Lots and lots and lots of people really really really want to live there, and it’s been that way for a long, long time. Combine that with a heavy-handed state government and you’ve got a recipe for extreme prices.

Certainly the remainder of the West Coast is disproportionately influenced by California’s economy, but this only proves my original point. If people can’t afford to be where they would most prefer (or to stay where they were) then they’ll compete for the next best thing.

One part of this post (well, two) doesn’t hold up to scrutiny very well. For one, the idea that the automobile appealed to a rural nation. In fact it was an urbanized phenomenon first of all. The kinds of things you see for tokens of long distance personal mobility all lay still in the future.
Second is your point that expense wouldn’t be there (in highly planned areas) without there being desire for some valued quality that’s nurtured specially there. You could, I suppose, even have tied your vehemence explicitly back into the idea that the price reflects the property’s economic use. But the truth is that you neglect larger geography. If your whole life, family and friends are on the West Coast, but you’re sick of urban California’s mess or you’re priced out of it, then you could move to inland California, but then you’d be out of the reach of job markets too. Other than Tijuana, the Pacific Northwest is the only game in town. If you got in early, you may have gamed the real estate – and many Boomers did, so even a normal-sized cohort of other age demographic groups has to find a spot in the leftovers – but the macro Californian flow has equilibrated those two urban areas to California prices and its emigrants now head to the urbanized Intermountain West.
Even the perceived economic value of being in any of these places will change as soon as the Boomers start not to be filling up most of the housing stock anymore. The point is that in the psychology of the demandors, any premium they’re willing to pay does not exist with reference to normal nationwide pricing options, but only the options of the social radius they need to stay within. Your own sense of certainty was in judging how the effect must have happened for people not to go elsewhere instead; I hope you have a finer sense now of how it stacks up. It would be interesting to hear of any pairs of expensive-highly-planning-taxed-cities and similar sized cities where this isolation effect does not obtain. Thanks for the posts.

This particular piece of the plan took 10 years to come to fruition. While it was not the preferred course by the community, which preferred an alternative that came out of a charrette process (1997) that would have been better funded and likely built earlier, now that it is open it’s a good thing.

And DC has existed more than just the last few year period and people have lived East of 14th Street throughout the period. In fact, except for all but three years, I have lived east of 14th Street for the 21 years I’ve lived in the city…

Excellent post.

Not to long ago, basically you didn’t go east of 14th Street. On 14th Street itself there was a lot of crime; an ex-girlfriend who was living in the area moved farther west when there was a murder on 14th Street in broad daylight. There were a lot of pawn shops, liquor stores, check-cashing places, etc. (all with bars on the windows). Now that whole area has been cleaned up. Neglected jewels east of 14th Street (like the beautiful Victorian townhomes around Logan Circle) are being renovated and reborn. They are building new mid-rize buildings in the area for new residents (like those in the picture). New business is opening up to cater to the new residents.

And it didn’t take all that long for this to happen. In a matter of about two years, the area changed dramatically. But what it did take was a concerted effort on the part of the city, developers, police and the population at large. You need planning to accomplish something like this in any meaningful period of time. Otherwise, you end up with a haphazard series of pockets, surrounded by the abandoned buildings and fenced in lots (like Midtown in Houston). And I will remind everyone that Washington is a city with a pittance of resources when compared to places like Houston. But what Washington does have is the will to change, a system in place and the long-term planning and foresight to (for example) build the METRO in the 1970’s rather than ruining the city with a series of mega-highways like so many other cities were doing at that time.