This idea that cities reach a point of maximum growth, become unaffordable, and should be abandoned by potential newcomers: this is currently true, but it's a broken system, and it's time we look at ways we can improve it.

When a city becomes unaffordable, when rents skyrocket-- those expenses are someone else's windfalls. When people expect the value of real estate to rise and rise indefinitely-- those windfalls are someone else's expenses.

I've come to believe that so much of these structural problems are essentially reducible to issues of land-use (property/land taxes), but there is so little focus at present on reforming this.