Perhaps not coincidentally, almost all of the increased land rent that comes with increased density is captured by the Singaporean state, since it is the ultimate landowner ("privately owned" land is actually leased from the state on a 99 year basis).

This means that as an area becomes more desirable, more people move there, land rent goes up, and the state earns more and more capital to build/maintain infrastructure and bureaucracy that is proportional to its population.

Contrast with the Bay Area (only used as an exemplar of basically all of America/the western world), which is full of extraordinarily wealthy people paying enormous rents to live under a dysfunctional government with a budgetary shortfall of $6.3B.

It appears that high Singaporean rents go back into paying for a society worth living in, while high San Franciscan rents go into the pockets of a handful of landlords (who of course contributed nothing to San Francisco's explosion of productivity over the last few decades).