[throwaway22032]

"That's just like, your opinion, man."

The car is clearly not the best way to navigate a dense city. It is impractical to have, say, tower block apartments and also have a car for each resident. It is unreasonable to build enough parking for peak time around every destination that anyone might want to go to.

On the flip side - not everyone wants to live in a dense city, and people's opinions on this change throughout their lives. It was profit maximising and also a lot of fun for me to live in the inner city in my early to mid 20's. Now that I can afford to not maximally push my career I prefer the outer parts of the city / more rural areas, and that's where the car shines.

[tonyedgecombe]

> On the flip side - not everyone wants to live in a dense city, and people's opinions on this change throughout their lives.

If you look at the cost of living in an urban area it’s clear there is a lot of demand. Rural is cheaper because most people don’t want a long commute.

[bluGill]

Urban living isn't even possiple without a high cost of living. Building a single story builing is massively cheaper than going up - unless land costs are extreemely high.

[throwaway22032]

This is to some extent a kind of tautology, though.

There is more money available to chase housing in urban areas because it's where most of the jobs are due to network effects, so if you are a labourer you gravitate towards that (as you say, it's a commute thing).

It's not necessarily intrinsically more desirable. If you gave the average person 5 million quid I don't think they would choose to live in Central London.