zlacker

>>halduj+(OP)
The dynamic is a little different than in most other cities. What's really happening here is that cheap rent is a kind of entitlement in Berlin: rent controls extend across tenants so getting an apartment is really about persuading a landlord to take you rather than bidding at an appropriate price point. AirBnB gets around this by allowing rentals at arbitrary price points. This is true whether it's an owner or a renter doing the leasing, which is very different from other markets in which it's mostly a concern of renters abusing their leases.

> "The Berlin Senate’s ruling nonetheless reflects a general feeling across a city in which homes are getting harder to find: Berliners have had enough and they want their city back."

Translation: There is no pricing mechanism on rents in the city and it is becoming increasingly impossible to find an apartment.

While it's certainly true that AirBnB essentially allows landlords to flout the law, it's worth noting that the adverse effects of price ceilings on supply are the root cause of Berlin's problems and this will not solve the underlying problem of rents being far from equilibrium.

>>jvm+ih
A free market price would not fix anything - every tiny bit of flatland is already used. What you are saying is basically: Only rich people should have the right to live in central districts. I disagree and so do most Berliners.

>>doener+fl
Remove zoning restrictions, reduce barriers to development, and let density rise dramatically to meet demand.

Dozens of cities around the world are suffering from rejecting capitalism of property and the consequences will be the long run slow bleeding out to locations more accepting of economic reality.

Even in the most expensive places to live - Bay Area, central Tokyo, Venice, etc - if builders could build to their hearts content and see rapid high-rise housing development (first to meet the wealthy demand, and gradually to meet all other demand that turns a profit) you end up with affordable low income housing and extreme growth for the whole metro area, which means prosperity.

IE, rather than holding back development and costing yourself tremendous fiscal gains, you let those happen and tax the fuck out of them to make life better for all those displaced. Use tax money from more unfettered capitalism to improve the situation of the poor, rather than holding back markets for the sake of the poor, who are then also worse off.

>>zanny+Pp
Tokyo is a city that is generally agreed to get zoning right, because the matter is not left to municipal levels. There is no NIMBY exceptions, no fixers, no hellscape of red tape, just simple nationally run zoning laws.

>>Pxtl+3u
You have the Yakuza to thank for a lot of that.

>>orasis+mv
> simple, nationally run zoning laws

> Yakuza to thank for that

Your pithy one-liner isn't very enlightening. Could you elaborate?

>>nindal+6z
I've heard similar remarks in passing. The idea is something like this:

Democracy tends towards chaos and deadlock. There are too many cooks, and they all want different things, and they all have roughly the same amount of power. Usually nothing happens, and when something does happen it's a half-assed designed-by-committee nightmare.

When you see government acting swiftly, purposefully, effectively and succeeding at something difficult and expensive, it's because an autocratic force (like a political machine, or organized crime) has bent the democratic process to its will.

For example, only Mayor Daley could have pulled off Millenium Park in Chicago. To get something like that done in Chicago's dysfunctional government, you need to own people at every level and in every department. Only the Daleys have built empires on that scale, and other mayors in other cities don't wield nearly as much power (even if their legal entitlements are the same).