[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.