On the other hand, there's nothing forcing you to live in intra-muros Paris.
I live in Nanterre, 5min away from the RER station, and my rent is 1200€/month for a 2-bedrooms apartment (50 m²). I have a <1h commute for about anywhere in Paris, and <20min for La Défense.
Point is, you can have affordable-ish rents in a business center without building humongous high-rises everywhere, as long as your public transport network can support it.
Hmm... I should turn my ATX apt into 4 "Parisian" studios then. Such underutilized space considering I have an almost vestigial "dining room" that has been used mostly as a dance floor and a gym area.
In practice, most American jurisdictions will not let one legally subdivide a living area into chunks as small as a Parisian studio. NYC regulations on how small you can subdivide are probably as generous as they get.
In the Parisian example, it is legal to have an apartment without an in-unit bathroom, and this is straight up illegal in virtually every American city. A list of requirements for NYC (not exhaustive): https://www.renthop.com/qa/nyc/what-makes-an-apartment-illeg...
It's called tenement housing, in any case. Split the living room in half and rent the large walk-in closet, now a 2 bedroom is magically a 5 bedroom like an airline employee crashpad. :)
Some friends of mine were thinking about renting out an entire warehouse and constructing illegal residential tenement "apartments" in them.
I live in Nanterre, 5min away from the RER station, and my rent is 1200€/month for a 2-bedrooms apartment (50 m²). I have a <1h commute for about anywhere in Paris, and <20min for La Défense.
Point is, you can have affordable-ish rents in a business center without building humongous high-rises everywhere, as long as your public transport network can support it.