[jacques_chester]

> I'm curious why that's the case and under what conditions it applies.

Hong Kong is a small, mountainous archipelago. Tokyo-Yokohama surrounds a bay on a mountainous archipelago. Manhattan is an island. Yet these places have the most skyscrapers in the world and are amongst the richest places in history on any measure.

Urban density has nonlinear effects. It relies in part on the pressure to build vertically and the ability to move many people horizontally.

[marcinzm]

>Manhattan is an island

Surrounded by a giant empty plain which people commute in from (as in it's population doubles during the day). And there's constant issues with wealth inequality, homelessness, living conditions for the poor, etc. Money is not the only measure by which a healthy city is defined.

[jacques_chester]

I don't know if I'd describe NYC as surrounded by plains. It has the Atlantic on one side. Long Island is, you may have guessed, an island. Westchester and Suffolk are also pinched by the same rivers that constrain Manhattan. The densest parts of New Jersey that people commute from are variously constrained by the Atlantic, rivers and ports.

I cannot imagine that Manhattan would be anywhere near as dense without the Hudson and East rivers cutting it off from the New York mainland, Long Island and New Jersey.

> And there's constant issues with wealth inequality, homelessness, living conditions for the poor, etc. Money is not the only measure by which a healthy city is defined.

What's your definition of a healthy city, and why does massive sprawl satisfy it so well?

[marcinzm]

>What's your definition of a healthy city, and why does massive sprawl satisfy it so well?

Now you're putting words in my mouth, just because I don't agree with your extreme must mean I hold the other end of the extreme?