Urban Density Housing Debate

Density is too low because urban housing is artificially expensive.

You want something that is intrinsically expensive (a large home in a high-density urban area) to be cheap, which is understandable if not very realistic. It is not because of greedy developers, or bad zoning, it is because of simple market forces. Tiny condos don't sell and in the suburbs and big SFHs are too expensive in the city for most people. Everybody trades off a variety of concerns when choosing where to live, but pretending that if only you were in charge then everything would be

It's not that it won't be near "trendy". It's that it won't be near jobs. Look at median salary and workforce participation in places where houses cost $200k. Your affordability calculation will be re-calibrated.Density is not a problem, it is a solution. Denser means more developed, more environmentally friendly, more productive, higher earning, more efficient. Increasing density increases wealth (pay a little, gain a lot). It almost always increases wealth fast

In any given area the amount of land is fixed, you might be able to slightly increase the supply with some land improvements like draining a marsh, but there's nothing that scales.To house more people, you need to build denser housing on the fixed supply of land. Most places have zoning laws that limit density. But beyond that, it's actually less expensive to build higher cost homes - a lot of small apartments require a lot of walls (more material) redundant plumbing and electrical

There are some inherent problems with making cities affordable.Dense construction is more expensive per unit area. So even if you could spread out the cost of expensive land among many units, a high density building will cost more per unit to build. Shrinking living spaces can only be taken so far before they hurt quality of life.So city dwellers will always pay more per unit area because of building costs.Second, traffic from density imposes costs on transportation. So movement is more

It's real simple. If density is increased, more people can be serviced with a given length of sewer and water pipes. Busses don't have to drive as far. Cars don't have to drive as far. Businesses have more customers.The high-density places in your city that are expensive are only expensive because the developer probably had to fight a multi-year battle to be allowed to build there, with millions of dollars at risk because permitting could be stopped by a cranky neighbor at any

This sounds backwards? Density means more units available, which should lower costs. Supply and demand. Rentals in a dense complex are cheaper than standalone rentals or duplexes, townhomes are cheaper than SFH, etc.I don’t think cities should force density, but there’s no reason to go the other way either as long as growth is managed properly in terms of traffic, transit, and infrastructure.

How is it remotely hard to understand that someone doesn't want their neighbhourhood and greater neighbourhood plowed into the ground and replaced with skyscrapers?They can disagree about it sure, but it should't be remotely hard to 'understand'.America is a very large places, there are tons of places for people to build out and build up if that's a primary issue.The most vertical city in the US - NYC - is one of the least affordable.In fact - the 'most

The basic problem here is that there is a limited resource: land that is close to the downtown area where most of the workplaces and other attractions are. Some people (such as yourself) want that land to be filled with a certain kind of housing, and others ("YIMBYs") want that land to be filled with a different, much more dense kind of housing. They both have their advantages and drawbacks. The sparse areas have advantages like less traffic, less noise, and lower crime rate per capita

No, and for good reason: if everything is high-rises then housing becomes too dense. The problem isn't lack of housing density. The problem is too many people wanting to live in a small area. We need to reduce demand (by spreading over a wider area - more cities and rural areas too) rather than increase supply.