How do cities deal with strong population growth?

Humes fork

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Humes fork
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In Stockholm where I live, on average a bus load of people is added to the population every week. There is a lack of apartments in Stockholm, which means that they are bought and sold at fantasy prices (supply and demand). Lots of people in Sweden want to live in Stockholm, and I can certsinly understand why.

So I wonder, how is it in big cities globally, say New York City and London? These two are the most globalized cities in the world, and globally speaking a lot of people desire to live there. They are also major cultural and economic centers in the world.

I found some stats for New York City and I see that it is still a significantly growing city. I wonder, how do they manage the issue of apartments and persons? Are they very expensive there too?
 
Your stats show that NYC population has grown about 3% in a decade. That's not a whole lot. According to Wikipedia, the population of London is about 10 percent below what it was in 1939.

In contrast, Stockholm's population grew a lot faster--about 13 percent over the last decade.

If it would help make more room, lots of us in America would be happy to have your Moomins move here :)
 
Humes fork said:
In Stockholm where I live, on average a bus load of people is added to the population every week.
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That few? That's insignificant.

I found some stats for New York City and I see that it is still a significantly growing city. I wonder, how do they manage the issue of apartments and persons? Are they very expensive there too?
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In Manhattan, apartments are fantastically expensive.

The secret is suburbs.
 
Melbourne's growing at 1.3% per year, the fastest growing city in Australia. We are both increasing inner city density, and opening more suburbs in three main growth corridors. Works okay as far as I'm concerned.
 
PixyMisa said:
That few? That's insignificant.
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Yeah, a bus a week seems like a very small number. What's that, like 40 people or so? About 2000/year?

In the 1990s and 2000s Clark County Nevada (Las Vegas) was adding as much as over 100,000 people per year. Or about 48 busses/week if it's a 40-person bus.
 
lionking said:
Melbourne's growing at 1.3% per year, the fastest growing city in Australia. We are both increasing inner city density, and opening more suburbs in three main growth corridors. Works okay as far as I'm concerned.
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You're not concerned about water shortages?
 
Santa Barbara is possibly a case study in the use of a desal plant in the face of a drought. In the early 90s, we were in a SEVERE drought. I remember a picture of the local lake that is the principal source of our fresh water. The permanent intake was on dry land (literally) and temporary hoses were used to pull the little water that remained into the water supply system. We were in seriously deep doo-doo.

So the city (and state) authorized the emergency construction of what at the time was the largest desal plant in the USA. As you can imagine, the costs were huge but what choice did we have? Operational testing was conducted for three months, ending in March of that year (1991?). Then we had our "March Miracle". Record rainfall in that month refilled the reservoir (Literally. The dam eventually overflowed there was so much rain).

The plant was mothballed and eventually decommissioned. Major components were sold to Saudi Arabia. As you can imagine, the city took a financial bloodbath. Now the facility is a hollow hulk infested by rats and the homeless. In light of newer desal technologies since that time, any recommissioning would essentially require rebuilding the whole damn thing.

Desal requires huge amounts of electricity; I hope there is sufficient excess capacity in the grid to run your facility. And I hope the costs don't bankrupt the good citizens of Merbourne including, of course, the renowned lionking. :)

Good luck.
 
timhau said:
They're not theirs. The Moomins are ours.

:FINLAND:
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Well I know where the Moomins were born, but I thought they counted as part of Sweden's high immigration rate.

Anyhow, in line with the well-known Nordic social welfare systems...shouldn't both Finland and Sweden want to share with us Moomin-deprived Americans?
 
Cities don't deal with growth, markets do. In fact the policies of cities are often counter-productive when it comes to growth. For example making it difficult to get building permits, rent control etc. all can cause shortages and/or pricing bubbles.
 
NewtonTrino said:
Cities don't deal with growth, markets do. In fact the policies of cities are often counter-productive when it comes to growth. For example making it difficult to get building permits, rent control etc. all can cause shortages and/or pricing bubbles.
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Sorry, but you seem to have your ideological blinders set to kill. Cities without proper planning were inefficient messes. Even today we can see the effects of planning cities around cars or around public transit. Take Detroit as an example of what happens when you leave it up to the market to design a city.
 
NewtonTrino said:
Cities don't deal with growth, markets do. In fact the policies of cities are often counter-productive when it comes to growth. For example making it difficult to get building permits, rent control etc. all can cause shortages and/or pricing bubbles.
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Tsukasa Buddha said:
Sorry, but you seem to have your ideological blinders set to kill. Cities without proper planning were inefficient messes. Even today we can see the effects of planning cities around cars or around public transit. Take Detroit as an example of what happens when you leave it up to the market to design a city.
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I suggest you are both right. There needs to be good planning of a city. This is best done before it is built. Once a city is built it is hard to fix bad road design. Try to straighten some of London's inner city roads! But Melbourne in Australia has some great city roads. These were designed before the first people moved in. Not bad for early 1800s. Then the good planning needs to be maintained. The wrong type of red tape, such as what NewtonTrino is suggesting, may stop good things from happening.
 
Tsukasa Buddha said:
Sorry, but you seem to have your ideological blinders set to kill. Cities without proper planning were inefficient messes. Even today we can see the effects of planning cities around cars or around public transit. Take Detroit as an example of what happens when you leave it up to the market to design a city.
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Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahaha - good one! As a major transportation hub (and later car industry center) Detroit was a thoroughly planned city from the early 1800's to the 1930's, when it hit over 1.5 million in population.

OTOH, the decline of Detroit from the 1950's to today has certainly been market based as automobile owners exercised their freedom to live elsewhere, namely the suburbs where they enjoyed a lower cost of living, low crime and good schools. It would take some kind of dictatorship to make people move back there no matter how well you plan to make it over.
 
Startz said:
Your stats show that NYC population has grown about 3% in a decade. That's not a whole lot.
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By way of comparison, the Toronto metropolitan census area has seen its population grow by 9.2% in just the last five years. (The population went from 5,113,149 according to the 2006 census to 5,583,064 according to the 2011 census. Growth from 2001 to 2006 was also 9.2%, and from 1996 to 2001 the population grew by 9.8%. There's a national census every five years in Canada.)
 
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PixyMisa said:
That few? That's insignificant.
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Maybe, but it's not a terribly big city to begin with.

If I'm not mistaken, a lot of people in Stockholm don't move out from their parents' basement until they are 28 or so. We have a severe lack of dwellings in this city.

PixyMisa said:
In Manhattan, apartments are fantastically expensive.

The secret is suburbs.
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I see. But does NYC really has a center and suburbs? My impression was that it was divided into five or so boroughs, none really being more central than the other.
 
If you're Atlanta, you just ignore it completely for a good solid twenty years until there are so many cars on the road that traffic just stops and you live in your Subaru.
 
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