Your identification of fragmented ownership as the root of urbanism's problems is compelling; it clearly leads to a tragedy of the commons.
While your solution of neighborhood-level corporate ownership effectively aligns incentives for holistic improvement, we must consider its potential downsides. These include likely gentrification and displacement, homogenization of urban areas, a focus on superficial improvements, and reduced public input.
Perhaps exploring alternatives like stronger public-private partnerships with community oversight, enhanced municipal governance, or cooperative and community-owned development models could offer more equitable and inclusive paths forward.
Here's the thing: All these issues are downstream of poor ownership!
In a good market, all customers are well served. The same way as you have Ferrari, Lexus, and Dacias in cars, or Macs, HPs, and Raspberry Pis for computers, you would have neighborhoods that specialize in upscale customers and others that focus on more popular ones.
A lot of displacement actually comes from bad management of the commons: Because of NIMBYs, not enough units are built, the lack of supply drives up prices, only rich people can pay them, and long-term tenants get displaced. A neighborhood managed by a company won't have this problem, because it wants to retain its customers! And if it loses them, another company-neighborhood will want to attract them.
Similarly, you would have neighborhood differentiation, because companies want to differentiate. They don't want to all produce the same product! Look at how many hotels or cars there are. Different companies would study how to create rules that attract specific segments of the market, making the urban landscape much more different than when one single company (the municipality) has a monopoly on the entire city!
Companies are actually waaaay more reactive to customer input than municipalities, because municipalities don't want to lose you specifically as a customer, whereas city elected officials only get to a vote every 4 years, there's very little actual competition (normally 2 parties), and everybody votes on a gazillion items. Just to give you an example, whatever the business, you know pretty well how to contact them, complain, and get your issue resolved (google their website, look for Contact Us, and either call, chat, or email them). What's the equivalent for cities?
When you say "community oversight, enhanced municipal governance, or cooperative and community-owned development models", that's precisely the type of coordination cost that makes cities impossible. The free market works wonders where it truly exists. Governments, meanwhile, are usually broken. We should strive to get more market into government areas!
You propose neighborhood-level corporate ownership to align incentives through competition, envisioning diverse, responsive urban "products."
However, I believe urbanism's optimal state isn't a zero-sum game of competition, but rather a cooperative dynamic. While individual neighborhood-companies might thrive, the Nash equilibrium for a truly flourishing city lies in collaboration. When entities seek to complement rather than simply compete, they unlock collective gains far exceeding what isolated competition could achieve. How might we incentivize neighborhoods to cooperate for city-wide resilience rather than merely out-competing each other?
Competition is not zero sum. Look at all the highly competitive markets. Those create few profits for the companies, and massive value for customers. Why do you say that competitive markets are zero sum?
The problem at every level is ultimately societal. When a society's morals ("What I think is right") and ethics ("What we agree as a group is right") focus on individual gain and personal wealth (whether a person, a corporation, an investment company), rather than on community gain and social wealth (a neighborhood, town, state, nation, or trans-national union), power consolidates around the corruptable (who are willing, for self-survival, to ruin others to rise to the top), and leaves the majority at the bottom to fend helplessly for themselves without the tools to balance the power structure and prevent abuse or neglect, or both.
We see this in natural environments and societies where group co-operation beyond the local tribe was never necessary for survival, and where the focus on individual prosperity (the most able-bodied and luckiest person) ignored the needs of those who required group prosperity to thrive (children, the sick, the elderly, the marginalized). Unchecked strength is celebrated, and with it, contempt, cruelty, disdain, "other-ing", and a fetishizing of imagined destiny (kings, CEOs, dictators, cult leaders, emperors, religious authorities).
Individualism then, when taken too far (as it has been in places like the United States) creates at all levels an "I have mine, f*** you!" mentality of "eat or be eaten", and social life becomes a game of "take what you can, when you can". Competition devolves into "last (man) standing", and the effort to maintain beyond the bare minimum becomes exponetially weaker as the powerful grow increasingly distant from those they ultimately control.
Only with a return (secular, religious, spiritual) to a set of new social and interpersonal rules/contracts (written, verbalized, or memorized) for how we honor and cherish each other fractally, at all levels of a society, can we ensure that regardless of what level we designate, everyone is equally invested in the well-being of everyone else within that level. Then the legal and contractual agreements will embody that new set of rules, and flow from that need to protect the weak, as well as the strong.
Without that new set of social contract, any form of singluar management will result in a self-serving, superficial form of cynical attention, without the deeper, more difficult issues ever being addressed.
"Humans have an inertia toward laziness." one philosopher wrote. And without each of us holding each other to an agreed set of standards, situations always devolve into one emotionally and spiritually lazy person pointing a gun (real or otherwise) at the others, telling them, "Obey or be shot."
The premise that unit owners don't care about the commons does not match my observations. It's trivially easy to find neat, well-maintained neighborhoods governed by effective HOA's, including the two suburban HOA's I've been an owner in. There are, of course, differences in opinion on how much should be spent to maintain commons and to what level, but that's different than a 'tragedy of the commons' style lack of incentive. Rather than throwing the concept out, it'd be useful to understand why some governance structures work, and others don't, and how often they achieve satisfaction for the owners/occupants.
In my limited experience, the structure of the CC&R's has a lot to do with success in making necessary investments while limiting the ability of a small majority to 'tax' the other owners. Over the last 50 years or so, the preferred CC&R structure has evolved, and I've been told that newer models are more successful in achieving balance. Professional HOA management is also a factor.
Oh they definitely care about the commons! But they care less about the commons than about their owned assets, and more importantly the coordination cost of managing the commons is just too high! Whereas to manage the owned assets it's easy: The owners are the ones to decide.
HOAs have a much more haphazard track record, which shows the mechanism really depends on the luck of stumbling upon a good-working HOA.
And that leaves the commons outside of the reach of HOAs still in problematic terrain, and usually maintained even worse.
Why some governance structures work and others don't: I think I'm making a case here!
Can you give me some examples of well-managed and well-maintained HOAs & CC&Rs you're talking about? Something that includes not just a description, but also ideally some visuals.
as to the hawker center, if it became a skyscraper offering exactly the same services plus 50 times more services like schools and healthcare, couldn't it increase the value of the other skyscrapers?
also, I often wonder if there's any way to let the "free market" efficiently manage streets (including the flexibility to turn those streets (partially) into buildings)
Maybe it would indeed! In fact a company would be in a good position to consider all aspects of this problem, much better than I would! They would study dozens of other similar examples, make financial models... Exactly what we need!
I think my proposal is what would allow the free market to do what you say!
Thomas, I love your work (and it has probably changed the course of my studies), but did you seriously just write an entire article to suggest the creation of private intra-city municipalities? Are you forgetting your beloved hawker centers are mostly public-owned?
If you're curious to know: after my BSc in Physics, I've changed fields a bit and (in part thanks to your articles about cities) I'm starting a MSc in Earth Observation and Data Analysis.
Regarding the article, I just think you're suggesting giving privates ownership over neighborhoods, when local (public) governance does the exact same thing. Something like the Paris' Arrondissements, for example. Did you know, for instance, that the old railway line that used to go around Paris, the Petite Ceinture, has been converted into an urban park in some Arrondissements while in others it remains off-limits?
As an example. In Sweden if you "own" an appartment then you actually don't own your appartment, but you own a part of the appartmenthouse or houses and your ownership includes the right to live in the appartment (bostadsrätt). That has some of the benefits that you describe. (And also some minuses naturally.)
I've lived in my neighbourhood for 30 years and noticed that as it's gotten wealthier, the streets have become dirtier.
One of my observations is that older residents who kept the streets clean outside their homes are gone. Now there seems to be an expectation (backed up by conversations with newer residents) that the council should do everything "to justify the rates (taxes) paid to them".
It's like people want to outsource everything nowadays from food preparation to shopping to basic hygiene.
As a landscape design/install contractor for the last 4 decades I find HOAs to be strange. The idea of neighborhood ownership (and I'm speaking of suburban hoods, not urban density) isn't much different than the power HOAs already yield, stifling creativity and choosing uniformity over innovation. I highly doubt the current landscape I'm installing at my own house currently would be allowed---in fact the low amount of oversight here in Silver City, New Mexico has resulted in quite the artistic community, way better than anything a common ownership or HOA could dream of. Granted we have some pretty trashy houses as well because of lax oversight but as our visiting friend from Bainbridge Island and Mill Valley commented: at least it's authentic.
The power is similar, but it would be yielded completely differently, because you have a single decision-maker, rather than dozens or hundreds who need to coordinate.
I'm pretty sure you'd have some companies that bet on freedom and let people build most of what they want.
This is a very interesting and compelling proposal. I see it as a capitalist version of Christopher Alexander’s work as laid out in “pattern language” and “the timeless way of building”. Specifically patterns 12 (community of 7,000) and 14 (identifiable niegborhood).
share ownership rather than home ownership - brilliant idea!
As usual inciteful.
Would love to see some articles on democracy (and within that the best -compromise- structure to replace the myriad of compromises we have today) versus other options sometime in the future.
And is reincarnation before death possible? You have so many good ideas, I am starting to wonder😉
"The other issue is transforming everybody into a renter. Is that bad?"
Functioning society requires homeownership so individuals have long term stakes. Not acknowledging this warrants throwing out your entire thesis. That said, it is probably worth breaking up cities. God, I wish Manhattan was its own city.
Agreed. Ownership gives an individual long-term influence and security over their property (a TV, a house, a car, land), and rewards contract fulfilment with a release of the property from the original owner. It encourages security of being, and long-term care of the property itself.
"I bought it, and nobody else will care for it, so I'd better treat it well."
Ownership is also possession security. "I bought it, and nobody else can legally claim it."
Renter-ship, however, reduces the individual to an insecure cash source without any power over whether their payments bring any form of security. The ability to exist with the property becomes a function of the rentor's whim, regardless of the sunk cost by the rentee.
Without a sense of ownership, the incentive for the renter to maintain what they use also falls, as they have no investment or power over the property, and are ultimately not responsible for the property.
"It's not mine, so what do I care?"
Worse, a city of renters has no stake in the collective well-being of the city. The city becomes one giant hotel filled with functionally transient populations.
But a city of owners is one where everyone wants the best for the city, as it means the best for their own property.
It's no coincidence that social quality of life drops as affordable ownership drops.
"Why give a damn about what my neighbor does, if the property damage isn't ultimately my responsibility?"
Plus, ownership equals liquidatable wealth in a future time point, and the knowledge that they *can* liquify if needed. And ownership + wealth = long-term stability, creating local culture and familiarity, which often translates to shared interest.
A building full of renters is just a bunch of strangers temporarily paying for a box to live in, often with no social, cultural, or interpersonal connection. Without that connection, they have no collective power against the renter to force improvements.
The renter can always say, "Don't like it? Get out."
But what I suggested is more ownership, not less! You own your house, but also the commons, so you care about them like your own house!
For that feeling of ownership to be enacted, you need a way to create single ownership of shared environments. That's hard. That's where companies can do a good job.
Except that privitization of shared environments leads to discriminatory practices in now formerly-public spaces, in the name of private ownership rights.
Since the 1980s, influenced by Milton Freedman and other "greed is good" proponents, private companies have generally optimized toward the singular goal of higher profits for wealthy shareholders, abandoning social responsibilities whenever those responsibilities lead to lower direct shareholder profits, or are even perceived to do so.
If a private company decides that highest profits are best achieved by locking out those who don't have or contribute the highest wealth, then they will (through rules, planning, or pay requirements) lock out anyone from their "common" property whom they deem "undesirable" (see "Redlining" and "Jim Crow Laws" in the U.S.)
Public ownership, while not perfect, falls squarely within public law, and is subject to (in societies with strong anti-discriminatory laws and socially-driven safety regulation) rules which favor the highest common good.
But giving common grounds to singular private entities leads to those entities reducing access to the public either through discriminatory rules, or forced access payment (per event, or per time period). They then raise rates whenever they can, as far as they can, to keep "undesirable" people away from thier best-paying customers, the wealthy.
Ownership of individual properties encourages investment in the common areas for mutual improvement. Ownership of common areas encourages increasing profit at the expense of the common good.
Food for thought... One reason you may not want a single owner is that the place can become stale. Variety is the spice to life—the thing that makes a place dynamic. Think about the difference between an organically grown historic downtown vs a newly built lifestyle center. The lifestyle center may be flashy and clean, but every building tends to look the exact same. It becomes monotonous and off-putting in a dystopian sort of way.
Character of place tends to be developed over time as everything is built according to different plans by different people, but with a certain bit of overarching structure (neighborhood guidelines).
There may definitely be something to a different ownership model and looking at a place’s value wholistically, but it shouldn’t be done in a way that unintentionally limits character and variety.
But the newly built lifestyle centers that are stale... Aren't they managed by the municipalities? Isn't that what's causing the staleness? Why do you think all companies would prevent freedom? If their customers want freedom, don't you think some companies will enable this freedom? Wouldn't different corporate strategies promote neighborhood differenciation?
It is not necessarily how the developments are managed, but how they are built. Be aware that I am generalizing here, but large scale developers are often incentivized by economies of scale and build entire developments (or phases of developments) at the same time and often use the same architects/contractors/etc. to build everything. This is what leads to the staleness.
This isn't always the case (as every lifestyle center or large development doesn't have this issue) but it can plague even the best of intentions/places.
What I am cautioning is ensuring a degree of differentiation within each neighborhood. I am not talking about differentiation between neighborhoods.
It’s a good idea. But I suspect that there must be some limitations to prevent the inhabitant from becoming disinterested.
How are shares dished out? Small shareholders may have no ability to impact the whole. A giant shareholder can dominate.
Do we end up with corrupt politicians managing RealCorp?
In communist countries where the land belongs to the state, the commune has theoretical control over the development plan, but in fact the commune managers pay attention to the person who pays them the most.
Well if you have 100 apartments and each apartment is basically one share, you don't have gigantic shareholders don't you? The inhabitants own the entire thing.
What is usually more corrupt, the government, or companies in a competitive market?
Is that realistic? Where I live I could not say that there was a clear distinction about inhabiting houses. There are no apartments here, it’s all 1-story sprawl where people rent accommodation for 1-12 months at a time. The occupancy last month is not the same as this month. Even ownership can be transferred in a week. One person can own a street. Do the tenants care about next year?
Which is more corrupt…? Easier to say who is not corrupt. Answer; the tenant.
As I said, it’s a nice idea, but I don’t see how it works in practice.
Interesting ideas, thanks. Since capitalism tends towards monopoly -- wouldn't the companies who own neighbourhoods just want to acquire more neighbourhoods, even if only defensively to fend off other owner takeovers? But if the neighbourhoods were run by a soviet of the people who own and live in that neighbourhood -- a kind of distributed competitive democratic socialism, or anarcho-syndicalism -- you would argue that that would descend into chaos and inefficiency?
Capitalism doesn't tend towards monopoly. Look at restaurants.
Some industries do tend towards monopolies. For example there are natural monopolies like the electric grid or sewage systems. Those need to be regulated.
Similarly, this would need to be regulated. I mentioned that you'd need probably at least 10 different companies managing neighborhoods, which means you wouldn't allow them to merge beyond that point. And the municipality would still oversee the entire thing.
The most fundamental problem with cities is that fertility rates in most first world cities (at least the urban cores) are far, far below replacement. If too large a share of your population lives in the urban core (i.e Korea) your nation will end.
Cities drive civilizational decline if the problem of low urban birthrates is not solved.
Suburbs are an antidote, where people can have family-suitable housing and drive to plig into the vital urban economy. Urbanists hate surburbs, but with an answer to the birthrate problem, decline is the result.
Your identification of fragmented ownership as the root of urbanism's problems is compelling; it clearly leads to a tragedy of the commons.
While your solution of neighborhood-level corporate ownership effectively aligns incentives for holistic improvement, we must consider its potential downsides. These include likely gentrification and displacement, homogenization of urban areas, a focus on superficial improvements, and reduced public input.
Perhaps exploring alternatives like stronger public-private partnerships with community oversight, enhanced municipal governance, or cooperative and community-owned development models could offer more equitable and inclusive paths forward.
Here's the thing: All these issues are downstream of poor ownership!
In a good market, all customers are well served. The same way as you have Ferrari, Lexus, and Dacias in cars, or Macs, HPs, and Raspberry Pis for computers, you would have neighborhoods that specialize in upscale customers and others that focus on more popular ones.
A lot of displacement actually comes from bad management of the commons: Because of NIMBYs, not enough units are built, the lack of supply drives up prices, only rich people can pay them, and long-term tenants get displaced. A neighborhood managed by a company won't have this problem, because it wants to retain its customers! And if it loses them, another company-neighborhood will want to attract them.
Similarly, you would have neighborhood differentiation, because companies want to differentiate. They don't want to all produce the same product! Look at how many hotels or cars there are. Different companies would study how to create rules that attract specific segments of the market, making the urban landscape much more different than when one single company (the municipality) has a monopoly on the entire city!
Companies are actually waaaay more reactive to customer input than municipalities, because municipalities don't want to lose you specifically as a customer, whereas city elected officials only get to a vote every 4 years, there's very little actual competition (normally 2 parties), and everybody votes on a gazillion items. Just to give you an example, whatever the business, you know pretty well how to contact them, complain, and get your issue resolved (google their website, look for Contact Us, and either call, chat, or email them). What's the equivalent for cities?
When you say "community oversight, enhanced municipal governance, or cooperative and community-owned development models", that's precisely the type of coordination cost that makes cities impossible. The free market works wonders where it truly exists. Governments, meanwhile, are usually broken. We should strive to get more market into government areas!
You propose neighborhood-level corporate ownership to align incentives through competition, envisioning diverse, responsive urban "products."
However, I believe urbanism's optimal state isn't a zero-sum game of competition, but rather a cooperative dynamic. While individual neighborhood-companies might thrive, the Nash equilibrium for a truly flourishing city lies in collaboration. When entities seek to complement rather than simply compete, they unlock collective gains far exceeding what isolated competition could achieve. How might we incentivize neighborhoods to cooperate for city-wide resilience rather than merely out-competing each other?
Competition is not zero sum. Look at all the highly competitive markets. Those create few profits for the companies, and massive value for customers. Why do you say that competitive markets are zero sum?
The problem at every level is ultimately societal. When a society's morals ("What I think is right") and ethics ("What we agree as a group is right") focus on individual gain and personal wealth (whether a person, a corporation, an investment company), rather than on community gain and social wealth (a neighborhood, town, state, nation, or trans-national union), power consolidates around the corruptable (who are willing, for self-survival, to ruin others to rise to the top), and leaves the majority at the bottom to fend helplessly for themselves without the tools to balance the power structure and prevent abuse or neglect, or both.
We see this in natural environments and societies where group co-operation beyond the local tribe was never necessary for survival, and where the focus on individual prosperity (the most able-bodied and luckiest person) ignored the needs of those who required group prosperity to thrive (children, the sick, the elderly, the marginalized). Unchecked strength is celebrated, and with it, contempt, cruelty, disdain, "other-ing", and a fetishizing of imagined destiny (kings, CEOs, dictators, cult leaders, emperors, religious authorities).
Individualism then, when taken too far (as it has been in places like the United States) creates at all levels an "I have mine, f*** you!" mentality of "eat or be eaten", and social life becomes a game of "take what you can, when you can". Competition devolves into "last (man) standing", and the effort to maintain beyond the bare minimum becomes exponetially weaker as the powerful grow increasingly distant from those they ultimately control.
Only with a return (secular, religious, spiritual) to a set of new social and interpersonal rules/contracts (written, verbalized, or memorized) for how we honor and cherish each other fractally, at all levels of a society, can we ensure that regardless of what level we designate, everyone is equally invested in the well-being of everyone else within that level. Then the legal and contractual agreements will embody that new set of rules, and flow from that need to protect the weak, as well as the strong.
Without that new set of social contract, any form of singluar management will result in a self-serving, superficial form of cynical attention, without the deeper, more difficult issues ever being addressed.
"Humans have an inertia toward laziness." one philosopher wrote. And without each of us holding each other to an agreed set of standards, situations always devolve into one emotionally and spiritually lazy person pointing a gun (real or otherwise) at the others, telling them, "Obey or be shot."
The premise that unit owners don't care about the commons does not match my observations. It's trivially easy to find neat, well-maintained neighborhoods governed by effective HOA's, including the two suburban HOA's I've been an owner in. There are, of course, differences in opinion on how much should be spent to maintain commons and to what level, but that's different than a 'tragedy of the commons' style lack of incentive. Rather than throwing the concept out, it'd be useful to understand why some governance structures work, and others don't, and how often they achieve satisfaction for the owners/occupants.
In my limited experience, the structure of the CC&R's has a lot to do with success in making necessary investments while limiting the ability of a small majority to 'tax' the other owners. Over the last 50 years or so, the preferred CC&R structure has evolved, and I've been told that newer models are more successful in achieving balance. Professional HOA management is also a factor.
Oh they definitely care about the commons! But they care less about the commons than about their owned assets, and more importantly the coordination cost of managing the commons is just too high! Whereas to manage the owned assets it's easy: The owners are the ones to decide.
HOAs have a much more haphazard track record, which shows the mechanism really depends on the luck of stumbling upon a good-working HOA.
And that leaves the commons outside of the reach of HOAs still in problematic terrain, and usually maintained even worse.
Why some governance structures work and others don't: I think I'm making a case here!
Can you give me some examples of well-managed and well-maintained HOAs & CC&Rs you're talking about? Something that includes not just a description, but also ideally some visuals.
Super interesting piece, thank you.
interesting article.
as to the hawker center, if it became a skyscraper offering exactly the same services plus 50 times more services like schools and healthcare, couldn't it increase the value of the other skyscrapers?
also, I often wonder if there's any way to let the "free market" efficiently manage streets (including the flexibility to turn those streets (partially) into buildings)
Maybe it would indeed! In fact a company would be in a good position to consider all aspects of this problem, much better than I would! They would study dozens of other similar examples, make financial models... Exactly what we need!
I think my proposal is what would allow the free market to do what you say!
Thomas, I love your work (and it has probably changed the course of my studies), but did you seriously just write an entire article to suggest the creation of private intra-city municipalities? Are you forgetting your beloved hawker centers are mostly public-owned?
Thank you for your kind words! In what way has my work changed your studies?
The hawker center is the lead, but not the entire answer!
If you're curious to know: after my BSc in Physics, I've changed fields a bit and (in part thanks to your articles about cities) I'm starting a MSc in Earth Observation and Data Analysis.
Regarding the article, I just think you're suggesting giving privates ownership over neighborhoods, when local (public) governance does the exact same thing. Something like the Paris' Arrondissements, for example. Did you know, for instance, that the old railway line that used to go around Paris, the Petite Ceinture, has been converted into an urban park in some Arrondissements while in others it remains off-limits?
This reminds me of the work of Michael Heller https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2779&context=faculty_scholarship/1000
Oooo fantastic! Will read. Thanks!
As an example. In Sweden if you "own" an appartment then you actually don't own your appartment, but you own a part of the appartmenthouse or houses and your ownership includes the right to live in the appartment (bostadsrätt). That has some of the benefits that you describe. (And also some minuses naturally.)
Very interesting! How does that change the apartments and neighborhoods?
I've lived in my neighbourhood for 30 years and noticed that as it's gotten wealthier, the streets have become dirtier.
One of my observations is that older residents who kept the streets clean outside their homes are gone. Now there seems to be an expectation (backed up by conversations with newer residents) that the council should do everything "to justify the rates (taxes) paid to them".
It's like people want to outsource everything nowadays from food preparation to shopping to basic hygiene.
Interesting.
Companies would definitely cater to these needs to attract customers
This is really good.
Thanks!
As a landscape design/install contractor for the last 4 decades I find HOAs to be strange. The idea of neighborhood ownership (and I'm speaking of suburban hoods, not urban density) isn't much different than the power HOAs already yield, stifling creativity and choosing uniformity over innovation. I highly doubt the current landscape I'm installing at my own house currently would be allowed---in fact the low amount of oversight here in Silver City, New Mexico has resulted in quite the artistic community, way better than anything a common ownership or HOA could dream of. Granted we have some pretty trashy houses as well because of lax oversight but as our visiting friend from Bainbridge Island and Mill Valley commented: at least it's authentic.
The power is similar, but it would be yielded completely differently, because you have a single decision-maker, rather than dozens or hundreds who need to coordinate.
I'm pretty sure you'd have some companies that bet on freedom and let people build most of what they want.
This is a very interesting and compelling proposal. I see it as a capitalist version of Christopher Alexander’s work as laid out in “pattern language” and “the timeless way of building”. Specifically patterns 12 (community of 7,000) and 14 (identifiable niegborhood).
What an amazing book.
I didn't remember these patterns, but now that you mention them, I do remember!
share ownership rather than home ownership - brilliant idea!
As usual inciteful.
Would love to see some articles on democracy (and within that the best -compromise- structure to replace the myriad of compromises we have today) versus other options sometime in the future.
And is reincarnation before death possible? You have so many good ideas, I am starting to wonder😉
OK here are my thoughts on these so far:
https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/future-of-democracy-decentralized
https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/the-4-ways-you-might-live-forever
Right now, no reincarnation, but living forever is within our reach!
many thanks, some holiday reading!
inciteful vs insightful... both work! intentional or serendipity?
both work, but yes, it probably should be insightful :)
"The other issue is transforming everybody into a renter. Is that bad?"
Functioning society requires homeownership so individuals have long term stakes. Not acknowledging this warrants throwing out your entire thesis. That said, it is probably worth breaking up cities. God, I wish Manhattan was its own city.
I think you missed a big part of the article!
Agreed. Ownership gives an individual long-term influence and security over their property (a TV, a house, a car, land), and rewards contract fulfilment with a release of the property from the original owner. It encourages security of being, and long-term care of the property itself.
"I bought it, and nobody else will care for it, so I'd better treat it well."
Ownership is also possession security. "I bought it, and nobody else can legally claim it."
Renter-ship, however, reduces the individual to an insecure cash source without any power over whether their payments bring any form of security. The ability to exist with the property becomes a function of the rentor's whim, regardless of the sunk cost by the rentee.
Without a sense of ownership, the incentive for the renter to maintain what they use also falls, as they have no investment or power over the property, and are ultimately not responsible for the property.
"It's not mine, so what do I care?"
Worse, a city of renters has no stake in the collective well-being of the city. The city becomes one giant hotel filled with functionally transient populations.
But a city of owners is one where everyone wants the best for the city, as it means the best for their own property.
It's no coincidence that social quality of life drops as affordable ownership drops.
"Why give a damn about what my neighbor does, if the property damage isn't ultimately my responsibility?"
Plus, ownership equals liquidatable wealth in a future time point, and the knowledge that they *can* liquify if needed. And ownership + wealth = long-term stability, creating local culture and familiarity, which often translates to shared interest.
A building full of renters is just a bunch of strangers temporarily paying for a box to live in, often with no social, cultural, or interpersonal connection. Without that connection, they have no collective power against the renter to force improvements.
The renter can always say, "Don't like it? Get out."
But what I suggested is more ownership, not less! You own your house, but also the commons, so you care about them like your own house!
For that feeling of ownership to be enacted, you need a way to create single ownership of shared environments. That's hard. That's where companies can do a good job.
Except that privitization of shared environments leads to discriminatory practices in now formerly-public spaces, in the name of private ownership rights.
Since the 1980s, influenced by Milton Freedman and other "greed is good" proponents, private companies have generally optimized toward the singular goal of higher profits for wealthy shareholders, abandoning social responsibilities whenever those responsibilities lead to lower direct shareholder profits, or are even perceived to do so.
If a private company decides that highest profits are best achieved by locking out those who don't have or contribute the highest wealth, then they will (through rules, planning, or pay requirements) lock out anyone from their "common" property whom they deem "undesirable" (see "Redlining" and "Jim Crow Laws" in the U.S.)
Public ownership, while not perfect, falls squarely within public law, and is subject to (in societies with strong anti-discriminatory laws and socially-driven safety regulation) rules which favor the highest common good.
But giving common grounds to singular private entities leads to those entities reducing access to the public either through discriminatory rules, or forced access payment (per event, or per time period). They then raise rates whenever they can, as far as they can, to keep "undesirable" people away from thier best-paying customers, the wealthy.
Ownership of individual properties encourages investment in the common areas for mutual improvement. Ownership of common areas encourages increasing profit at the expense of the common good.
Food for thought... One reason you may not want a single owner is that the place can become stale. Variety is the spice to life—the thing that makes a place dynamic. Think about the difference between an organically grown historic downtown vs a newly built lifestyle center. The lifestyle center may be flashy and clean, but every building tends to look the exact same. It becomes monotonous and off-putting in a dystopian sort of way.
Character of place tends to be developed over time as everything is built according to different plans by different people, but with a certain bit of overarching structure (neighborhood guidelines).
There may definitely be something to a different ownership model and looking at a place’s value wholistically, but it shouldn’t be done in a way that unintentionally limits character and variety.
But the newly built lifestyle centers that are stale... Aren't they managed by the municipalities? Isn't that what's causing the staleness? Why do you think all companies would prevent freedom? If their customers want freedom, don't you think some companies will enable this freedom? Wouldn't different corporate strategies promote neighborhood differenciation?
It is not necessarily how the developments are managed, but how they are built. Be aware that I am generalizing here, but large scale developers are often incentivized by economies of scale and build entire developments (or phases of developments) at the same time and often use the same architects/contractors/etc. to build everything. This is what leads to the staleness.
This isn't always the case (as every lifestyle center or large development doesn't have this issue) but it can plague even the best of intentions/places.
What I am cautioning is ensuring a degree of differentiation within each neighborhood. I am not talking about differentiation between neighborhoods.
It’s a good idea. But I suspect that there must be some limitations to prevent the inhabitant from becoming disinterested.
How are shares dished out? Small shareholders may have no ability to impact the whole. A giant shareholder can dominate.
Do we end up with corrupt politicians managing RealCorp?
In communist countries where the land belongs to the state, the commune has theoretical control over the development plan, but in fact the commune managers pay attention to the person who pays them the most.
Well if you have 100 apartments and each apartment is basically one share, you don't have gigantic shareholders don't you? The inhabitants own the entire thing.
What is usually more corrupt, the government, or companies in a competitive market?
Is that realistic? Where I live I could not say that there was a clear distinction about inhabiting houses. There are no apartments here, it’s all 1-story sprawl where people rent accommodation for 1-12 months at a time. The occupancy last month is not the same as this month. Even ownership can be transferred in a week. One person can own a street. Do the tenants care about next year?
Which is more corrupt…? Easier to say who is not corrupt. Answer; the tenant.
As I said, it’s a nice idea, but I don’t see how it works in practice.
Interesting ideas, thanks. Since capitalism tends towards monopoly -- wouldn't the companies who own neighbourhoods just want to acquire more neighbourhoods, even if only defensively to fend off other owner takeovers? But if the neighbourhoods were run by a soviet of the people who own and live in that neighbourhood -- a kind of distributed competitive democratic socialism, or anarcho-syndicalism -- you would argue that that would descend into chaos and inefficiency?
Capitalism doesn't tend towards monopoly. Look at restaurants.
Some industries do tend towards monopolies. For example there are natural monopolies like the electric grid or sewage systems. Those need to be regulated.
Similarly, this would need to be regulated. I mentioned that you'd need probably at least 10 different companies managing neighborhoods, which means you wouldn't allow them to merge beyond that point. And the municipality would still oversee the entire thing.
Soviets are basically.. HOAs!
So that's why I think we should NOT do tat
The most fundamental problem with cities is that fertility rates in most first world cities (at least the urban cores) are far, far below replacement. If too large a share of your population lives in the urban core (i.e Korea) your nation will end.
Cities drive civilizational decline if the problem of low urban birthrates is not solved.
Suburbs are an antidote, where people can have family-suitable housing and drive to plig into the vital urban economy. Urbanists hate surburbs, but with an answer to the birthrate problem, decline is the result.
Hey Daniel, interesting point, albeit adjacent!
I think tech will have a massive influence in fertility