If only America's productive cities did not ban building more housing..
"Boston saw a historic building boom during the seven years (2014-2021) that former mayor Marty Walsh, a former construction union leader, occupied City Hall. The city’s skyline transformed, and continues to do so. Tens of thousands of new units of housing were created. An entire neighborhood rose from the ground." - https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2021/07/19/boston-mayor...
> Most major metros are experiencing a serious housing crisis right now.
Completely agree. But your reasons are off. Most high prices have literally nothing to do with supply or demand in any traditional (person-based) sense. Boston certainly fits that model -- it's price problems have nothing to do with any shortage in construction (construction is booming) or 'housing ban' (obviously there's no meaningful ban, because construction has already happened in large numbers for over a decade)
This is poor reasoning. The fact that some housing got built does not mean that there weren't significant impediments to building it, many of which still remain. Or that even during the boom that enough housing was built to sustain increased demand. There has been a historic housing boom alongside an enormous population surge over the past ten years (nearly 10% in the city proper alone). The boom is still not keeping pace with demand, and restrictions on multi-family housing remain. Here's a good article that gives an overview of the policy issues locally: https://commonwealthmagazine.org/opinion/on-housing-wu-shoul...
In particular:
> In Boston, on account of its antiquated zoning laws, it’s easier to build a leather tannery than it is to site an apartment building. The zoning code is written in such a way that it is nearly impossible to build multi-family housing, without going through the time consuming and costly process to obtain a zoning variance. Even then, projects are at the mercy of abutters and neighborhood associations that are often diametrically opposed to any form of development in their backyards, particularly projects with a higher unit count.
Also,
> Most high prices have literally nothing to do with supply or demand in any traditional (person-based) sense.
Citation needed. Population is growing faster than housing supply. High prices are exactly what you would expect in this situation. Building more housing is the only long-term solution.
Well, that are migration away from supply constrained cities.
Problem is that America's most productive cities are the most supply constrained.
People contribute less to GDP, earn less for themselves, pay fewer income taxes etc, in those other areas where they can still afford to live.
Also keep in mind that the linked FRED graph doesn't adjust for population size nor number of households in the country.
America is huge. There's land everywhere. Start dreaming. China has 160 cities with 1+ million people. We have 10. Granted, there is a massive population difference, but we should most definitely have more than 10.
There are major issues when you only have a few cities with the bulk of the opportunity and high salaries for given fields. It stymies growth for the rest of the country, and for all the people we claim to care about: the poor and uneducated.
Greece has this issue with Athens being the only realistic metropolitan location. All the resources are there, and those left in the villages and small towns are finding it harder and harder to advance. If you aren't going to Athens (or immigrating to another country), you aren't succeeding. This is a big problem.
For example, I could live in Wise County in Texas, and be technically counted towards the population of the Dallas/FW/Arlington Metro, but I would never dream of driving into Dallas from there daily for services, schooling, or work, and if I did, I would be severely disadvantaged, especially if I was poor or lacked resources.
Let me put it this way. If you go by city population size, Columbus where I live is larger than San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Las Vegas, or Atlanta [1]. In fact, Columbus is almost the same size as Atlanta and and Miami combined. Does that seem right to you?
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
But you can’t bucket a million people living in thousands of square miles as the same as a million locked together in a suburban sprawl connected with rail and roads. Look at London. Take away the boroughs and what is really left?
You also have to face the fact that as you spread people out, most costs go up. Cities subsidize suburbia and rural areas in the sense that cities generate more tax revenues of all types relative to costs. Suburban and rural areas mostly fail to raise enough tax revenue to pay for their own infrastructure and generally rely on various handouts from state and federal governments to build things like sewers and roads, which they then do not adequately maintain due to budget shortfalls.
Ok yeah ok Australia might as well be a hollow disk (no one lives in the middle) but still!
There are other educated assumptions we can make based on the rapid response to the Wuhan outbreak and the surrounding cities, but in my opinion, based on inference from what we can observe from the outside, the answer is firmly yes.
From an environmental point of view, it seems nearly ideal if most humans would live in a few big cities, than more of the rest of the earth could be given back to nature.