Close to where we live, a short walk west on the Bay Run, lies Callan Park, a 60-hectare open green space with several heritage listed buildings on it. We have walked and cycled here often in our three and a half years in Sydney. With a rich and complicated past, the future of this central green space is all but certain.
Callan Park, view towards Bay Run
Continue readingFor those in the political center, housing policy is primarily viewed from a supply side angle. We need to build more so that prices come down, goes the mantra. New housing construction and its affordability is inherently linked to housing productivity, i.e., how much share of a building a worker can build in an hour, or more elegantly, a worker’s gross value added per hour (which accounts for quality related aspects of new housing).
Housing productivity is down everywhere in the developed world. One reason that is often cited is the Baumol Cost Disease, i.e., productivity in labor-intensive sectors is stagnant and thus the cost of products produced or services rendered increases faster than inflation. With much of the work unautomated and provided custom-made on site, the construction sector is a case in point, almost as intuitive as the hairdresser usually chosen an an example.
However, a significant explanation for falling productivity is also related to its measurement. If a builder sells you a prefab house and assembles it on site for you (with some additional material), much of the gross value added is now accounted for in intermediary goods, causing overall productivity to fall.
I first came across this interesting debate while listening to an episode of the Ezra Klein Show a while back. Jake Auchincloss, a member of Congress from Massachusetts, suggested the Cost Disease in construction is one of the main drivers of the cost of living crisis. And hence the way to alleviate this problem is by getting more prefabricated housing into the mix.
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Musashi-Koyama Palm Shopping Street, 2024
I am excited that an article I co-wrote with Jessica Ilunga and Jorge Almazan of Keio University has just been published in Cities. We took a closer look at three redevelopment areas in Tokyo: Musashi-Koyama, Tsukishima and Shimokitazawa.
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Growing up in East Berlin in the 1990s, Die Linke (or PDS, as it was known before) was omnipresent. Still the party’s most recognizable face, Gregor Gysi is still running and winning in my district (Treptow-Koepenick). I still get a sense of home and the past when I see him speak.
The complexities of the Wende / transition period after the Wall fell in 1989 found an important political outlay in the party, taking along (or trying to at least) a significant part of the East German population that found adjustment to the new system difficult.
Recently Die Linke has transformed itself into a more modern progressive party, increasing its appeal to younger generations. It thankfully saw a more national and populist wing under the leadership of Sarah Wagenknecht split from it ahead of the elections.
As a result, it staged a historic comeback from what seemed a certain sub-five percent vote to a respectable 8.8%. It also came in as the strongest party in Berlin.
It is good that their ideas, especially some of the more radical ones, will be represented in the German parliament and get some more airtime in the public discourse. Among these are that we should strive to live in a world without billionaires and that rents should be capped and housing socialized.
Continue readingOne of the unused datasets from the Cities article was on average taxable income per capita across the 23 wards between 1985 and 2022 (kindly provided by the authors of this great article).
For the period I worked on for my PhD (1950/55-1975), this data was not available so I had to look at proxy indicators, primarily living space per capita. This came with its own limitations but provided opportunities to transcend a purely economic measurement of living standards.
My analysis found a compression in inter-ward inequalities between the 1950s and 1970s. What happened since then?
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I am putting up a few posts on Tokyo in the coming days. They are about my recent work on residential redevelopments outside of the yamanote ring that I have carried out with Jessica Illunga and Jorge Almazan of Keio University.
It’s a tad ironic that I have become so engaged in this contemporary urban development issue. My first home in Tokyo was ARK Hills in Roppongi 1-chome, where we lived for half a year between 2012-13. ARK Hills opened its gates in the 1980s and is arguably the ground zero of neoliberal Tokyo.
Until ten or so years ago, these massive mixed-use developments still had a relatively unique aura. They were concentrated in the center and lured their well-heeled inhabitants with distinct architecture, upscale dining and retail, as well as cultural venues. This is the Mori Tokyo.
I put up quite a few Instagram posts back in 2012 (which, the Luddite I am, was the only time I really used the platform) and paste some below, with a few other reflections, for nostalgic reference.
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We finally visited India again after an eternity. The last time we went was in 2014. With our move to Japan, having kids and then COVID, it just wasn’t possible earlier.
Continue readingI stumbled over this interesting article in Development Southern Africa. Its authors, Dobbin and Lloyd explore whether development finance should be treated as an emerging, separate discipline in academia. An engaging read, even if inconclusive.
I took a moment today to revisit the two Tumblrs I was running several years ago. Both had a strong visual component.
Further to my post on debt in South Asia from November last year, I have been thinking more deeply about potential research ideas. I have returned to the “sovereign bank nexus” (SBN) and in particular how it manifests itself in Pakistan.