Fantastic idea. Now you just have to convince the existing landed gentry--most of whom have the bulk of their personal wealth wrapped up in their primary residences--that building more won't actually cause their house to devalue to less than the cost of a Happy Meal. Or that building anything more dense than a single, regular-style house every 5,000sqft doesn't result in a Blade Runner dystopian future.

At least in Seattle, this has been a tough slog.

Only an idiot thinks this. Imagine rezoning a single family home lot to permit a 15 floor tower to go on it. How can any functional human think that would result in a lower land value?

Because people don't think rationally about hosing.

Everyone says "the solution to expensive housing is to build more housing. Supply vs demand".

That's not accurate, it never has been. But if you believe that (as most people do), then you must also believe that building a 15 floor tower will lower land value (since it is "more supply" so demand and prices must drop because of it). Belief in one, implies the other.

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In truth, a 15 floor tower would raise land value, for itself and properties around it. But that also means that "simply building more housing" won't actually make housing affordable. Because the new 15 floor tower and the single family home next door will both be worth more afterwards, making both less affordable.

Repeat that process a thousand times, and you have the US housing market. Lots of beautiful places getting built (and they should get built, because we need that new housing). But almost no one can afford to live in any of the new housing, and old housing never really gets cheaper, so "affordable housing" is this huge issue, despite new construction happening in every city nationwide.

Building more doesn't devalue their land. It actually increases the value simply due to the fact that there's more revenue to be made on the same amount of land.

It also doesn't solve the housing crunch, because there's no meeting the demand. It doesn't matter how dense you go; even Manhattan isn't dense enough.

There are two things this does accomplish, though:

- It exacerbates the wealth divide, as it increases the market entrance costs and moves ownership into the hands of fewer and fewer "landed gentry" who, invariably, build rental units.

- It destroys quality of life for existing residents, as it foists all the scaling issues of upzoned density (traffic, crime, costs, required size of bureaucracy) right onto them.

Because building anything new drives the price up even higher than it already is. (High density generates more demand than it adds in units)

We need the new homes. But we also need to rethink the system here, because building new homes makes all nearby homes less affordable.

"We have a lack of supply, I agree. But building more supply makes it worse!!!"

You are sorely mistaken

Until when? Manhattan density? They still have this problem.

Do we not stop until until we've turned entire cities into Mega-City One?

How about until we've turned them into Boston? Boston and Manhattan are congested, admittedly, but Boston at least (I can't personally speak for Manhattan) is a wonderful place to live. It's a normal, natural, _human_ city, with medium-height buildings and mixed commercial and residential land use (businesses at street level, residences above and sometimes below); it's a far cry from the typical suburban wasteland, half Le Corbousier and half Leave it to Beaver.

Boston is much less dense than Manhattan and much more pleasant to walk in. Some of it is that there are fewer skyscrapers to block the sun. Some of it is the colors -- more red brick and green trees.

I agree strongly. But Boston as well as Manhattan is denser than SF (from what I've heard of SF); in answer to teacup50's question, I'd say "first develop to Boston levels, which are clearly still humane and habitable, then revisit the density issue after that."

Boston's average population density is 13.3k/sq mi.

San Francisco's average population density is 18.5k/sq mi.

SF has been developed beyond Boston levels, and it's still not enough.

Manhattan is actually cheaper than SF now, and they have easy public transit from all different areas (Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, New Jersey, Yonkers, Staten Island, Long Island) where the lower classes can actually afford to live and commute into the city easily for work. It's much better laid out and planned than SF Bay Area.

Manhattan is only cheaper than SF because SF's market has been driven completely insane by local industry.

Manhattan is still wildly expensive.