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Even if it didn’t slow the price increases - just the fact that building more housing means that more people get to live where they want to live- isn’t that a good thing and enough reason to build?

And as you said, the neighbourhood gets improved - isn’t that a good thing?

Or are you saying that the solution to the housing crisis is to make cities as inhospitable as possible such that people are forced to live in the countryside?

Have you considered the effects that dense cities have on the ecological footprint, the welfare and the technological progress of a society?

Have you considered how allowing free movement - including into cities - increases human welfare and happiness?

I am not against building more. I am simply saying that if you look at the data, there is no evidence what so ever that building more decreases the price of housing. What it does is slow the price increases, but the very demand that is driving price increases was generated by the density, that is exacerbated by building more.

We need a better metric. If you have some number to describe the quality of a city, perhaps let's call it fun, then the fun/$ is probably much higher than in a cheap suburb, for sure.

Density doesn't drive price. Nobody pays more for "density".

Density and price are both simply measures that track other desirable factors like jobs. It is correlation, not causation.

agreed that it's correlation. however that's all you're going to get. no one is going to run a city wide experiment in this way. however if you look at the trend it's clear that cities have seen higher median price increases than suburbs. you can search yourself.

Cities have a long list of attractive qualities that drive prices up. Being in a tiny box with high density is not one of them. Nobody is going to choose the 500 ft apartment downtown when they could have price.

Every city has already run this natural experiment. You have units that are high density and low density that are completely paid off. People will pay more for a larger space in an urban center. If people wanted density for its own sake, rent would be higher for a tiny apartment in a large house in the same location. It is not the density that they want, it is the short commute and high paid job. This is what I mean by causality.

> Nobody pays more for "density".

You do, actually, pay more for "density". Moving things closer together, incurs extra costs (Even ignoring all other factors). Building codes have to be stricter (for equivalent safety levels), when buildings are closer together. Walls and insulation need more expensive materials (for equivalent sound dampening levels), when buildings are closer together. Insurance rates get higher (for equivalent coverage), when units are closer together. Labor costs are higher and labor time needed is higher (for equivalent results), and so on.

A few costs go down (less length of pipe material, or less length of wire, etc). But those minor material costs are usually far out-shadowed by the increases in labor to accomplish them (it costs less money to replace all shared water pipe in my 20 house suburban street, than it costs to replace all shared water pipe in a NYC mid-level with 20 units, even though the literal length of pipe material might be cheaper). It costs more to remodel a bathroom in Manhattan than in (say) Louisville, KY., even for identical bathrooms with identical fixtures and identical sqft.

Denser usually means more complexity or more labour, both things that cost extra money.

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Density advocates generally acknowledge this, density fundamentally costs more. Their argument usually rests on cities having hyper-overvalued properties -- the argument is that the extra cost of density is cheaper than the extra cost of land, and that's how they manage to make density look like a cost savings. Which kind-of works in major cities downtowns, but doesn't really pencil out elsewhere.

What I mean is that basically nobody looks at two options and desires the more dense one simply because they find density attractive.

If offered to rent a large home on a 1/4 acre in downtown Manhattan, or a dense condo for the same price, almost everyone would choose the less dense option.

People want space, and put up with density because they have limited money and like the location.

They don't like the density, but they like the location?

Usually, liking the location means you like that it's close to other things, right? In other words, you like the density.

They are not synonyms.

Location means being close to things you like. Those things can be, but are not always other humans. you might like a location because it is beautiful, by the ocean, mountains, or a short commute.

I might like a location because it is close to a high paid job, but hate the population density. That is to say, population density can be a negative attribute of a location.

I'd argue that being closer to work is more density, but it really doesn't matter. People like being near things they like, whether that is density or is merely correlated to it.

There is very much evidence that building more housing decreases the price of housing. I'm not sure why you think there isn't. https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/new-construction-...

then why are the places with the most units the most expensive? the research seems bad - they use a simulation, not actual data.

> then why are the places with the most units the most expensive?

Because the most people want to live there and population is growing?

There are plenty of high density old towns all over Italy that are dirt cheap because nobody wants to live there anymore. You can buy a whole house for $10 in a town built for such high population densities that streets are a meter wide.

indeed! which is my point. density does not make it cheaper.

Dense housing also doesn’t make it more expensive either.

You've got it the wrong way around - expensive areas (usually because of lucrative local jobs) densify because it's how you can still turn a profit despite expensive land. Cheap, poor areas don't densify because the land is cheap, and the way to turn a profit is to build big houses that can still attract some people.

In order for it to decrease prices, the rate of building would have to outpace the rate of demand.

If you build 100 houses, but 1000 people move there, you can say "Oh look building more houses didn't help, prices still went up". It's not that building more didn't help, it's that you didn't do it enough. The obvious answer is to do it more, not to ... stop building houses as if that is going to bring prices down.

I agree that housing being big is a primary driver, if not the primary driver of price, along with quality, in most markets.

That said, I think the fundamental claim that adding houses doesn't reduce prices is pretty absurd. You simply have to ask what would happen if we stopped building houses.

Of course density is not the driver of price. Houses in urban center are not more expensive because they are denser. They are more expensive due to proximity to jobs.

Build a high density structure in the middle of the desert and it will be cheap and dense.

> 1. Major housing developments are accompanied by more jobs than the units being built could serve.

Lets take your theory to be true.

Even if this is the case, it would still effectively cause housing prices to decrease, relative to the amount of money that people are making.

So, if density causes people's income to double, by having all these awesome and cool jobs, but housing prices only go up by 50%, this is still a massive win for the residents.

> Even if this is the case, it would still effectively cause housing prices to decrease, relative to the amount of money that people are making.

This isn't true at all, though, empirically. Trivially you can look at the minimum wage in the top 10 most expensive cities vs the bottom 10 and see this.

> So, if density causes people's income to double, by having all these awesome and cool jobs, but housing prices only go up by 50%, this is still a massive win for the residents.

Why exactly would that happen? Ironically denser places result in lower wages, relative to the rent. Your theory is empirically false. This is why people like remote work, so they can better arbitrage.

You can't have it both ways here. Either density is creating lots of high paying jobs in an area, that is driving up the price of housing, or it isn't.

> Ironically denser places result in lower wages

No it doesn't. The highest paid locations, in the US, are located in these high cost of living areas.

> This is why people like remote work, so they can better arbitrage.

Yes, they work remote, because dense locations have high salaries. That supports my point. You just agreed with me.

If people had high paying jobs, where they live, they wouldn't work remote, to get the highly paid jobs in dense cities.

> It should be almost self evidently true that they pay more money, than random jobs, in the middle of nowhere, in the US.

I'm talking about the wage relative to the price sq/ft. You're laughably wrong. Just google Median NYC salary and look at the median NYC sq/ft, and do the same with say, Dallas, TX. It's not even close.

I'm not talking about nominal wages, I'm talking about sq/ft monthly rent adjusted wages. When you look at that, the densest places do not have the highest wages. People are sacrificing earning potential to be in a more fun area, which makes sense.

Once again, if your statement was true, people wouldn't be moving to NYC, or SF, for the highly paid jobs.

If they could get highly paid jobs, elsewhere, they wouldn't pay the high cost of living, to be near the high paying jobs.

I am not sure what theory you could invent, that would cause people to move to a high cost of living area, if not for the high paying opportunities in those areas.

If, instead they could get better opportunities elsewhere, why pay the high cost of living?

> People are sacrificing earning potential to be in a more fun area

Hey, if you know of any jobs that pay 500k a year, for a sofware eng position, not in SF or NYC, please let me know then!

I'm going to say, that actually its the salaries though.

> Once again, if your statement was true, people wouldn't be moving to NYC, or SF, for the highly paid jobs.

adjusted wages for rent is not the only consideration. cities have far more amenities, which are beyond the scope of the discussion.

it's simply a fact, however, that if you're simply looking at square footage, rent, and wage, the densest cities in the united states do not give you the highest wages. there's really no point in arguing about it, you can go look for yourself.

Wage, measured in $/month

Housing cost, measured in $/month

Housing cost/sqft measured in ($/month)/sqft

Wage/(housing cost/sqft) measured in sqft.

Why is sqft a measure of earning potential?

How would you take into account Vienna in the denseness and cheapness dimensions?

I'm not familiar with Austria. I'd be shocked if Vienna is cheaper than random parts of Austria, though.

> I’ve yet to see anywhere on earth that’s both dense and cheap which I believe more or less proves the point. If building more houses really made things cheaper it would be trivial to prove: cities, which are denser, would be cheaper than the nearby suburbs. Across virtually every region this is not true, when adjusted for square footage.

After a certain point, density probably increases unit costs, which would mean the densest housing can't be the cheapest.

I'm reminded of an all-hands meeting years ago, where employees were asking for parking improvements in very office building large building (surrounded by very large parking lots). They wanted a parking garage, and the management said flat out that wasn't going to happen because it would cost 10x+ more per parking space.

Sure, building a structure is cheaper than not building a structure, bit to an extent, usually height above 7-8 stories, it gets cheaper per SQ ft to build as you go up.

That's before you factor in the cost of land which tends to be one of the most expensive parts of building in a city, that also goes down per unit built.

I'm not sure, 'should we build a structure or just pave a field is really a good comparison here'