Boulder's a great place in many ways, but it's also what got me really interested in urbanism, and getting involved at a local level, because it is an abject failure in terms of being affordable to even middle-class people who didn't buy in 30 years ago, with average house prices somewhere around 700K or north of that.

This is, in part, because they refuse to add denser areas like the downtown in more parts of the city, despite there being ample room to build 'in and up'.

I mean... if Aspen or something like that is expensive, it is what it is, but a larger town with ample space like Boulder or Bend (where I ended up) or Palo Alto should not have these crazy prices.