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Comment by LudwigNagasena | Hacker News Reader

There is abundance of housing. It's just that people want to live in big metro areas that have extreme concentration of economic opportunity and amenities.

I don't understand how transforming every urban area into Kowloon Walled City will solve that unless your plan is to make it so dense that people will finally find it undesirable to live there?

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At the density of Kowloon Walled City, the entire population of India could fit within the city limits of San Diego. Nobody is asking for that, silly.

We could 1.5x the density of San Diego and still have the livability of Copenhagen. We could 3x the density of San Diego and still have the livability of Vienna. We could 5x the density and still have the livability of Paris. 8x and still have the livability of Tokyo. We have a ridiculously low bar to pass, all we have to do is allow it.

Paris [1] and Copenhagen [2] have similar housing issues. Both are some of the most expensive cities in Europe [3]. Vienna has a large municipally owned and non-profit housing stock [4]. The situation in Tokyo was okay while it was growing its stock like crazy, it is facing an intensifying affordability crisis right now [5]. If there is a bliss point at which the housing crisis is solved with density before Kowloon Walled City levels, it surely not at Tokyo levels. What do you think that bliss point is? Why do you think it is a better solution to grow city densities to those levels rather than trying to make it easier to live and work in compact, mid-rise 15-minute cities that people generally seem to prefer? [6]

[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2026/04/20/french-h...

[2] https://www.politico.eu/article/copenhagen-denmark-mette-fre...

[3] https://www.vanguardngr.com/2026/01/top-10-most-expensive-ci...

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/10/housin...

[5] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/09/29/japan/society/r...

[6] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02697459.2026.2...

Housing price is a function of supply and demand and your argument had nothing to do with price of housing, you were only talking about density and its effect on livability. And it's very clear that people value living in cities that are much denser than San Diego. If people genuinely do not want a denser San Diego, there wouldn't be any point to restricting that growth.

I personally would love to live in a city like Tokyo. People have different preferences. Don't force your preferences on me. If people "generally prefer" midrise cities, they will move there. There's a reason why so many people live in Tokyo when there are plenty of less dense cities in Japan. The great thing about allowing density is that people will stop moving in when they don't like it anymore.

> Housing price is a function of supply and demand

Yes, a function of supply and demand of everything. [1]

> your argument had nothing to do with price of housing, you were only talking about density and its effect on livability

My argument is that there is no reason to assume that increasing supply by blanket deregulation is a simple and effective solution to the housing crisis that has no downsides.

> If people "generally prefer" midrise cities, they will move there.

Many people don't want to move there because there are not enough economic opportunities, not because they dislike good traffic or green spaces.

> The great thing about allowing density is that people will stop moving in when they don't like it anymore.

If you solve all possible tragedies of the commons of that approach, sure.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnenschein–Mantel–Debreu_the...

I think both dense and not dense areas suffer from tragedy of the commons. The only difference is in the suburbs the effect is spread out, so you can kind of pretend it doesn't exist. Which also means that each individual person has the potential to cause more damage.

That's the issue. Most Americans don't want the entire population of India to be in San Diego. To some of us, San Diego is one of the best areas in the country. Why destroy it?

Did you only read the first sentence???

Second sentence, repeated here for clarity: “Nobody is asking for that, silly.”

Perhaps it’s too much to ask you to read the entire comment you’re responding to, but at least read the second sentence, please.

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