[welshwelsh]

We have plenty of land.

When I moved to Manhattan, I was shocked to see how many apartment buildings that are only a couple floors tall and don't have elevators. I assumed every building in Midtown would be at least 50 floors and house thousands of people.

Counting the office space, which is completely unnecessary when people can work from home, even the densest neighborhood of America's most populated city has tons of room. I would bet that we can fit 20 times more people in Manhattan if we got rid of the height limitation laws and converted all the offices to apartments.

On the other hand, when we consider the average suburb there is a ridiculous surplus of land. We could fit the entire world population into Texas if we used it more efficiently.

[polio]

There are many reasons why not every building in Manhattan is 50 storeys. The most obvious one is that each neighborhood's infrastructure imposes limits on the density of the block. Other considerations are public transit, water main, and school capacity. So the effective amount of "land" today, is closer to what exists today, relative to a block of residential 50-storey skyscrapers.

[mixmastamyk]

Infrastructure scales with development, q.e.f.

[throwfh80h82]

Cramming people together more tightly does not create more land.

[lr4444lr]

But they flock to NYC. No one is "cramming" them there.

[throwfh80h82]

Not sure I follow your point. NYC is not affordable. Are you implying the New York real estate market is in a desirable state because people still want to live there despite exorbitant rents and never being able to buy a home?