A brilliant historic narrative of urban development. As a former real estate lawyer I saw our work on every street and with every building.
You have conected politics, economic, legal, financial regimes into an historic record of development.
I believe that this subject has been poorly examined notwithstanding it's importance.
I have observed 2 real estate booms and one bust. Seen tradesmen builders grow from 1- 5 homes to a thousand. To bankruptcy.
Seen families torn apart over real estate inheritances. Some with shares that could be liquidated and some with partnerships that requires years of litigation.
Over the last 25 years international buyers have acquired thousands of condominium apartments in Toronto and Vancouver and many other cities. Much of it individual/family investors from China. A boon to Toronto developers. That had a banking system receptive to lending for such projects. With buyers in hand, a condominium building is easier to finance. Results may vary though. Investors were frequently sold poorly designed units that a long term landlord wouldn't want to market.
The families torn apart over real estate inheritances u mentioned are the use-side equation playing out in real time n the liquidatable shares vs years of litigation is exactly the difference between what the Code Civil produced and what strict settlement couldn't.
Very interesting (and dense) article, thank you! I do wonder how, given all the above, the Netherlands ended up in the “Anglo camp”, given that it’s on the continent. Is that because in the Netherlands there were also more attractive alternative offers on the stock market?
Hi Robin, thanks for the question! Indeed, that is a fascinating question and is fundamental to the story, as far as I have been able to research it. The answer is coming soon in part 2 😁
great tour through a fascinating system, look forward to reading further essays. i wonder how these contingencies and mechanics will have played a major part in european history (as they surely will have!)
Tbh the contingencies run deeper than history n the same mechanics are still pricing real estate capital today like build-to-rent returning in the US is the rentier corporation re-emerging under a different name.
Warsaw at 116 persons per building is what happens when you stack Napoleonic partition logic on top of imperial Russian land policy and extreme demographic compression n the legal substrate n the political constraint both pushed the same direction, harder than anywhere else.
Will have to read this more carefully - and it does seem interesting. It doesn’t seem true that cities looked alike in 1700 though. Amsterdam had created a distinctive sort of urban form with its canal projects and approach to selling uniform plots along them, Edinburgh had a very different distinctly vertical form, etc
Fair pushback like the Amsterdam canal plot system is precisely the exception the framework needs to explain, not dismiss. Uniform plot frontages sold at auction to individual buyers is a form-side variable working differently from the aristocratic estate model n the "broadly alike" claim holds at the aggregate but breaks down fast at the city level.
Very interesting - having read the article for a first time now (will have to reread - lots there!), I think the Amsterdam case does raise an interesting example that tests the overall theory.
Not prepared to provide a detailed critique yet as I haven’t fully absorbed the article!
But it does occur to me that The Netherlands was very unusual at the time it’s great canal expansions occurred in having broken from centralized royal control after the revolt v Spain and confirmed the power of a class of Amsterdam oligarchs to set the rules, or “form-side” rules based on their own sensibilities.
Added to this was the fact they were creating a lot of land, which is very unusual in general - but not in the Netherlandish context. Other peculiar aspects included that the Netherlands had a history of this sort of local control that the Spanish had never succeeded in suppressing - and that had only become more entrenched during the reformation period.
Also, Amsterdam was experiencing tremendous prosperity and its elite were brimming with confidence about their ability to create a much more rational plan for development as opposed to the city’s inherited medieval patterns.
They also had both the engineering and the financial nous to successfully realize very grand projects.
As an aside, the scale of the vision for Amsterdam during the canal era was truely grandiose - a lot of soil was sourced from the ’s-Graveland area, which then became a prime location for country estates of the same elites
This is all just specific observation, not a theoretical critique
Inheritance law is infrastructure n Paris built the apartments because the réserve héréditaire destroyed dynastically held land and forced capital into rentier corporations but tbh the building is just the vehicle the legal regime produced.
What a privilege to read. You have made me think about cities in a completely new way - looking forward to the next part!
Thank you. It has been a fascinating rabbit research hole digging this up.
The frame shift is from "taste explains form" to "law explains form" n once that clicks you can't unsee it in any city you walk through.
Fascinating study
A brilliant historic narrative of urban development. As a former real estate lawyer I saw our work on every street and with every building.
You have conected politics, economic, legal, financial regimes into an historic record of development.
I believe that this subject has been poorly examined notwithstanding it's importance.
I have observed 2 real estate booms and one bust. Seen tradesmen builders grow from 1- 5 homes to a thousand. To bankruptcy.
Seen families torn apart over real estate inheritances. Some with shares that could be liquidated and some with partnerships that requires years of litigation.
Over the last 25 years international buyers have acquired thousands of condominium apartments in Toronto and Vancouver and many other cities. Much of it individual/family investors from China. A boon to Toronto developers. That had a banking system receptive to lending for such projects. With buyers in hand, a condominium building is easier to finance. Results may vary though. Investors were frequently sold poorly designed units that a long term landlord wouldn't want to market.
I look forward to your next piece.
The families torn apart over real estate inheritances u mentioned are the use-side equation playing out in real time n the liquidatable shares vs years of litigation is exactly the difference between what the Code Civil produced and what strict settlement couldn't.
Thanks for this stunning, thought-provoking read!
Very interesting (and dense) article, thank you! I do wonder how, given all the above, the Netherlands ended up in the “Anglo camp”, given that it’s on the continent. Is that because in the Netherlands there were also more attractive alternative offers on the stock market?
Hi Robin, thanks for the question! Indeed, that is a fascinating question and is fundamental to the story, as far as I have been able to research it. The answer is coming soon in part 2 😁
Utterly enthralling. Thank you for your work.
great tour through a fascinating system, look forward to reading further essays. i wonder how these contingencies and mechanics will have played a major part in european history (as they surely will have!)
Tbh the contingencies run deeper than history n the same mechanics are still pricing real estate capital today like build-to-rent returning in the US is the rentier corporation re-emerging under a different name.
Fantastic study. Any idea why Warsaw is such an outlier, even compared to Vienna/Budapest/Berlin?
Warsaw at 116 persons per building is what happens when you stack Napoleonic partition logic on top of imperial Russian land policy and extreme demographic compression n the legal substrate n the political constraint both pushed the same direction, harder than anywhere else.
Thanks, really interesting
Will have to read this more carefully - and it does seem interesting. It doesn’t seem true that cities looked alike in 1700 though. Amsterdam had created a distinctive sort of urban form with its canal projects and approach to selling uniform plots along them, Edinburgh had a very different distinctly vertical form, etc
Fair pushback like the Amsterdam canal plot system is precisely the exception the framework needs to explain, not dismiss. Uniform plot frontages sold at auction to individual buyers is a form-side variable working differently from the aristocratic estate model n the "broadly alike" claim holds at the aggregate but breaks down fast at the city level.
Very interesting - having read the article for a first time now (will have to reread - lots there!), I think the Amsterdam case does raise an interesting example that tests the overall theory.
Not prepared to provide a detailed critique yet as I haven’t fully absorbed the article!
But it does occur to me that The Netherlands was very unusual at the time it’s great canal expansions occurred in having broken from centralized royal control after the revolt v Spain and confirmed the power of a class of Amsterdam oligarchs to set the rules, or “form-side” rules based on their own sensibilities.
Added to this was the fact they were creating a lot of land, which is very unusual in general - but not in the Netherlandish context. Other peculiar aspects included that the Netherlands had a history of this sort of local control that the Spanish had never succeeded in suppressing - and that had only become more entrenched during the reformation period.
Also, Amsterdam was experiencing tremendous prosperity and its elite were brimming with confidence about their ability to create a much more rational plan for development as opposed to the city’s inherited medieval patterns.
They also had both the engineering and the financial nous to successfully realize very grand projects.
As an aside, the scale of the vision for Amsterdam during the canal era was truely grandiose - a lot of soil was sourced from the ’s-Graveland area, which then became a prime location for country estates of the same elites
This is all just specific observation, not a theoretical critique
Pieces of this are AI-generated, for what it’s worth. The part starting with “The Culture Thesis:”, for example. https://www.pangram.com/history/38306fa0-71e5-4373-b4ba-07c81ae6d2fa
The writer is co-founder and CSO of an AI company, so I wouldn’t have expected otherwise.
Inheritance law is infrastructure n Paris built the apartments because the réserve héréditaire destroyed dynastically held land and forced capital into rentier corporations but tbh the building is just the vehicle the legal regime produced.