[nickstefan12]

The problem with "just build more" is that eventually you run out of space the same as now, only you get to do it with a worse quality of light / space / light / traffic / noise / etc. I wish more cities fought to maintain true pristine open space.

There is no housing crises. There is a concentration of jobs problem and a wealth inequality problem. The internet's winner-take-all nature has created a world where one office in one city can do what used to require more sprinkled out offices of different businesses. Couple that with too many rich people, who will always have more money to park in desirable places than we have time to out build, and you get people priced out of the "one place" they can get a job.

It's not housing. It's the structure of our economy. If you don't believe me, notice how every city in America right now talks about its "housing crisis". It's wealth inequality and job monopolies.

[jknz]

> The problem with "just build more" is that eventually you run out of space the same as now

This argument misses the point. In the process of building more, you have made a lot of people richer/happier/commuting less, because now they can live within the city walls. Making a lot of people richer/happier/commuting less should be done everywhere where it's possible to do so.

> The problem with "just build more" is that eventually you run out of space the same as now, only you get to do it with a worse quality of light / space / light / traffic / noise / etc.

By admitting that you will eventually run out of space again, you acknowledge that demand will always keep increasing until saturation even if you build more, _because people are even more interested in denser city lives and its work/leisure/community opportunities than they are interested in suburban-type light/space/traffic/noise_. If people were interested at all in suburban-type light/space/traffic/noise, dense cities would not be in such high demand.

[nickstefan12]

My argument would be that the demand is created by where the jobs are. What has changed "recently" is that jobs are being more concentrated post invention of the internet. The internet has removed the need for regional companies and so what we have now are super max companies located in "one place".

[kousatsu]

That assumes that building more creates more diversity among the services or that the people living there are the McDonald's kind of non-picky persons that accepts whatever is being served.

People move to dense areas in belief that a dense city has more to offer in terms of jobs, but end up moving to country-side in their mid 40s despite commuting due to realizing what truly is quality in life.

[jknz]

Let's trust people to choose for themselves. Currently, people would like to live in cities, but they are denied that because of zoning laws.

Your second sentence is anecdotal. My observations is that a lot of people in their 40s move out of the city because it's too expensive to buy enough rooms for a family with current zoning laws. If rents were affordable they would be happy to raise their kids in the city.

I don't see how telling people to go live elsewhere, ignoring their current wishes, because they haven't understood yet what quality of life truly is, is anything but condescending.

[nickstefan12]

People are going to accuse me of "got mine", but I have none! What I'm saying is to consider that wanting cheaper housing today is throwing away a lot of natural beauty, vistas, and life, forever, just for a short term easement of housing pressure.

[saosebastiao]

Building cities is exactly how you preserve natural beauty and vistas. Maybe you prefer we convert Mt Tamalpais to a SFH subdivision, but I would much prefer we house millions of people in a few sqm of land than millions of sqm of land. San Francisco at Paris densities could house 2.5M people. We could eliminate an entire Silicon Valley's worth of housing development if we would just allow density where there is demand for it.