Juntas de Compensación obscure and legitimise vast fortunes gifted to private landowners from the community via rezoning (albeit less than Ireland).

When Fine Gael abolished the Greens' policy of 80% CGT on rezoned land, Ireland lost an effective and fair way to finance new serviced areas.

4/4

Of course, this approach doesn't address the severe problem in Spain of poor construction quality.

Builders and developers deliver shoddily built homes with impunity, knowing that buyers will generally avoid resorting to legal action due to sectoral collusion and long delays in the courts.

3/4

The municipality defines not only how many m2 can be built, but also the proportion of residential, commercial & public services.

Physical infrastructure (water, sewage, electricity, roads, lighting) is built first.

In Madrid, space is reserved for a metro and/or regional rail station.

2/4

While still imperfect, I have experienced the outcome of the "Junta de Compensación" approach in Spain which is commonly used as part of the rezoning process.

Sites are reconfigured to confirm the urban plan, via a process of "reparcelación urbanística".

I'd be curious to hear your opinion.

1/4

There is some middle ground to be found. Some increased supply of smaller apartments is, of course needed.

The problem is that the lobby in favour of this is against new market entrants, against pressure to develop "land-banked" sites held for speculative capital gains, and against land value tax.

Let's be clear-eyed about what this is.

The United States is pushing for regime change in Europe, supporting the far right in their efforts to take power in the next elections. As a result, they're polling in 1st place in Germany, France & UK

And our centrist leaders pretend it's not happening.

There's also a suggestion of using UK law despite the statute of limitations having expired.

I guess the idea is to get around constitutional freedom of speech in the US.

Buttigieg is not criticising it per se.

He is criticising the political strategy centred on identity politics that, in a US context, delivered the White House to Donald Trump.

Federalisation of Europe is the only path forward.

All other paths lead to fragmentation, and becoming subjects to foreign powers.

We'd have to design the system carefully with enough safeguards to avoid a Trump-style circus.

"In the aftermath"?

Looks like TikTok is complicit:

Lets the Russian bots do their job. Deletes them *after* the election to keep regulators off balance.

Repeats.

As I'm sure you're aware...

There's a vast number of AI bot farm accounts on X, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, etc.

These form a big part of Russia's information warfare operations against what's left of Free Europe.

The US now intentionally facilitates these Kremlin attacks, so they're untouchable.