What happens to housing affordability when new homes are built in the local area? Recent economic papers have tried to answer this question, and a new Greater London Authority report summarises their findings

Here's a thread to summarise the summary: https://t.co/wwEsxO1wf5data.london.gov.uk/housing/resear…
There is already evidence that increases in the supply of housing bear down on housing costs over the long term, but until recently there has been little evidence on the short-term and local impacts of new supply on affordability, not least due to challenges identifying causation

Here’s a thread about Seestadt Aspern, a new town on the outskirts of Vienna that I visited yesterday. It was only a short stroll around but I was more impressed with it than I expected to be. Seestadt (‘lake city) is on the site of the Aspern Airfield, which closed in the 1970s. The first residents arrived in 2014 (a year after the metro line extension to the area opened). Population is expected to grow from 9k at present to 25k by 2030, with space for 20k jobs too.

Introducing PublicHouse, a new collection of publicly available data on housing stocks and population in countries and cities around the world. I'll post some analysis in this thread, but you're welcome to use the data and to add to it. github.com/jgleeson/Publi… The dataset is fairly simple, covering only the total number of dwellings and the population in an area. This does leave out a lot of things we would like to know about housing, such as tenure, size, quality, cost. But for international comparisons, it may be the best we can do.

Out today! The GLA has published its 2021 Housing in London report, with over 100 pages of charts, maps and facts on London’s housing crisis. The report and tables are available here data.london.gov.uk/dataset/housin… Some highlights to follow … For the first time since 2004, growth in the number of homes in London outpaced growth in both population and the number of jobs, but there’s still quite a gap to make up.

Via @jburnmurdoch, this is a vg thread of evidence indicating high rates of Covid-19 transmission in household settings, prolonged close contact being the key factor.

This lines up with my pet theory that Tokyo has had so few cases because so many Tokyoites live alone. Thread:

https://twitter.com/mugecevik/status/1257392347010215947

Average household size in Tokyo, 1.99 in 2015, is well below the national average of 2.33 (table 34 here e-stat.go.jp/en/stat-search…). Average household size in London is far higher at 2.69, above the UK average ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…

I wonder what would happen if we regulated car supply like housing supply, with people only allowed to get a new car if their immediate neighbours didn't complain about it. With supply heavily restricted, cars would be affordable only to the richest, so perhaps any move to increase supply would be attacked as a sop to rich consumers and greedy manufacturers.

If I had to pick the one most important factor in making so many Tokyo streets so attractive it would be the absence of any on-street parking. A fairly random but typical example is the street around the corner from our hotel in Nishi-shinjuku-go home ... That street, closed at one end to traffic, is relatively unusual in having no markings to deter parking. This one, narrower and with more shops, has markings on both sides.