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Why can't we simply say, "what are the greatest places to live densely" and just copy-paste design elements?

The Netherlands is one of the most dense regions in the world. But it doesn't feel like it -- at all. It is human-scale.

We don't have to sacrifice our humanity or quality of life. There is plenty of room.

Are people in the Netherlands similar to people in the United States? In the US you will primarily get a neighbor that is watching football, shouting swear words and always accompanied with the smell of budweiser as you pass them in the halls. You will always know when they are home... And if you don't get that guy it will be the screaming couple.

I think the problem perhaps is that in house-owning countries, the apartments are usually cheaply built, or cheaply converted, so leak sound like sieves, because everybody who has any money wants to live in a suburb. In apartment-living countries, they put earth between the floors, and the walls are pretty heavy duty. So you don't really have that much noise pollution.

Dutch weed stinks more than American beer

From my own perspective, the Dutch are more similar to educated Americans than any other country in Europe, including UK. Kind of a midwest friendly vibe.

Queens and Brooklyn can't get up to that level of density unless we build more transit lines. This is very difficult to do in NYC. Without additional lines, the city's road infrastructure would not be able to handle the additional traffic.

I think the author's point is to build more density along existing lines. Many stops in Queens and Brooklyn already have 3-5 storey development around them. Thus, build higher in those areas.

I agree that 3-5 storey development is a nice density for living in (I choose to myself). But practically speaking, spreading that zone wider in NYC, without any sort of transit plan, is not possible.

You might not like walking through it, but I think Long Island City is a success story for this model. Thousands of workers, who otherwise would've been driving up rent in Manhattan, decide to live near the LIC transit hub in high rises, and I think the city as a whole is better off because of it.

Walking through LIC makes me deeply unhappy but I agree with you completely. In terms of its ability to deliver on raw numbers of housing increase it has been a total success and arguably helped keep rental pressure off my crappy Alphabet City apartment (and by extension the cheaper apartment I would have moved to and so on down the chain) by drawing away midtown finance types.

I do wonder which is harder: changing zoning laws in Gramercy and the West Village or fixing capacity problems on the F/G/NQR or LIRR

Replying to this after having a spent a few days in Tokyo, a city based on which Alon makes many of his arguments and I have to say it is also miserable. The experience of Tokyo neighborhoods is a relentless wall of gray, right until you take the train into an outlying neighborhood which is of course mostly three and four story mixed use apartment buildings and homes.

> We know what happens when NY gets big tower housing - it turns into the Upper West Side, Midtown West or FiDi all of which are miserable places to walk through.

I've never been to NY. What makes those parts miserable?

Rich people move in, place looses its vibrancy, everything starts to look the same, etc. Ofc, the miserable part is not true for the affluent who gentrify the place. New York is a dirty old place but sometimes something special happens naturally, when people from all over the world, from all cultures, blend in and create something, it’s very hard to describe if you don’t experience it in person. The problem is that New York’s specialness is slowly dying out

Wait, correct me if I misunderstood something - building high-rise apartment buildings makes living there more expensive? But how does that happen, since high rises provide greater supply of living space?

The only places people will build high rise apartments is where there’s a demand for it, near concentrations of jobs. Having more housing allows more people to live there which will lead to more people having jobs there. Imagine if you doubled the population of Manhattan. Finance in the US would become even more concentrated there and they’re well paid. By allowing agglomeration effects[1] to work more more housing could lead to higher housing prices. The solution to this is to build more housing. If you increase supply enough prices will fall.

[1] Tech and Silicon Valley, Fashion and New York, Oil and Texas, if you want to be in X industry you go to Y city. It’s easier to get a job, the jobs are better and better paid, there are more people doing the job.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration

Supply vs Demand.

There is a lot of demand for high rises close to city center and not enough supply of those buildings for the entire population.

Similar to how all real estate works really. Pick any small town Kentucky and you'll find housing prices that are dirt cheap with huge lots. Why do you find those? Because very few people want to live in tiny towns in the middle of nowhere.

It is so strange. I'd love to read an economics paper on it. I think it has to do with the fact that building a lot of expensive (above market) housing stock in an area tends to increase surrounding housing prices. It makes sense, but somehow seems to violate supply vs demand.

Well, I would first like to read an economics paper that investigates whether the premise is true at all :)

In general, I'm pretty sympathetic to this point, but how many square feet per person does the East Village have compared to other metropolitan areas?