[stouset]

We have made an enormous shift in that direction post-COVID and it turns out that: [drumroll] people still largely prefer to live in cities when financially viable. The price tag of cities is itself evidence of this. San Francisco isn’t expensive in a vacuum. If there wasn’t demand for housing at these prices, they would fall. And yet people continue to willingly pay an enormous premium for the privilege of living here.

I can walk across the street to get my groceries. I have at least fifty restaurants within walking distance. My doctor is four blocks away and a large hospital is six. I have access to a large park three blocks away.

There is a streetcar that goes straight downtown one block away and three buses that go throughout the city are right at the end of my block. I can bike to virtually anywhere I want to go if walking is too far or transit is annoying.

And all of this keeps us healthy. It’s no secret that obesity is approaching near universality in areas of the country where driving is the only option to reach basic amenities. It also correlates with reduced energy use and therefore to reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

Making cities cheaper goes a lot further than trying to make cheap but fundamentally broken suburbs and exurbs less hostile. And part of that is precisely what this article highlights: the rentier class siphoning away the profits of workers while providing little to no value themselves. And I say this as a homeowner (and therefore landowner) myself.