Sigh. Democracy is going to hang itself with the bike lanes and public transit, isn't it?
Density increases and ubiquitous transit result in HIGHER levels of housing shortages. Just ask France.
Anyway, nobody who has ever been to a major French city believes that they've tried to increase core density. They famously have building height restrictions all over the place. Pretty much the entire city of Paris caps out at 7 stories.
Think about this: EVERY large European city now has a "housing crisis". And nice cities just a couple of hours from them have housing that is essentially free. In Japan it's often _literally_ free.
Want an example of a city that doesn't have a housing crisis and is comparable in population to Paris or Berlin? Houston, TX.
Density is not the thing making the prices go up. Local supply lagging behind local demand is what does that. Your two choices are either build more or make living there less desirable compared to somewhere else. There's no third choice.
> nice cities just a couple of hours from them have housing that is essentially free
If nobody wants to live there then tautologically people have decided that they aren't nice.
Dense cities are not nice places to live, especially for less well-off people. Just look at the number of children per capita. You are just _forced_ to live there by economic forces, whether you like it or not.
Japan is really illustrative there. You HAVE to live in Tokyo or other large cities if you want to achieve anything. Yet a young person will not be able to afford anything decent. And forget about families.
Oh, and the construction capacity in and around Tokyo is maxxed out. Parts of the city are literally permanent giant construction zones. They're building housing as fast as possible. Yet the prices are _skyrocketing_.
> Your two choices are either build more or make living there less desirable compared to somewhere else.
You don't have that choice. The construction rate in large cities can't keep with demand if the city is growing.
You can try to streamline permitting (like in Japan), prohibit foreign ownership and/or investment (Vancouver), regulate the rents (NYC), dance around naked under the full Moon - and nothing will work.
> There's no third choice.
False. There is one: make other places nicer by promoting remote work and incentivizing companies to open new offices in smaller cities.
Houston is a great example. It's pretty much the only large city in the US that doesn't have a housing crisis. And it did that (on accident) by not having a real consolidated urban core. Instead, it's a collection of smaller cities, each one with its own business core.
Houston is a great example of many things, but being a good place to live isn't one of them. Most of it is a depressed concrete wasteland of sprawling blight and freeway lanes far from any natural beauty with weather that causes people to stay indoors most of the time. I lived there for 20 years and have family there and you could not pay me enough to move back. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/article/houston-li... https://secrethouston.com/houston-unhappiest-cities-us/
Paris in the middle of a riot is a far better place to live than Houston.
> Just look at the number of children per capita.
Fertility tracks religion. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/religion-fer...
The birth rate in Houston has been steadily declining for a long time and is well below replacement. https://kinder.rice.edu/research/declining-fertility-greater...
Hm. "Depressed concrete"? And concrete in Manhattan is hyperactive, and concrete in Japan is meditative?
I absolutely loved not having a commute in Houston (I could get to work in 15 minutes!). The average commute in Houston is shorter than in ANY comparable European city.
Weather is probably the reason Houston became so successful: pretty much nobody WANTS to spend a lot of time outdoors in summer. So city architects ended up building the city for humans and not buses and bikes.
> far from any natural beauty
My backyard was periodically visited by deer, I had a family of crows living in a tree, and my neighbors had a beautiful garden.
> Fertility tracks religion.
It primarily tracks urban density, which is also associated with religion.
They aren't building enough rental housing so rents are going through the roof.
Here is the REAL horror show: https://alfred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1ZPRl
Houston is still the second most affordable large metro area in the US. And the per capita square footage is about two times that in NYC.
And despite that, Paris is one of the densest cities in the world, and an incredibly pleasant place to live. This should be a good lesson to everyone that "high density" does not have to be synonymous with reams of skyscrapers.
Even if you go beyond the city proper, a number of the Paris banlieues are similarly dense and I think most of the most populous ones are like twice as dense as SF (which, again, is America's second-densest city).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_popul... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco
Density doesn’t cause housing shortage. A housing shortage creates motivation to increase density.
Wow, that's a new one
Hell, there are even consulting companies that provide guidance on how to upzone the city to squeeze most taxes out of new density.
increased density and transit increases demand for that area. high demand != shortage.
What are you suggesting exactly? low density and car-dependency is the solution to our housing problems?
Yes, it just means higher costs.
Just build more of the thing that people want!
And how do you build more land for single-family houses? Around 80% of people in the US would prefer to live in a SFH.
But even putting that quip aside, you physically can't keep up with the demand. Large cities physically can't grow fast enough to keep up with the demand.
A typical apartment unit now requires about 2 work-years of labor to build. So if you're growing your city by 5% a year, then 10% of the city will be apartment construction workers! And then you'll need to keep upgrading the infrastructure, and this is usually exorbitantly expensive.
To give some perspective: one mile of Manhattan subway now costs as much as 1500 miles of modern 6-lane freeway.
74% of people live in SFH right now in the US. How many of those have actually never experienced living in multi-family homes? Probably most of them. How can you prefer something you've never even tried?
Also, keep in mind that in many places SFH is literally the only choice right now.
Given real estate prices in places like Boston and NYC I think multi-family housing is doing just fine
Yeah, and you don't even need multi-family houses. A bunkbed would do, like in Singapore!
> 74% of people live in SFH right now in the US. How many of those have actually never experienced living in multi-family homes? Probably most of them. How can you prefer something you've never even tried?
They also did not experience living in buildings without AC or heating. Remove them.
> Given real estate prices in places like Boston and NYC I think multi-family housing is doing just fine
Then invert your argument. Can a person in NYC who hates living in a multi-family home have an option to NOT do that?