Tyler on Tyson's

I thought real-estate prices are a barometer of how much competition is restrained by zoning laws.

link to "real barometer of quality of life" seems to be broken

Tyson's is ugly, if only for it's sterile feel and a feeling that it exists absent the real world.

I know it's contradictory for a libertarian to want to live in DC, but I much prefer it to the burbclaves of Northern Virginia, even if DC seems headed for a Tyson's like existence as property values have skyrocketed over the last few years.

Clean, convenient, corporate living, Big Box stores, and McMansions - not Oakland.
Right on! People prefer sprawling Le Corbusier-like towers linked by highways in the style of Tyson's Corner. That's why real estate prices for single family homes in so called "urbanist" communities like Bethesda and Chevy Chase, with their sidewalks and pedestrians and down-town mainstreets where people walk are so cheap. No one wants to live in a place like that.

Right on! People prefer sprawling Le Corbusier-like towers linked by highways in the style of Tyson's Corner. That's why real estate prices for single family homes in so called "urbanist" communities like Bethesda and Chevy Chase, with their sidewalks and pedestrians and down-town mainstreets where people walk are so cheap. No one wants to live in a place like that.

Not a particularly good comparison. Tyson's is a good bit farther out from the city center than Bethesda and Chevy Chase (particularly in terms of time, with I-66 shrinking inside the Beltway and having to cross a bridge to get into DC). No amount of urbanist planning would drain the Potomac or move K Street into Arlington, which is what you would need to do to make Tysons vs. Chevy Chase an apples-to-apples comparison.

Public transportation doesn't work in most areas of the US because of population density. Also it is not profitable in the US because the way we structure it much of the benefits of the network they create are captured by real estate developers rather than the rail operator itself.

The study cited adjusts for NYC as an outlier but I would argue that NYC is not an outlier but the only true example of an effective public transportation system in the US.

Additionally the study excludes suburan to urban rail systems.

There are so many problems with this study that a comment section isn't big enough.

But the best example of how a rail system is effective is to look at Japan, specifically East Japan Railway, or MRT Corp in HK. Again the affectiveness of these systems is the fact that they are in areas of high population density and the fact that the companies have control of the real estate surrounding the stations. This highlights another problem with the study is that it is US-centric which is predominately a low population density country.

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When a big developer builds an area from scratch, it wants to maximize real estate values by making residents happy. What's the result? Clean, convenient, corporate living, Big Box stores, and McMansions - not Oakland.

You realize that those developers are working in one of the most regulated sectors of the economy, right? That zoning and building codes drive that "clean, convenient, corporate living," and that in the majority of the country it's not legal to build Oakland?

It's also not clear to what extent home prices reflect preferences for urban form versus preferences for other parts of the suburban bundle, such as good schools or low crime.

Vickers:

"Not a particularly good comparison."

In fact I'd suggest it's quite a good one as the issue is whether people value walkable, urbane neighborhoods. I can tell you that in Seattle it is conventional wisdom that people want the detached house within walking distance of a "Main Street." That is among the most valuable real estate in the whole region.