I don’t think the USA is a good model for most countries. the USA is not a case where 50% of its national GDP is squeezed into approx 10% of contiguous territory centred around the capital !

I suppose India and the UK are ironically both in the position of treading unknown territory — having to develop via services rather than via industry 😂😄😜

well it sounds like you are saying investment could potentially revive, if the planning system were liberalised; whereas I’m not sure that’s true.

planning system => low business sector investment is ex ante plausible, except for the fact that the UK investment rate has fluctuated around 16-17% of GDP for nearly 30 years. This makes me doubt the planning system is anything other than a minor factor

I suppose, because business sector investment as % of GDP has been falling since the late 1980s, & the decline is driven by manufacturing investment & then by ICT investment. and the UK is the most deindustrialised of the big rich countries, in terms of manufacturing value added as % of GDP

haha not saying planning restrictions don't matter; just that, demand growth has accelerated in the SE, so that planning constraints on supply growth matter more now than it used to do?

Neo-Thatcherite 'housing theory of everything' argues slow growth of housing & infra due to planning restrictions => low private investment. But isn't it more plausible: deindustrialisation + financialisation + ever greater concentration of econ activity in the SE, raise costs of housing & infra?

but ex ante the connections, if they exist, seem small. rather the primary mechanism appears to be: deindustrialisation & financialisation => even more intense concentration of high value economic activity in Southeast England => housing & infrastructure undersupply relative to intensified demand

If you're going to do deindustrialisation, it's much better to deindustrialise employment than deindustrialise your value added ;-)

the planning matrix explanation is looking less plausible...