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Actually the housing types we had in abundance in the 1900s-1930s - walkable, row houses, townhouses, garden apartments, apartments over the store - are now extraordinarily premium, luxury products. The modern car-dependent high-energy-use high-amenity high-sqft stuff is cheaper!

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Wrong, it's that those houses are in locations that are now the epicentre of a huge cultural and infrastructure amenity that did not even exist in the 1900s. The physical houses are not the value there, it's the location and amenities.

While the location is the same in a geographic sense as in 1900, a google maps view of that era would show them being in a small town compared to a city with incredible amenities these days.

>huge cultural and infrastructure amenity

The amenity is simply walkability. If the same mix of businesses that are spread across many square miles of ordinary suburbia were structured in the form of an old-style main street, that would be just as much of a huge cultural and infrastructure amenity.

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