[jacobolus]

Mountain View has about 6,000 people per square mile. Cupertino has about 5,000 people per square mile. Palo Alto has about 2,500 people per square mile. Etc.

By contrast, a suburb full of real housing can be far denser. For example, Somerville, MA, a suburb of Boston, has about 19,000 people per square mile. It’s entirely unnecessary to fill the whole of the Bay Area with 30+ floor high rises in order to increase density by a factor of 2 or more; all we need is to re-zone a fraction of the land to allow 3–6 story low rise apartment buildings in mixed-use neighborhoods instead of only allowing single family detached houses on large lots and scattered strip malls and outrageous numbers of parking spaces everywhere.

Kowloon has a density of more than 100,000 people per square mile. The Bay Area does not need anything near the density of Hong Kong to meet its housing needs.

[Johnny555]

Of course, Somerville has little parkland, and few commercial buildings, not even much retail, and little office space.

I'd much rather see balanced communities with parks, retail/entertainment and office space so many residents don't have to travel outside of their community for every day needs.