It’s logical that when housing supply does not meet housing
demand, prices will rise. Housing affordability is a huge issue
in many cities around the world – with the blame often falling
on planning rules and restrictions: both in the form of
restrictions on sprawl and restrictions on the level of
intensification. While there’s a logical connection between a
lack of housing supply and higher housing costs, it is perhaps a
little more complicated if we start to take this connection and
apply it through saying that if we build a lot more dwellings we
will start to make a positive difference to affordability. For a
start, there are two different ways in which we might try to
improve affordability by constructing more housing supply:
building more houses on the urban edge and building more houses
through urban intensification. As many previous posts have
pointed out on this blog there are likely to be a number of
‘false economies’ if you attempt to improve affordability by
allowing urban expansion. Not only are m