“Agree with crowriver”
I’ve given up trying to work out where the ‘problem’ starts.
Undoubtedly the economic success of Edinburgh (partly based on it being a nice place) has meant more people want to live in the city (or nearby, with well known transport consequences).
“The Council” (CEC) is a mix of councillors, doing what they may think is in the interest of ‘their voters’, ‘the City’ or ‘the economy’ and officials dealing with all that plus developers and Government desires, directives and laws.
The developers of course want to make money and to do that have to produce things that people buy.
The extent to which ‘we build what people want’ is overstating is hard to calculate.
Building on “anonymous farmland” is generally easier and more profitable (especially if the developer has owned or optioned the land for many years).
There can be little doubt that many people do want a detatched multi-bedroomed box (or the slightly cheaper semi).
Developers do their best to minimise the amount they pay for’externals’ like schools, road junctions, pedestrian crossing and active travel routes (congestion costs etc are unlikely to be calculated by anyone in the whole process). They say (truthfully) ‘if we pay for all those things our houses would be more expensive’.
Whether that would mean slower sales or just fewer ‘affordable’ houses is uncertain.
So markets, politics, aspirations etc.
But certainly no apparent joined-up policies on student numbers, tourists and consequent accommodation requirements and knock-on problems.
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