What about those who provide social services to city-dwellers? Teachers, firefighters? It can be problematic to have the police tasked with protecting a city they don't even live in. Next time you see an SFPD officer with a free moment ask him/her what they think of the explosive growth in SoMa.

If they can't afford to live where they work maybe they're under payed?

I don't think that's a "maybe".

Lol sfpd with a free moment. The sfpd and sffd are some of the most busy. I remember reading last year that one sf fire truck rolled more than a thousand times over the previous twelve months.

Maybe...

But it would be pretty sad to grow up in a working class family and then be forced to move away from your hometown at the age of 30 because rent had grown faster than your ability to generate income.

Of the various promises society has made to various people, when did "you always get to live in the city you were born in" end up on the list?

There are trade-offs everywhere. The reason these crazy cycles continue is because people refuse to accept alternatives. If more people said "screw you guys, I'm leaving" to expensive cities, the cities would start to become cheaper.

There are also cities that die off because the industry in them goes away. Are we going to force them to stay where they are so that they don't end up bidding up prices, driving kids born in Oakland out of Oakland?

The job market is slower to redistribute, so that creates tension. It'll probably balance eventually, but it's valid news until it does.

Where are we supposed to work then?

Many, many jobs may be in urban areas but aren't actually in cities/urban cores. In fact, the movement of many professional jobs into cities is a relatively recent phenomenon.

And while Silicon Valley and the greater NYC area are something of exceptions, you get out of the urban cores of somewhere like Boston/Cambridge and housing prices go down fairly quickly except for some particularly upscale towns.

Somerville is expensive as hell, despite the fact that it used to be known as "Slumerville" and the housing stock hasn't improved one bit.

Well, I certainly consider Somerville part of the urban cores of Boston being on the T (sort of) etc. And it's expensive as a result. But get out beyond 128 and, with the exception of some specific communities like Concord, housing prices drop considerably.

I think they're counting Somerville and similar locales as part of the urban core. By that metric though places like Mattapan should also be part of the urban core and are a lot more affordable.

Somerville is more accessible to both Cambridge and downtownish Boston where a lot of the professional jobs are than somewhere like Mattapan. But to your broader point, yes, there are certainly parts of the City of Boston that are considerably cheaper albeit less desirable from housing stock, safety, environment, etc. perspectives.