Housing is more costly in the most expensive cities because so little of it is built. In the 2000s, Houston’s housing stock grew by more than 25 percent while that in the Bay Area grew just over 5 percent. In 2013 Houston approved 51,000 new homes while San Jose okayed fewer than 8,000, despite the booming Silicon Valley economy. Glaeser and Kristina Tobio find that since the 1980s, the extraordinarily rapid growth in the population of Sunbelt cities is due primarily to the receptiveness of those cities to new construction. A strengthening economy in places like Texas and Georgia leads to a construction boom and rapid population growth, while economic booms in coastal cities lead to very little population growth but soaring housing costs.
More Q where construction is allowed, higher P where it is not. Read the whole thing.
Is possible. Sure higher densities are possible, but they aren’t nearly as easy as sprawl.
It’s a vicious game of cutthroat survival in America’s most egalitarian cities. In it’s most blasé and socially darwinistic locales, everyone’s welcome!
What a scenario.