Rome is not very dense compared to places like Milan or Naples.

Italy has a lot of cities that are fairly dense, but not Hong Kong or Singapore dense.

That's why, despite being somewhat smaller than California, it has about 20 million more people.

I've completely lost sight of your point. You said Italy has good transit and affordable housing because it's dense. Now Italy only has "fairly dense" cities. Of those, the densest are on par with Seattle.

I'm going to re-assert that Italy has affordable housing because they are in an economic slump. I was frankly not that impressed with their public transit, either, but I didn't spend a lot of time on it.

If Italy had the same kind of NIMBY laws that the US does in many places, half the country would have to get up and leave, or they would have to pave over everything between towns, leaving no agriculture, parks, forests or much of anything.

The public transportation in Italy varies a lot, from North (pretty good) to South (awful in many places). The thing they tend to do well is that it's fairly frequent, so you usually don't have to stress about missing one particular bus or tram.

"Fairly dense" is all you need to vastly improve things in many places. Look at vast swaths of the bay area that are single story detached houses. Mix in some 2/3 story buildings in there, and you'd add a lot of supply without going 'full Hong Kong'.

Also, Milan is about twice as dense as Seattle.

> "Fairly dense" is all you need to vastly improve things in many places. Look at vast swaths of the bay area that are single story detached houses. Mix in some 2/3 story buildings in there, and you'd add a lot of supply without going 'full Hong Kong'.

Ok, but I still don't buy your argument. Seattle has a density similar to Rome. San Francisco has a density similar to Milan. Why is Italy cheaper with good public transit? It's clearly not the density, and I don't buy that it's just NIMBY-ism either (though even if so, it's still not density.).

> Also, Milan is about twice as dense as Seattle.

I was looking at the broader urban area. You're right that it is considerably denser if you only look at the 70 square mile administrative area (roughly San Francisco density).

Sure, in part Italy is cheaper due to the economy, but it's also because you can build outside of the historic areas to meet demand.

And there's decent public transportation.

I just don't see any relationship between decent public transportation and things being affordable or not. It's much more closely tied to density: without density, public transportation doesn't work as well.

I think I've just been misunderstanding your point. From your original comment, I thought you were saying that density was responsible for both good transit and affordable housing in Italy. I totally agree that you need density for decent public transit.