Economics Nobelist Paul Krugman: Cities for Everyone

Krugman doesn't state so explicitly, but the reasons for the high cost of living in Manhattan is because of "rent seeking" a Microeconomics market inefficiency created by using politics to limit density to create artificial scarcity in housing and thus increase the price of housing for new entrants and artificially inflate the cost of housing for existing property owners.

Another reason for the high cost of housing is the overuse of historic landmark status laws.

For more about how to fix the high cost of housing, see Harvard Economist's column: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/build-big-bill-article-1....

For more about the explicit Microeconomics, see Tim Harford's fun to read book, "The Undercover Economist" http://www.amazon.com/Undercover-Economist-Revised-Updated-E...

I think, in the long run, relying on coastal cities to absorb everyone is not going to be a sustainable option. Right now, something like 40% of the US population lives in a coastal county, and that percentage is increasing. Meanwhile, environmental and infrastructure pressures on those areas are also going to be increasing. Transit systems are breaking down, water systems are overloaded, highways are overloaded. Everyone says, build more housing, but they don't want to pay for the the resources that housing will require. That is not going to work.