zlacker

>>halduj+(OP)
It's almost like cities (or more specifically, voters in municipal elections) don't realize that the only sustainable way to reduce prices is by increasing supply: http://www.amazon.com/TheRent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp.... We know what to do, we have the technology, and we only lack the political will to make it happen.

>>jselig+ec
Berlin is a poor city. In fact it's former mayor famously described it as "Poor but sexy". It doesn't have the liberty of increasing supply on it's own to a large extent. You also can't increase supply, no matter how much you want to, in the districts everyone wants to live in. Getting a place outside of it can be accomplished fairly easily.

>>DasIch+oe
It would be rather easy to increase supply of housing. Berlin is full of brown-field sites that could be stacked with housing.

1. Remove density and height restrictions (e.g. "Berliner Traufhoehe").

2. Remove unnecessarily strict building requirements (e.g. "Daemmungswahn").

3. Remove legislation that is too tenant-friendly (e.g. "Mietbremse").

All three serve as breaks to increasing housing supply, the first is a legal impediment, the other two reduce investments.

>>mafrib+af
I guess when you remove 3, you would increase the supply, but only with what you see for example in London: Mostly luxury flats

Doesn't really help getting more affordable flats on the market.

>>thesim+Wf
Berlin has an extremely affordable rental market, unless you want to live in Mitte or nearby. Even Mitte would be more affordable, if 50-100 floor skyscrapers could get building permission.

I'm not sure how familiar with the London property market. London is currently seeing a large amount of real estate being built, mostly studio, 1, 2 and 3 bedroom. Hardly luxurious. Prices are commensurate with London income levels. Otherwise people wouldn't live in London.

>>mafrib+Lg
Before you talk about how affordable Berlin is you need to take the income of people living in Berlin into consideration. You can reasonably live in Berlin but it's by no means extremely affordable.

You also can't arbitrarily increase density of a city as you need infrastructure to go along with all those people. Not to mention that Berlin has many old buildings that are under protection, so you can't just demolish buildings and replace them with skyscrapers.