Mobile home park residents form co-ops to save their homes

Back of napkin answer:

Build bigger buildings, lots of them. All of those 'quaint' places with 2-6 story buildings? 50-60+ story sky-scrapers.

However that's probably also the answer you assumed. Yes that would change the 'character' of a place, because the only way of keeping that the same is to keep the number and type of people in a place the same. How could someone preserve an idea that directly contradicts a reality? No, there would need to be a new idea that supports the desired conditions. Hopefully a good idea that is well executed.

As another commenter said, 'more ''Manhattans''' is another way, try to replicate the sort of feel / idea at existing scale or larger in other locations.

My own comment was about the technical and physical goals a society should strive for, which are within reach, should we the people have the will to reach for them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

For example, a company in nowhere-ville develops Mr. Fusion (home edition) and needs to expand rapidly. Rents and land prices double overnight which results in the cost of labor rising which slows expansion.

There are many opportunities for rent extraction in capitalistic systems and some degree of rent and speculation are necessary to establish a market but when society allows for excessive rent taking and speculation it becomes dead weight on productive investment.

For example the “billion dollar industry” for sand that makes computer chips (https://www.wired.com/story/book-excerpt-science-of-ultra-pu...) is an example of companies with little or no investment in the technology around chips who were able to extract large sums of money simply by controlling a sand pile.

I.e crime is not a characteristic of poverty or the poor, but a specific policy failure in dealing with it.

You might benefit from re-reading what I wrote and assume the best possible interpretation of what I wrote.

This is probably true. I mostly rented houses, but the few apartments were nightmares (and cheap!). In my experience, small to medium landlords were the worst. 1- or 2-unit owners are easier to deal with but (sometimes) slower to fix problems as they arise. "Mom and pop" rentals were by far the best experience all around.

I now own a house in a small city. I've noticed each street varies in quality and safety. Streets with densely packed multifamily homes have littered streets and more crime. Single family neighborhoods have less trash (none on mine) but are more likely to fall into disrepair than income producing property. I've also lived in the bad area of my city. I stayed there longer than anywhere. My landlord and neighbors were great. That street was special despite being densely packed multifamily homes.

There are many variables affecting livability. Though, I do wonder about the efficacy of modeling apartment/condo/street satisfaction. Pricing seems less like a filter, and more like a KPI representing maximization of some hidden variables (those affecting housing satisfaction).

Also, I wonder if a dollar value could be placed on "good neighbors".