5 korrents from this piece
Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.
Their wordsIn fact, European housing shortages are generally worse than America’s.
Their wordsBut this effect is far too small to explain the increase in house prices in Europe since 1914, when, after all, most urban continental Europeans lived in flats.
Their wordsWithout densification restrictions, housing shortages will only ever be serious in cities where land is really intensely scarce, as in Hong Kong.
Their wordsIn fact, zoning was invented in Europe, in Germany and Austria-Hungary, in the late nineteenth century.
Their wordsI suspect the same is often true in the rest of Europe: NIMBYism is the ultimate reason why the French and German states don’t solve their housing shortages through unbanning densification, but since the claims of the NIMBYs have been preemptively conceded by everyone, NIMBYism has basically remained latent.