but you're on your own.
The UKs pop should dropping, if not for immigration which the UK can control if they wanted too (being an island surrounded by rough seas and rich neighbors).
In developed countries things haven't changed that much.
If you look at London (since that's essentially the article), population has actually only reached back to its 1950 level.
But attractive cities can now pull people and investment from a global pool of billions of people and thus the market does its thing and prices move accordingly.
Be careful of that though. Urban is very broadly defined by the census. I live in a 7,000 person town 40 miles outside of a major city. Myself and 2 neighbors are collectively on 75 acres and are adjacent to conservation land. This area is considered urban.
I haven’t seen recent details but as of a few years ago, there was an uptick in college educated young people moving to a handful of mostly coastal dense urban cores but the overall urbanization trend in the US was rather limited.
Because every industry needs to consistently grow, forever, under a capitalist system. "The future" will always be increased austerity and sacrifice for the proletariate, never the bourgeoisie.
Because people believe they are nobly resisting capitalism by preventing housing construction in cities, as the population continues to grow and urbanize, capitalism’s most important feedback loop (high demand -> high prices -> more profit —> more supply) is short circuited.
Because the vast majority of new housing projects in cities are luxury housing designed to further enrich property owners and would be unaffordable to most people in need anyway. If you're poor and starving and all I'm offering is $90 filet mignon, I'm not really helping you.
Even if what you're saying were true, it'd still drive housing prices down for the poor. I.e. the rich would slightly shift towards these new luxury units, leaving more supply for those in mediocre housing units.
A 600sqft box is a luxury because we have decided it should be rare.
We are massively overbuilding a housing type with offensive levels of resource consumption built in: single family detached.
Cap VW at 100 cars a year. Think they’re going to be Jettas or Porsche? Probably Porsche. Doing that, then getting mad that cars are unaffordable, and saying “clearly if we let the automakers make more cars they will just be more Porsches, that’s not helping” would be silly.
