[jschwartzi]

I see your point. However I don't agree that nobody could plan for the increase in population. They can absolutely plan for that. The failure is in planning modes of housing that nobody in the city wants(single-family detached housing with a 45 minute commute by car), and in blocking the increasing densification of neighborhoods in desirable areas. Because the density and housing type of a district is controlled by government, the zoning lags behind how people actually want to live. That's the source of the housing crisis.

It's shameful that our local governments continue to allow people to block the construction of housing when it's clear how much the NIMBYs contribute to the homelessness and impoverishment of their neighbors.

[downrightmike]

You have to remember that in the time when suburbs were being created, most people in the city did want to escape it. The white flight was a huge change. And once the whites left cities, cities drove out poor people and put them into Projects. For a while later, in the last century, downtowns were pretty much deserts with the wealthy living in pent houses and everyone else either suburbs or the streets. It is only in the last couple of decades that cities have become able to attract the grand-kids of the suburb generations back to the cities. Largely because that is where profitable work is located. It is a feedback loop.

Also humans don't work well on the larger scale. Nimbys exist because that is the scale human people can operate at. A million seconds is 11 days, a billion seconds is almost 32 years. Maybe IBM could use Watson to figure out the housing crisis. A few less variables there to work with than cancer.