[timr]

> You need to include Newark, Yonkers, Long Island, etc if you want to compare those figures.

That's just not an accurate comparison.

Live in NYC. Lived in Japan. The difference is transit. It is far easier to get to Saitama or Kawasaki or Yokohama or Chiba than it is to get to Long Island from NYC. You can do the former in an hour at rush hour. Try getting to downtown Manhattan from Bay Shore as a daily commute. You'll go mad.

Here's Tokyo and New York at the same zoom level:

Tokyo: https://www.google.com/maps/@35.736739,139.6246444,10z

NYC: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7983574,-73.948053,10z

The gray area of Tokyo on that map is pretty much all considered an exurb of Tokyo, more-or-less feasible for daily commute by rail. Most of the NYC region is inaccessible from Manhattan, except by car. Look at the Seibu Shinjuku line, or the Chuo line on the Tokyo map -- both offer express trains that will take you from the distant western exurbs, right into the middle of downtown Tokyo:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seibu_Shinjuku_Line

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Line_(Rapid)

[coryrc]

I understand, but that doesn't change my assertion that comparing Tokyo density to only-NYC density makes no sense, especially as an argument that there is no room for to build more. Hogwash! Half your NYC map is pure green, but even leaving that, most of the land area on that map that is housing is SFH.

The density of the NYC MSA is 1/3 that of Tokyo: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area

There's plenty of room to grow up. Just because the reason we don't is shitty government organization and FPTP voting doesn't mean we can just ignore the vast swaths of low-density just outside Manhattan 's borders.