Okay, very dramatic headline. Over-compensated, even.
But isn't this one of the results of poor city planning?

So, if we say poor city planning is the primary multiplier of housing costs, how does it translate to paying more for housing?
How does leaving home at 4:00am and other poor planning processes, protocols and failures make housing more expensive?

.

Agreed...
It's quite easy to quote inflation figures and cost of materials when explaining how it adds to cost of housing.
One... You can't go wrong, &
Two, nobody can ‘drag’ you for quoting publicly available data.

But when it comes to poor city planning, we all summarize (and leave) this as infrastructure deficit, systemic inefficiencies and traffic.
Because these effects are indirect and harder to quantify.

Yet, these outcomes directly translate into higher expenses for homebuyers, which are often passed down in the form of increased housing prices.

So, how does each of these outcomes or expressions of the failures influence every extra N1 paid for housing?

.

Since planning operates in different layers, and housing responds directly to those layers.

Take for example:
⛔️ Friction with land
⛔️ Delays and financing/capital
⛔️ Infrastructure gaps
⛔️ Quaity of life

When planning systems fail, each failure multiplies cost of the next layer (Not just add to it)
The interesting thing is, while basic business exists as: Cost price ‘+’ Margin, planning failures multiply it.

…Each one compounds the next...
🚩 Poor land titling and registry systems cause massive price speculation and risk.
🚩 Lengthy and inefficient approval processes increase capital/project costs significantly.
🚩 Infrastructure gaps increase development cost.
🚩 Poor living conditions, which ironically slows down housing sales, thus further increasing financing/capital costs.

.

The effect of capital exposure, of high financing cost, of increased development costs, of higher living costs, are simply garbaged out to the buyer...
... These stack up and only manifests as:
Friction × Delay × Risk × Infrastructure gaps = Unaffordable housing.

Thus, by the time the keys are handed over, the final price reflects these layers of inefficiency. Because the only way to recover this cost is through the “Price” of the house.

.

This is the “structural/systemic issues” that we always talk about and how they compound the cost of housing.

That is why if we want affordable housing, we can not just address inflation or cement prices.
We must also reform city planning policies, practices and protocols.
Tackling it head-on is essential before (or alongside) addressing other economic factors like inflation and material prices.

Affordable housing is a systems problem, and planning failure only multiplies its effects.
Fix panning, and 80% of the problems go away.