As the unmet demand for housing at all levels is currently outstripped by supply, the optimal local move is to replace cheaper-per-space housing with expensive-per-space housing, where the latter is targeted towards rich people, whenever permission from local government can be obtained. If the unmet demand for housing at all levels were much smaller, then this move wouldn’t be profitable by default and developers would have to choose where to build new marginal rich-people-targeted houses more carefully. For some human-desirable variable “strength of community”, the rents/sale prices will be higher the more of that is present. Then the obvious choice is to build your new development such that the “strength of community” of the removed building is lowest, relative to the “strength of community” of the new building. The existence of this sort of choice would mean that existing communities that people like would be less likely to be removed.
As the unmet demand for housing at all levels is currently outstripped by supply, the optimal local move is to replace cheaper-per-space housing with expensive-per-space housing, where the latter is targeted towards rich people, whenever permission from local government can be obtained. If the unmet demand for housing at all levels were much smaller, then this move wouldn’t be profitable by default and developers would have to choose where to build new marginal rich-people-targeted houses more carefully. For some human-desirable variable “strength of community”, the rents/sale prices will be higher the more of that is present. Then the obvious choice is to build your new development such that the “strength of community” of the removed building is lowest, relative to the “strength of community” of the new building. The existence of this sort of choice would mean that existing communities that people like would be less likely to be removed.