<story><title>Detroit&apos;s abandoned tunnel systems open door to another world</title><url>https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2024/02/10/underground-tunnels-detroit-michigan/72060366007/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kurthr</author><text>Really? It seems like once a group of people have lived somewhere for a generation or two and have a $Trillion invested in a place they probably are going to make it hard for new comers to make radical changes.&lt;p&gt;Kinda like a giant codebase that&amp;#x27;s been maintained for 50 years and has a million regular users is going to make updates difficult.&lt;p&gt;Find a place people don&amp;#x27;t already want to live and make that better with great new housing designs? Why do does someone deserve to move somewhere new and live there cheaper than the people who already live there?&lt;p&gt;Now, that said there are huge distortions to the market driven by taxes and leverage. Many expensive places have 10% unoccupied housing. Think about how much that is. Imagine the time, cost, and disruption to build even 10,000 units of housing, when there are 40-50k units unoccupied.</text></item><item><author>ajmurmann</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s wild that we used to do radical changes to cities like this and now changing zoning or making cities walkable are frequently seen as unfathomable.</text></item><item><author>dmoy</author><text>Here in Seattle the underground part of the city is open for tours (parts of it anyways).  They built the current downtown on top of the old one, so it&amp;#x27;s pretty surreal down there.&lt;p&gt;Not even tunnels in this case, just like a whole-ass other set of streets and storefronts, all abandoned, partially buried, and covered on top.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lmm</author><text>&amp;gt; It seems like once a group of people have lived somewhere for a generation or two and have a $Trillion invested in a place they probably are going to make it hard for new comers to make radical changes.&lt;p&gt;Few if any of them actually invested that money. Rather they bought when it was cheap and then sat on it (either individually or as a family passing it down through inheritance) as the price went up - worse still they vote to grandfather in cheap property tax rates for people who bought early, so they&amp;#x27;re not even paying their fair share at the most basic&amp;#x2F;direct level.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Find a place people don&amp;#x27;t already want to live and make that better with great new housing designs?&lt;p&gt;In today&amp;#x27;s vetocracy that&amp;#x27;s pretty much impossible - you&amp;#x27;d have to find somewhere where not a single person already lived. Even then, as soon as you started doing it someone would move in and then block you. (Set a rule that requires development to continue? There&amp;#x27;s already a statewide rule that cities just flaunt)&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Why do does someone deserve to move somewhere new and live there cheaper than the people who already live there?&lt;p&gt;Being able to move in at the same price would be plenty. Up until the &amp;#x27;50s people moved where they liked and build what they liked where they liked, without any permitting or anything. Now it&amp;#x27;s illegal to build practically anything - the vast majority of housing stock is only legal because it&amp;#x27;s grandfathered in, and would be illegal to build anew.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Now, that said there are huge distortions to the market driven by taxes and leverage. Many expensive places have 10% unoccupied housing. Think about how much that is. Imagine the time, cost, and disruption to build even 10,000 units of housing, when there are 40-50k units unoccupied.&lt;p&gt;Unoccupied housing is a scapegoat. A healthy market needs some liquidity. If you legalise building new houses then unoccupied houses cease to be a problem.</text></comment>
<story><title>Detroit&apos;s abandoned tunnel systems open door to another world</title><url>https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2024/02/10/underground-tunnels-detroit-michigan/72060366007/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kurthr</author><text>Really? It seems like once a group of people have lived somewhere for a generation or two and have a $Trillion invested in a place they probably are going to make it hard for new comers to make radical changes.&lt;p&gt;Kinda like a giant codebase that&amp;#x27;s been maintained for 50 years and has a million regular users is going to make updates difficult.&lt;p&gt;Find a place people don&amp;#x27;t already want to live and make that better with great new housing designs? Why do does someone deserve to move somewhere new and live there cheaper than the people who already live there?&lt;p&gt;Now, that said there are huge distortions to the market driven by taxes and leverage. Many expensive places have 10% unoccupied housing. Think about how much that is. Imagine the time, cost, and disruption to build even 10,000 units of housing, when there are 40-50k units unoccupied.</text></item><item><author>ajmurmann</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s wild that we used to do radical changes to cities like this and now changing zoning or making cities walkable are frequently seen as unfathomable.</text></item><item><author>dmoy</author><text>Here in Seattle the underground part of the city is open for tours (parts of it anyways).  They built the current downtown on top of the old one, so it&amp;#x27;s pretty surreal down there.&lt;p&gt;Not even tunnels in this case, just like a whole-ass other set of streets and storefronts, all abandoned, partially buried, and covered on top.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bobthepanda</author><text>Keep in mind that ten percent figure is not ten percent totally unoccupied for the entire year.&lt;p&gt;The process of leasing is not immediate. In a similar way to how 0% unemployment is not actually desirable or remotely achievable, you want some slack in housing markets so that people actually have price competition and choice.</text></comment>