Samuel Hughes
Editor at Works in Progress writing on architecture, urbanism and housing policy, and a fellow of the Centre for Policy Studies and Create Streets. Has worked in think tanks, academia and government in Britain.
Samuel Hughes did not write this page. ppll compiled it from their own words, each linked to the source. Is this you? · Report a mistake
What they believe
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Housing affordability is almost the direct inverse of how many new homes are built, so the answer is to build more houses.
Without densification restrictions, housing shortages will only ever be serious in cities where land is really intensely scarce, as in Hong Kong.
worksinprogress.newsSaid 16 Jun 2026This on korrents
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Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 5 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
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Housing affordability is almost the direct inverse of how many new homes are built, so the answer is to build more houses.
Without densification restrictions, housing shortages will only ever be serious in cities where land is really intensely scarce, as in Hong Kong.
Europe's housing shortages are even worse than America's Said 16 Jun 2026
Europe's housing shortages are worse than America's, and Europeans do not discuss zoning as their cause at all.
In fact, European housing shortages are generally worse than America’s.
Europe's housing shortages are even worse than America's Said 16 Jun 2026
Zoning is a European invention: German and Austro-Hungarian cities wrote the first rules protecting rich suburbs from denser building.
In fact, zoning was invented in Europe, in Germany and Austria-Hungary, in the late nineteenth century.
Europe's housing shortages are even worse than America's Said 16 Jun 2026
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Europe has no visible NIMBY movement because its NIMBYs already won: nobody proposes suburban densification, so nobody has to fight it.
I 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.
Europe's housing shortages are even worse than America's Said 16 Jun 2026
Green belts and other limits on outward growth cannot explain European house prices, because densification would have supplied nearly all the same homes.
But 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.
Europe's housing shortages are even worse than America's Said 16 Jun 2026
Beliefs others hold too
Housing affordability is almost the direct inverse of how many new homes are built, so the answer is to build more houses. 4 hold this
Without densification restrictions, housing shortages will only ever be serious in cities where land is really intensely scarce, as in Hong Kong.
Europe's housing shortages are even worse than America's Said 16 Jun 2026
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