Monday, June 02, 2014

Superstar Neighborhoods and the Concentration of Wealth

When grappling with gentrification, easier to deal with the demand than increase supply at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Gentrification and migration.

Subject Article: "Superstar Cities."

Other Links: 1. "Giving Up on Urban Neighborhoods."
2. "Turning Real Estate Market Fundamentals on Their Head."
3. "No MetroCard Needed: Bikes Change Your Brooklyn Apartment Hunt."
4. "The Geography of Anti-Gentrification: Google Buses and the World Trade Center."
5. "Tech booms: Too hot for jobs."
6. "On being priced out of downtown Detroit."
7. "The rise of the global capital: ‘Many ambitious Dutch people no longer want to join the Dutch elite. They want to join the global elite’."
8. "The Silicon diaspora: why the tech geeks are swapping Old Street for Stratford, Croydon and Kentish Town."
9. "AIG Sees Labor-Cost Arbitrage as Jobs Move to Philippines."

Postscript: "Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District – and its real estate: Were this an emerging arts hub in almost any other city, property prices would surely be soaring in anticipation."

As with much of Hong Kong’s high-end housing, West Kowloon’s residential market has gone into reverse. Prices are at present about 13 per cent off the highs, in line with falls elsewhere in the city, after the government introduced cooling measures – such as a tripling of stamp duty on purchases made by foreigners. It also coincided with the economic slowdown in China, a crackdown on corruption and lavish spending by the new government in Beijing, and the prospect of higher borrowing costs as the US Federal Reserve begins tapering its asset purchases. Knight Frank expects property prices to fall up to 15 per cent by the end of the year, while many analysts are even gloomier.

Emphasis added. The "cooling measures" attack demand for residential real estate. Zoning deregulation and more construction cannot target gentrification pressures in this manner. I've yet to encounter any consideration of demand side policy regarding gentrification in the United States. This is an egregious oversight.

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