You're still just saying "If you make a place nicer to live, then more people will want to live there."

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.

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cyberax a day ago | parent [-]

> If you make a place nicer to live

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.

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BugsJustFindMe 8 hours ago | parent [-]

> Houston is a great example. It's pretty much the only large city in the US that doesn't have a housing crisis.

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...

	▲	cyberax 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> 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. 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.