Public Address | Cafe | Speaker: Sprawled out

Kumara Republic

Wed, 20 Jul 2016 11:48:26 +1200

A crash would definitely jolt the economy out of something, but I don't know what it would jolt it into. It could something much worse.

One possible scenario is that those who are too narcissistic and born-to-rule to get the message if/when the bubble bursts could go full-on Trump or…

Kumara Republic

Wed, 20 Jul 2016 10:15:19 +1200

Ironically a crash also goes a long way to restoring faith in free markets, the much vaunted "correction", setting everything to rights again.

And because what we have right now isn't much of an actual free market. I worked out early on that it's more like a rentier system where…

Moz

Wed, 20 Jul 2016 09:39:49 +1200

My own feeling that we need new levers of economic control.

Yep. Various governments keep whining that there's no money so they "have to" cut spending. The alternative is to raise taxes, which is apparently something they can't think of (I'm an ecognomic geeniuz, I teels ya).

We could just…

BenWilson

Wed, 20 Jul 2016 08:25:36 +1200

A crash would definitely jolt the economy out of something, but I don't know what it would jolt it into. It could something much worse. There are often big time predatory winners from crashes, those guys waiting with their cash in something else for a chance to switch in at…

Sacha

Tue, 19 Jul 2016 22:30:25 +1200

I had to weigh up that precious extra kilometre from the city that we've moved. I can't any longer pretend to be a central suburbs boy, this is full West.

And the (finally) impending CRL construction effectively shifts you to Mt Albert. Good move.

Kumara Republic

Tue, 19 Jul 2016 22:13:26 +1200

A 40% correction would take almost all of our equity. We’d just hang on. There would be a certain justice in it, since that 40% represents gains that we made for nothing more than buying back in the noughties and holding on. It might bring property prices back to the…

BenWilson

Tue, 19 Jul 2016 22:06:23 +1200

Having grown up in both of NZ's 2 million dollar suburbs, St Mary's Bay and Herne Bay, the first of which gentrified beyond recognition since I padded those streets barefoot on my skateboard on the way to the predominantly brown schools I attended, it's quite a bizarre experience to be…

Sacha

Tue, 19 Jul 2016 20:28:23 +1200

And FWIW Sydney has been trying the "second city centre" game for, oh, 25 years now, and it still hasn't worked very well. Even at 30 minutes on the train, every 10 minutes, people still won't go "all the way out there" for a meeting. Forget decentralising 100km up the…

Kumara Republic

Tue, 19 Jul 2016 19:42:11 +1200

Look, I live in Sydney because there are relatively few people doing my sort of work in NZ and if I want one of those jobs I’d have to be willing to live in Wellington or Auckland on half the money I get now.

A big contributing factor is that…

Moz

Tue, 19 Jul 2016 17:45:03 +1200

It's a bigger dynamic than we can control. I'd still push for regional economic development

Yep, this. It's difficult for governments to fight it, and the ones succeeding seem to have 50M people or more, but that is possibly just because with that many people you can have several 5M…

Sacha

Tue, 19 Jul 2016 12:18:00 +1200

Whatareyagunnado?

It's a bigger dynamic than we can control. I'd still push for regional economic development, but it's probably best focused on each area's existing strengths.

Kumara Republic

Tue, 19 Jul 2016 10:37:03 +1200

The problem in this case really is that "the people", specifically, those who vote in council elections, don't want intensification. The people who want that generally don't live where it's proposed to happen. Which is one problem that the super-council is designed to solve. I think there is a real…

bob daktari

Tue, 19 Jul 2016 09:55:38 +1200

Otherwise we have low-value tourism and primary production jobs to offer our children.

the most depressing part of current and at least near future NZ and both under threat from climate change and farming practices

daleaway

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 20:33:30 +1200

All we can take from your response is
[shrug] Whatareyagunnado?

Suck it up, hicks.

Sacha

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 19:04:57 +1200

the brown kids who walked home with me

I'm always grateful for learning young how my Maori friends saw people and the world. Acceptance is gold. Lifelong challenge to live up to..

Sacha

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 18:56:05 +1200

Healing the regions by putting the jobs (and many of the immigrants) there will also heal Auckland's woes, but few are even suggesting looking in this direction for an answer. Yet it's such an obvious starting point.

Sadly, that's not what most relevant research and policy evidence says. The world…

Russell Brown

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 17:20:00 +1200

The problem in this case really is that “the people”, specifically, those who vote in council elections, don’t want intensification.

That particular perspective isn’t universal in Auckland. Its loudest voices have come from a privileged class and been amplified by certain journalists.

But it is pretty amusing that that class…

daleaway

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 17:11:42 +1200

The crisis is only mainly about housing if you live in Auckland, though.

For the majority of New Zealanders, it is about a lack of job opportunities in their region, and a complete absence of regional development. You looked, Orchid, and there were no jobs for you. There's also naff…

Moz

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 16:56:03 +1200

That's a great libertarian logic fail right there.

I think it's more a classic example of libertarian logic. "less government is always better, you can tell by {insert example of government doing what people want}". The libertarian solution is usually to remove those disruptive elements of "the people" from consideration.…

Russell Brown

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 16:40:50 +1200

Yeah, problematic describes that paper pretty well. I find it amusing that first they complain about planners preventing people building what and where they want, then they flip that and talk about what people have been doing as an indicator of what they want to do. “very little intensification means…

william blake

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 16:38:49 +1200

“Call the fire brigade, report a pyroclastic event”

There aren’t any active volcanoes on the isthmus in the geological sense. However there is activity to stop development around the Otuataua volcanic stonefields. Partly because it would drown one of the last living papakianga in the country, partly because it will…

Russell Brown

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 16:38:22 +1200

We should get rid of the petty restrictions that stop people building on active volcanoes, I think.

I couldn’t agree with you less, Moz. Already the encroachment by housing onto the volcanic cones is too much.

Yes, people have built a fair way up several of the major cones –…

Lucy Telfar Barnard

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 15:54:51 +1200

Re: the NZ home, I had a sulk when they were talking about 1870s houses and showing houses from the 1900s. And later they described the villa as having come from the UK, when I think there's better evidence it was based on a style developed in Virginia. So the…

Joe Wylie

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 15:28:31 +1200

Keeping the natural hillside might slow the lava flow a bit too – but a built environment will give it artificial channels to speed the lava flow up and redistribute it to the lower-lands faster – though perhaps it doesn't act like water...

Call the fire brigade, report a pyroclastic…

Ian Dalziel

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 15:14:27 +1200

The New Zealand Home on TV1 on Friday nights is quite interesting – The radio sports jock ‘everyman’ character can be a little annoying at times, but I guess ya have to cut those intellectuals down a bit for common consumption.
Last friday’s episode noted that even the first State…

Ian Dalziel

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 14:59:30 +1200

Already the encroachment by housing onto the volcanic cones is too much.
Keeping the natural hillside might slow the lava flow a bit too – but a built environment will give it artificial channels to speed the lava flow up and redistribute it to the lower-lands faster – though perhaps…

Aotearoan

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 14:48:55 +1200

"We should get rid of the petty restrictions that stop people building on active volcanoes, I think."

I couldn't agree with you less, Moz. Already the encroachment by housing onto the volcanic cones is too much.
They are in great part what gives Auckland it's beauty.- green spaces to walk…

Moz

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 13:51:51 +1200

It's single-handedly sorted out the genuine free-marketeers (who are usually OK with building upwards) from the Generation Rentier

Interestingly that link from steven takes the approach of also bashing town planning for their restrictions on sprawl.

Saying that the housing market is
significantly influenced by government
is a statement of…

Kumara Republic

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 12:05:35 +1200

I recently read a piece by Greg Pritchard and Stephen Jennings quotes and found myself agreeing with what I thought was common sense. This requires work from all political parties, but instead it will become a messy and ugly election issue (and looking at Brexit and Trump, I am scared…

Moz

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 11:14:11 +1200

The flip side of people getting pushed out by gentrification is the people pushed into gentrifying because it's all they can afford. In the old days people like that would buy in new subdivisions, but these days the equivalent is new apartments... and have you *seen* the new apartments? They're…

Public Address

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 11:14:11 +1200

Discussion from blog post.