[quantumwannabe]

There are cheap high-density areas and expensive low-density areas. According to your and that blogpost's logic, Silicon Valley's high housing prices in single-family neighborhoods and the fact that people want to move there are proof that people ACTUALLY want a suburban lifestyle, not an urban one.

Looking at where people live and where they want to live is a better source of their actual preferences than looking at housing prices in a handful of expensive neighborhoods and guessing what the average person wants.

[Schiendelman]

All you have to do is delete zoning and you’ll let people decide for themselves - no measurement necessary!

[quantumwannabe]

Sure, as long as we also get rid of all urban growth boundaries. Be careful what you wish for, a free market city won't look like what you think it will.

[Schiendelman]

Go for it. A free market city won’t go outward because nobody is willing to pay usage based pricing for highways.

[quantumwannabe]

They already do in many places. Toll roads exist, and the gas tax pays for almost all of the highways anyways. Transit is subsidized an order of magnitude more. A world with no subsidies looks more like suburban sprawl than a dense transit focused city.

[Schiendelman]

Show me evidence. Gas tax doesn’t cause market decisions.