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> Cities often had their priorities backwards and became very dependent on unsustainably high property values. Even if you started rezoning office buildings into housing, SF would be taking a double hit - there is less reason to live in SF and more housing would bring down values everywhere. Forgetting that these business districts are pretty undesirable places to live anyway.

Let's thought experiment this. In one world, you have a lot more housing supply, which would help stabilize the drain from people being priced out, and quite possibly swing SF back towards being a desirable place to live once it's no longer unattainably expensive (and spur jobs too because you'd need businesses to serve the people who'd otherwise leave or never come). Prices dip then plateau then gradually recover if you avert a "death spiral."

In one world, you do nothing, you shrug and say "homelessness isn't my problem, and I don't want any new housing or anything." Let's say you get that death spiral. What's happened to your property value then? NIMBYism ain't saving you there if far fewer people want to live there.

Other cities in the US, especially those which are less geographically constrained than SF, and a bit more practical than just "we're gonna say we care about homelessness instead of demonizing people, but actually we're not gonna do anything", have ongoing development and feel a lot healthier. There are likely still rental market dragons lurking (though many of these other cities are also less WFH-oriented/friendly) but they're in far better shape so far.

Before I run this thought experiment, I'd like to know what percentage of top 20-30-50 cities in the world where average income people are not priced out of city centers / downtowns or other desirable areas.

I don't entirely understand your question, but the one bit I do want to address is that it's somewhat tautological that average incomes will be priced out of [the most] desirable places.

The issue with SF that the OP here is trying to extrapolate to US cities as a whole is rather more like "priced out of literally every part of town other than a tent on the street" while at the same time having huge amounts of empty space in buildings, which is a very precarious position and one that's far less common in large US cities/metro areas. (There's also a unique aspect about SF being quite small, city-wise, by US standards and much of its surrounding suburbs also being obscenely expensive across the board; SF itself could suffer big hits to population and desirability and that may or may not have much impact on the rest of the Bay Area).

I don't disagree with anything here except the idea that (for most cities, at least) cheap housing creates growth. Especially after reading Alain Bertaud (who I would strongly recommend on this topic).

On the other side of the scale you have cities like Detroit. There is no shortage of cheap housing and culture. But without enough career prospects, the city struggles for opposite reasons. If anything, homelessness is actually worse because the city services are stretched so thin across such a large geographic area with so much poverty.

Most cities in the US are somewhere in the middle. SF is uniquely bad in how terribly they let basic livability get for even their highest income earners.

> I don't disagree with anything here except the idea that (for most cities, at least) cheap housing creates growth. Especially after reading Alain Bertaud (who I would strongly recommend on this topic).

What would recommend as a starting point for Bertaud?

I think Rust Belt/NE US cities have a huge weather disadvantage that makes it hard for a place like Detroit to attract people back once they lose them; I don't think SF has that same problem. I see it as the difference between "affordable because of low demand" (where they're also competing with the literal middle of nowhere) and "affordable because of adequate supply". Once you jump-start the demand (with the jobs and all - another thing the Sun Belt cities and states did very deliberately) the cities in the latter situation that keep building so they stay "affordable-ish" will never be as affordable as the ones that simply aren't desirable, but they can also avoid being so fragile as modern SF. You gotta jump-start it first, but then the presence of continual new, affordable-ish housing becomes a factor that draws more business due to lower COL (like any of a number of relocation announcements from CA to TX).

(I would, though probably-controversially, claim that the biggest problem of SF in the last 20 years was not solely "didn't build enough housing" but "allowed way too much office space for the amount of residential they wanted" - I think they could've done slower residential demand growth in a more sustainable way if they'd better balanced what they wanted early on. The lack of balance meant the proceeds of the industry they did have couldn't be re-invested into other jobs and industries in the city, it was all just going to stupid high rent and property prices.)

"Cities" is the wrong word here, it's really "downtown" or "city center" areas. The center of activities will move outwards toward the suburbs, but stay in the wider metro area. This has been slowly happening for a while in many (most ?) metro areas, but the pandemic will certainly expedite things.

The suburban reaction to the pandemic is a real shame. For a while there, it had looked like we might finally reverse the awful tide of sprawl.

Until the ponzi scheme that is suburbia bankrupts the city

I read an article a few years ago that showed that cities make the most money off of the poorest areas because they are the densest.

It turns out the French had it more right when they levied taxes based upon Street front length instead of area.

The length of the road, sidewalk, street lighting, water pipe, electrical lines, telephone lines, etc. are all increased with wide properties. Perversely, the wealthier homeowner is subsidized by the poorer apartment dweller.

Sure. But if you are Seattle or San Francisco or any other number of examples, the actual city boundaries are quite small. So while you pay for city services that the larger region might get to enjoy (transit, housing authority, etc), your funding pool to draw from might still be shrinking.

How cyclical is this? Say there is a middle-class-flight for the next few decades to the Peninsula or Marin, SF deflates for many years, then eventually artists start moving in for the cheap rent and abundant space, and the cycle starts all over again, the $10 cold brews return. I think this was somewhat the case with Downtown Los Angeles.

I've heard similar things about New York as well. In the 70s, NYC was a crime filled mess. But it was cheaaaaap. And the cheapness brought in young cool bohemians and now it has the opposite problem.

"Cities exist as job markets."

That's changing. Cities are beginning to exist as playgrounds for the privileged.

Maybe NYC or a few other coastal "cool" cities, but for the vast majority of urban areas I am familiar with this doesn't seem to be the case.

So, the ~9 Million people who live in New York don't have jobs other than catering to the privileged?

Americans have a strange idea of what cities are because the vast majority of Americans live in suburbs, or cities that are basically suburbs, or cities that have been modified to cater to suburbs.

I learned yesterday that the term of art for what you're describing is "urban doom loop".

American cities are huge money laundering fronts using real estate.

https://www.fincen.gov/resources/advisories/fincen-advisory-...

  Criminals can use all-cash purchases to make payments in full for properties and evade scrutiny—on themselves and the origin of their wealth—that is regularly performed by financial institutions in transactions involving mortgages.9 All-cash transactions account for nearly one in four residential real estate purchases, totaling hundreds of billions of dollars nationwide, and are particularly exposed to abuse.10 All-cash transactions account for an even larger stake in some U.S. markets.    For instance, nearly 50 percent of residential real estate sales in Miami-Dade County were all-cash transactions in 2015 and 2016.11 Many all-cash transactions are routine and legitimate, however, they also present significant opportunities for exploitation by illicit actors.

Shades of Tommy Wiseau.

Such great and thoughtful prose. Thank you for writing it. (Genuinely!)