You're gonna have to do a lot better job convincing me that 16 million people would move to San Diego if they just built more housing. Let alone 226 million.
I’m confused on why you think paris is affordable and San Diego metro could somehow have enough water to grow to 220 million. The nearest comparison I can think of is south China Bay Area population (87 million), and if you think that those cities are affordable…I’m guessing we really have to agree to disagree.
It's not about the exact number, it's that one city is not going to 10x in population from getting the price of housing down to "still a city but not skyrocketing".
> I’m confused on why you think paris is affordable
Compared to San Diego, it does seem to be significantly more affordable, and mainly because of rent.
> and San Diego metro could somehow have enough water
The most expensive source of water, desalination, should be under $1 per day per person. And there's probably better options.
> to grow to 220 million.
That number is a silly number to explain density, not a proposal.
> and if you think that those cities are affordable…
No, the only comparison point was Paris, and the density of Paris.
Paris is a good example, I think, of a city expensive by French standards. My point was that if your theory is you can build to affordable, there should be at least one example on the planet where that actually worked (even Tokyo is considered expensive by Japanese standards).
I really hope we don't have indefinite large amounts of US population growth. And if we mostly stabilize the population, then it only takes a few 16M cities to absorb all the demand and make the relief permanent.
> Paris is a good example, I think, of a city expensive by French standards. My point was that if your theory is you can build to affordable, there should be at least one example on the planet where that actually worked (even Tokyo is considered expensive by Japanese standards).
Then consider this particular argument not that you can build to a nebulously defined "affordable", but that you can build to "San Diego has between 100% and 1000% of its current population with rent 40% lower than it is right now".
You don't need indefinite growth. People generally want to live in a few cities; e.g. they don't really want to live in Toledo, they want to live in San Deigo. So you just have to let people live where they want to live, not where they have to lvie.
> Then consider this particular argument not that you can build to a nebulously defined "affordable", but that you can build to "San Diego has between 100% and 1000% of its current population with rent 40% lower than it is right now".
That has literally never happened before and I don't see how it will happen first in San Diego. Mega cities get more expensive, not cheaper, as they grow, since the concentration of human capital and jobs make it even more valuable to live there.
The only way that general idea fails is if the demand concentrates so strongly into a couple megacities that we don't even have 10-20 non-obsolete cities left. That seems unlikely to me.
At some point, demand is saturated, and it takes an extremely delusional belief that demand can perpetually grow so that prices never drop. We have proof in the article that prices can drop with even moderately fast construction rates. Keep going.
It's obviously not just about more housing, but more housing per capita.
3% of the French population lives in Paris proper, and roughly 20% in the metropolitan area compared with 0.42% in San Diego and ~1% in San Diego MSA [1].
More hosing will help Paris along with San Diego to put downward pressure on prices.
[1] Wikipedia
The equilibrium between demand and supply has the supply curve impacted by a whole host of policy choices.
Eg housing is impacted by cost of permitting, regulations, cost of materials and labor etc.
All of these things can be improved by policy.
There's a strong argument that especially infrastructure but housing should be built with people on work visas.
If we could have Chinese work crews come in and build housing, especially 30 story concrete towers that are popular in Asia, we could build fairly cheaply, that isn’t really the limitation (it’s easier to solve than getting water to those new units for expanded population).
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/17/climate/san-diego-water-s...
If everywhere built more housing do you think the price of housing would go up? Where are these people bringing up housing prices coming from?
I lived in Beijing for 9 years so I get a different perspective. But ya, the market for people who want to live in Beijing rather than Chengde or Langfang is surprisingly vast, and Beijing has a resident system to prevent at will migrations.
Houses can be built (this seems obvious)
Ergo, we can remove the national debt by building between 59 million and 121 million houses (depending on if you count the value of the land there).