If the hyper concentration is part of the problem, then won't forcing SF or other popular hubs to build high rise just make them even more popular and further increase the gravitational pull that will send another wave of migrants from the 2nd tier cities and we just repeat the same cycle with higher buildings?
Isnt this the same as making streets wider because of traffic? Now even more people decide to drive.
Just a note but I find it highly disingenuous to conflate eliminating restrictive zoning with mandating high-rises. Eliminating restrictive zoning is just allowing the free market to better utilize land, which may mean high rises, or it may mean tightly packed townhouses or single family homes like in many Japanese suburbs, and only where the demand exists. If you own a standard American SFH, nobody is forcing you to demolish it.
>just make them even more popular and further increase the gravitational pull that will send another wave of migrants from the 2nd tier cities and we just repeat the same cycle with higher buildings?
Absolutely, without a doubt. There's a limit (globally it seems to be around a population of 30 million in the metropolitan region), but there's no doubt that if market forces brought reasonable prices to the Bay area at the very least the gentrified and priced out would return, those who fled to the exurbs and drive in for 70+ minutes would return, and at the very least a bunch of techies in other cities who could never imagine paying 3600 on a single bedroom would give the Bay area a try.
Essentially, the region would likely boom much in the way that New York boomed in the industrial revolution, or more recently Shanghai and Beijing boomed. Whether you view this as positive is obviously debatable but I find it undeniably fair that we stop stacking the deck in favor of the rich and landed
Interestingly one of the arguments of the anti-growth folks in these high-rent cities is that more housing will just aggravate concentration. Unfortunately they don't offer alternative proposals.
I would like to hear about alternatives to increase employment opportunities where people can afford to live. Are there ways to encourage businesses to relocate to low-rent locations? Or to allow remote work? Or ??
That's the problem, it's in aggregate when the problem is very localized.
The nation is producing a ton of high paying jobs but only in places where rent and property values are skyrocketing, which is in a tiny sliver of American cities. That's the problem and why aggregate statistics will never capture the problem.
My wife works in biotech. I work in tech. A year back we asked ourselves if we wanted to move to the mid sized American city where my parents live. Homes are very affordable there and if we had children, we could raise them near my extended family.
One factor in choosing not to move is that there's only one employer in the entire metropolitan region that hires in her specialty of biotech. I would have to take a pay cut or work remotely, which I'm okay with, but we might be totally ending her career altogether which we are less okay with.
So instead we're now renting at 3500 a month (3 bedrooms) and saving up for the enormous downpay we will need in greater Boston
>A question with potentially constructive answers: "What federal interventions would potentially be helpful given that the housing crisis is mainly in a few high-rent cities?"
Parent already offers an answer, tell states to end exclusionary zoning or lose federal transit/highway funding. Exclusionary zoning is born out of a dark period of American policymaking (redlining) so personally I'm on board