[brozaman]

> More population sure raises the value of land, making housing more expensive which sucks for raising a family.

Actually this is not so much a problem for the amount of population but of excessive centralization around big cities. The earth, even if we only consider the places with reasonable climate, water and food supply and decent enough orography is pretty much empty.

Everyone agrees that as big cities grow the housing prices increase, but I don't see this happening in small towns far from big cities. Every country is different and obviously there are very good reasons to have some regions not very populated (I'm not saying Lapland should have the same population density as the coast of the Mediterraneum) but in plenty of cases places are unnecessarly crowded.

Spain is a good example of this, Madrid in particular is a city far too expensive for the salaries due to the excessive amount of population. The weather or the land aren't particularly good, it's not that it has massive water supply or anything like that, it's just that there have been centuries of centralization efforts by governments.