space / real estate

One of the big questions of politics and wealth distribution, is who gets to live where. Sometimes this has a simple answer: where there is little competition and it's so useful to live in some place that you can just do it.

The other case is that there is conflict over who gets a nice place and who doesn't.

One option on how to solve this, is that the place of living gets assigned.

The other is some kind of negotiation, for example, via a market or as a political discussion of who should live where. This has some issues and consequences:

• the transport problem, of people living in one place and working in another
• guarantee of ownership and property, sort of guarantees property in perpetuity
• the uncompetitiveness of necessary services, like daycare vs. a brand clothing store
• transfer of taxes
• a market wouldn't by itself fulfill all aspects we want from a nice living space:
  • standards for materials and technique
  • collective loss leader problem
• We can have politics driving spacial ordering that is not in the interest of parts of the population.
• Possibly racial/religious/economic segregation or mixing as positive of negative, depending on what's mainstream.

Berlin

I'm living in Berlin, there is a "housing shortage" now (2023) and there are certain patterns:

• The government didn't/doesn't want to and/or is incapable of building public housing.
• There is demand for cheap labor in the expensive city center
• There is a problem with the traffic caused by people (e.g. commuting to or from work)
• When looking at the equation of

  Fraction = Rent / Income

  People complain that rent is too high, but very infrequently mention that maybe income isn't high enough. That's suspcious to me.
• To "solve" this, various initiatives were started, such as
  • implementing a legal limit on raising rent
  • selling public parks to real estate developers, but not the ones near where the high society lives.
  • to collectivise big real estate companies and keep rent down that way.