It's like your comment was completely void of any kind of validity and it was easy to immediately look for evidence to the contrary of one of your major points.

I'm sure it would be trivial to counter the point around water. Just consider any of the metropolises in the Middle East.

In terms of infrastructure, that can be built as well. See literally any other city larger than Bozeman.

Yes. Trivial.

“ It has been estimated that between 1975 and 2000 a total of more than US$100bn has been invested in water supply and sanitation, and that a further US$130bn will be needed between 2002 and 2022, corresponding to US$6.5 billion per year or more than US$200 per capita and year.[2] This level of investment in water per capita is among the highest in the world, higher than in the US, the UK or Germany, due to the high cost of desalination and the need to transport water over long distances. It corresponds to about 1.5% of GDP.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_...

I mean, yeah clearly? Your own source for what is nearly the worst case in the world is ongoing investment of “US$200 per capita and year”. Look at how much the home values have increased! Do you really think that’s not trivially extractable from property taxes?? That’s IF it’s as bad as building megacities in the middle of literal deserts which obviously a place like Bozeman is NOT.

You’re throwing your hands up exasperated at the costs of building water infra when the peak is somewhere around 1.5% of GDP but then you have housing costs that are rising dramatically faster than wages and everyone’s like “whelp, nothing to done here.”

Over the course of 10 or 20 years, you can build out the infrastructure to support the previous boom (well, it’s harder in Montana since they are more anti-tax). But in the course of 1 or 2 years? And if that boom turns into a bust before you can get the infrastructure projects going?

Urban planning is useful for a reason. Building housing is far from effective on its own, and not all areas can support the same densities (in the Middle East, they have to be really careful about where they grow). And even if you “win”, the result is a more livable city that attracts even more people, leading to price increases nonetheless.

> And even if you “win”, the result is a more livable city that attracts even more people, leading to price increases nonetheless.

Your statement boils down to "supply can never outstrip demand" which is trivially falsifiable in its own right. No matter how livable a city becomes, at some point, you can have built more than the housing demanded by people. There are a finite number of humans and the proportion of them who both CAN and WANT to live in these cities is almost certainly manageable.

But don't take my word for it, look at the actuality of Tokyo (which for multiple reasons has a far more difficult challenge than Bozeman or any of these other mountain towns): https://marketurbanismreport.com/blog/tokyos-affordable-hous...

>the result is a more livable city that attracts even more people

That doesn't sound so bad. What's the alternative?

Yes, unless you are looking for low cost housing.

How do you lower the cost of housing in desirable places? Make them less desirable? Prevent people from moving there? Build more housing?

> How do you lower the cost of housing in desirable place

If there is fixed and relatively small unmet demand, you can build to accommodate it.

Otherwise, you can just make it less desirable. If you mistake a case where the earlier condition doesn’t apply for one where it does and start chasing it with runaway density, you’ll probably achieve this accidentally, so, one way or another, “build more” works

You don’t, you can’t build your way out of these kinds of problems, not without some sort of government intervention (like Singapore as mentioned before).

Yes, you can. Tokyo and Houston are perfect counterexamples.

Obviously government is required for the planning and zoning reform aspects but the idea that any solution to housing price issues isn't building more is non-sensical. Singapore's solution is just building HBDs!

Houston is definitely a great example of how you can’t just build blindly and not expect your traffic and quality of life to suck. But to its credit, Houston creates an equilibrium of being just pleasant and unpleasant enough to not be great but not horrible place to live.

Tokyo housing is expensive for its size. You can just get small apartments there that are affordable. Also, Japanese housing depreciates, which takes away a lot of speculative pressure.

Dublinben: "How do you lower the cost of housing in desirable places?"

You: "You don’t, you can’t build your way out of these kinds of problems"

Me: "Yes, you can. Tokyo and Houston are perfect counterexamples."

You: Does a combination of moving the goal posts on Houston to being about Houston's lack of livability and not prices as well as decides that somehow Tokyo's housing prices declining is a counterargument to building being a solution to high prices?

Tokyo is quite affordable in terms of rent and prices haven't been increasing anywhere as dramatically in other similarly classed world cities. If this source is to be believed, it's 48% cheaper than SF: https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/PROD000000000049...

I'll again point here, but there are plenty of other resources that will Tokyo's success at combating high housing prices: https://marketurbanismreport.com/blog/tokyos-affordable-hous...

Or here: https://www.ft.com/content/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3...