NewGeography.com blogs

Fresh from his recent national election victory, Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad announced that a planned high-speed rail project from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore will be cancelled. Kuala Lumpur is Malaysia’s largest urban area, with approximately 7.8 million residents, while Singapore has nearly 6 million residents. The Prime Minister told a press conference: “We need to do away with some of the unnecessary projects, for example the high-speed rail, which is going to cost us RM110 billion (S$37 billion) and will not earn us a single cent.”

Read more at the Straits Times (Singapore): https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/malaysia-pm-mahathir-mohamad-t...

Radio host, television personality and President of Denver’s Independence Institute Jon Caldara has announced progress toward placing the “Fix Our Damn Roads” initiative on the Colorado ballot.

Caldara provided an update to the campaign in a recent email:

Since the Colorado State Legislature refuses to address our crumbling road system in Colorado, we are proud to bring the issue directly to the voters. I’m thrilled to let you know our Fix Our Damn Roads initiative is one step closer to reality.

And now that the state has a MASSIVE budget surplus, thanks to the tax increase sell-out called the Hospital Provider Fee, we are going directly to the people. I am convinced voters will do what law makers refuse to do – Fix Our Damn Roads without raising taxes or fees, without siphoning off payola money to trolley cars and bike paths.

On May 3, Canada’s Financial Post, the nation’s leading business daily, published my commentary entitled: “Doug Ford was right: Toronto housing won’t be affordable unless we develop the Greenbelt: The PCs could have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to effectively deal with the housing-affordability crisis.”

For those unfamiliar with Ontario politics, Doug Ford is the leader of the Progressive Conservatives in the Ontario Provincial Parliament and the PC’s are the Progressive Conservatives.

As the commentary indicates, Toronto has a severe housing affordability crisis, traceable to adoption of a urban containment policy in the middle 2000s. The commentary concludes: “Doug Ford and the PCs could have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to effectively deal with the housing-affordability crisis. It is time for a serious rethink of the Toronto-area housing policy, with a focus on putting the right priorities first. People are more important than place.”

The article is available here….

Perhaps no region in the world is more associated with talent than the once-booming San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley. In the first four years of the decade, the area netted an average of 10,000 domestic migrants annually. But by 2016, the tide had turned. About 12,000 residents fled San Francisco that year, and the net outflow for 2017 climbed to 25,000. Nor is the future prognosis particularly great. Seventy-four percent of millennials in the Bay Area are currently considering an exit, according to the Urban Land Institute.

No surprise. San Francisco has devolved in recent years, with streets in some areas marred by the presence of homeless people, excrement and needles. Yet, housing prices are such that the California Association of Realtors now suggests a $181,000 income is necessary to purchase a home, more than 3.5 times the national average.

Expect Bay Area prices to rise further— even if Valley economic expansion continues to slow due to planning policies that block the peripheral growth required to improve affordability. Meanwhile, the outflow of households from the Bay Area could be accelerated by the new federal income tax provisions.

To date, the Bay Area’s job market has survived largely by hiring foreign workers; immigrants account for virtually all the region’s population growth. Many of these are essentially indentured servants on H-1B visas; the Bay Area accounts for a disproportionate share of these contract laborers and depends on non-citizens almost twice as much as other tech-oriented metropolitan areas. If the Trump administration follows through on promises to cut this program, the Bay Area may face even greater talent challenges in the years ahead

The complete listing for the Best and Worst States for Business can be found here.

This piece originally appeared on Chief Executive.

It has long been known by economists, but ignored by planners, that urban containment policies create speculators markets. This has been especially evident in Vancouver, the third most unaffordable market in the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey, and Toronto, which has experienced record breaking house cost escalation relative to incomes since enacting its “Places to Grow” urban containment policy in the middle 2000s.

Evidence continues to mount to support the relationship between urban containment policy and speculative profits. Now the Globe and Mail, one of Canada’s national newspapers, reports that realtors in Vancouver “are working with developers to obtain preferential access to condos in the Vancouver area.” The Globe and Mail also found that “ Many realtors also purchased one or more presale units for themselves and then resold them for six-figure profits.” Further, “A look at six buildings found flips for insiders and foreign investors brought a windfall of $10.6-million.”

Reprehensible as this is, it is to be expected. Vancouver has not only increased poverty by its urban containment policies that profoundly increase house prices, but also provided heretofore unavailable “get-rich-quick” schemes to make life even worse for those whose choice is a lower standard of living in Vancouver, or an unwanted move elsewhere just to enjoy the average lifestyle of other Canadians.