> I think there's a tie-in between suburban sprawl and the explosion of the middle class. It allowed middle earners to escape the urban "law of rent." […] This is really what led me to stop being an unreserved advocate for urbanism. The dark side of urbanism is that nobody but the property owners can accumulate wealth.
I do not understand: why did you stop being pro-urbanist? How does urbanism stop the middle class from accumulating wealth?
My reading is that in the suburbs you typically buy, while in urban environments you typically rent because all the land is already owned by someone who is making a killing off it; they aren't going to sell because that would be slaughtering the golden goose. And that prevents almost everyone who isn't a landowner from getting ahead, because as soon as you figure out a way to make a surplus, poof the rents go up and absorb it. Oh sure, individuals who perform better than average might be able to press their advantage; but class movement is impossible because it is always "priced in".
I am not sure that this phenomenon is unique to cities, in fact, but rather an inevitable endgame to the idea of owning land in perpetuity. It creates a permanent class divide.
I think the idea is that it locks them out of owning real estate.
Of course that opens the question: why should real estate be a continually appreciating asset? There are other countries where it isn't.
> Of course that opens the question: why should real estate be a continually appreciating asset? There are other countries where it isn't.
Over time, real estate just is inflation - if it's more than inflation it eventually ends up infinitely expensive and unaffordable, if it's less than inflation it leads to cheap-as-free.
Arguably the second is more desirable from a human standpoint - but the first is where financialization leads us.
> I think the idea is that it locks them out of owning real estate.
How does urbanism lock people out of owning real estate?
It doesn't have to, but at least where I live, urban means apartments, and the great majority of apartments are rentals, not for sale.