American cities don't ban housing construction (the one exception being San Francisco/Bay Area). Every other major US metro (literally everyone except SF) has been experiencing a massive housing construction boom for the past ten years straight now.

The 2010's were the least productive decade for housing since the 60's.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HOUST

And the 1960s is in there, just because FRED doesn't have earlier data.

Also keep in mind that the linked FRED graph doesn't adjust for population size nor number of households in the country.

This isn't true. Most major metros are experiencing a serious housing crisis right now. We see similar problems to SF here in Somerville and Cambridge, albeit to a lesser degree. There's certainly not enough being built to keep pace with demand. The suburbs around us are even worse.

> We see similar problems to SF here in Somerville and Cambridge,

"Boston saw a historic building boom during the seven years (2014-2021) that former mayor Marty Walsh, a former construction union leader, occupied City Hall. The city’s skyline transformed, and continues to do so. Tens of thousands of new units of housing were created. An entire neighborhood rose from the ground." - https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2021/07/19/boston-mayor...

> Most major metros are experiencing a serious housing crisis right now.

Completely agree. But your reasons are off. Most high prices have literally nothing to do with supply or demand in any traditional (person-based) sense. Boston certainly fits that model -- it's price problems have nothing to do with any shortage in construction (construction is booming) or 'housing ban' (obviously there's no meaningful ban, because construction has already happened in large numbers for over a decade)

> Boston certainly fits that model -- it's price problems have nothing to do with any shortage in construction (construction is booming) or 'housing ban' (obviously there's no meaningful ban, because construction has already happened in large numbers for over a decade)

This is poor reasoning. The fact that some housing got built does not mean that there weren't significant impediments to building it, many of which still remain. Or that even during the boom that enough housing was built to sustain increased demand. There has been a historic housing boom alongside an enormous population surge over the past ten years (nearly 10% in the city proper alone). The boom is still not keeping pace with demand, and restrictions on multi-family housing remain. Here's a good article that gives an overview of the policy issues locally: https://commonwealthmagazine.org/opinion/on-housing-wu-shoul...

In particular:

> In Boston, on account of its antiquated zoning laws, it’s easier to build a leather tannery than it is to site an apartment building. The zoning code is written in such a way that it is nearly impossible to build multi-family housing, without going through the time consuming and costly process to obtain a zoning variance. Even then, projects are at the mercy of abutters and neighborhood associations that are often diametrically opposed to any form of development in their backyards, particularly projects with a higher unit count.

Also,

> Most high prices have literally nothing to do with supply or demand in any traditional (person-based) sense.

Citation needed. Population is growing faster than housing supply. High prices are exactly what you would expect in this situation. Building more housing is the only long-term solution.

> Building more housing is the only long-term solution.

Well, that are migration away from supply constrained cities.

Problem is that America's most productive cities are the most supply constrained.

People contribute less to GDP, earn less for themselves, pay fewer income taxes etc, in those other areas where they can still afford to live.

Of course a housing shortage has to do with supply and demand. Yes, we're building, but not nearly fast enough.

That's not true, every major city in the US is experiencing a major housing shortage. Not building enough units to keep up with demand can hardly be called a massive boom.

Construction boom compared to what? Previous decades saw much, much more housing being built.

If only Americans reignited their imagination and didn't just settle on having a few big cities in opposite corners of the country.

America is huge. There's land everywhere. Start dreaming. China has 160 cities with 1+ million people. We have 10. Granted, there is a massive population difference, but we should most definitely have more than 10.

There are major issues when you only have a few cities with the bulk of the opportunity and high salaries for given fields. It stymies growth for the rest of the country, and for all the people we claim to care about: the poor and uneducated.

Greece has this issue with Athens being the only realistic metropolitan location. All the resources are there, and those left in the villages and small towns are finding it harder and harder to advance. If you aren't going to Athens (or immigrating to another country), you aren't succeeding. This is a big problem.

This is kind of ignoring all the positive effects from density. Yes, housing for density is hard. Yes, there are some negatives. But you would not get anywhere near the economic productivity you do from 330 Million people uniformly spread across the US as you do from having huge spikes in NYC and LA (and other metropolitan zones).

You also have to face the fact that as you spread people out, most costs go up. Cities subsidize suburbia and rural areas in the sense that cities generate more tax revenues of all types relative to costs. Suburban and rural areas mostly fail to raise enough tax revenue to pay for their own infrastructure and generally rely on various handouts from state and federal governments to build things like sewers and roads, which they then do not adequately maintain due to budget shortfalls.

There's a middle ground between spread out uniform, and having a few major population centers. Germany is a great example.

Big cities in Germany are richer than the small cities. And Germany is poorer than the US, too.

Is wealth the only factor? Is the materialistic perspective the only valid one left in the world?

The US has way more than 10 "cities" with over 1M population, unless you ignore ground truth (metro area) and only count people within random city boundaries

The US has 50-60 cities with 1+ million people. You may be conflating administrative boundaries with cities.

You may be conflating metro areas with cities. If you are, it's not a helpful distinction in either case, and not the point I am trying to illustrate.

For example, I could live in Wise County in Texas, and be technically counted towards the population of the Dallas/FW/Arlington Metro, but I would never dream of driving into Dallas from there daily for services, schooling, or work, and if I did, I would be severely disadvantaged, especially if I was poor or lacked resources.

I don't they are conflating metro areas, I think they're describing the accumulation of population a defined area. Metro area can make "cities" seem larger than they are because that population is spread out, but city is misleading as well because it ignores the surrounding population.

Let me put it this way. If you go by city population size, Columbus where I live is larger than San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Las Vegas, or Atlanta [1]. In fact, Columbus is almost the same size as Atlanta and and Miami combined. Does that seem right to you?

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

If I were you, for your argument I would use population densities.

But you can’t bucket a million people living in thousands of square miles as the same as a million locked together in a suburban sprawl connected with rail and roads. Look at London. Take away the boroughs and what is really left?

China may have a 160 cities with a million+ people, but, do all of these cities have the infrastructure and opportunities that are the same as or come close to Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzen? IMO, this is a case where quantity alone is a poor metric.

This is a difficult question to accurately answer because the only source of this information is an unreliable one (the Chinese regime). We can, however, assume via observation of how efficient and diverse their manufacturing is, which leads to some baseline assumption they all have above average infrastructure, housing, and other services, in addition to affording salaries to those millions of people that does not result in unmanageable civil unrest. Plenty of experts believe China's infrastructure is ahead of the US at this point. They build 100 miles of high speed rail for the same cost we build 1 mile of tunnel, or 10 miles of toll lane that 90% of commuters won't use.

There are other educated assumptions we can make based on the rapid response to the Wuhan outbreak and the surrounding cities, but in my opinion, based on inference from what we can observe from the outside, the answer is firmly yes.

Yeah sounded weird to me. Australia has at least 5 such cities, with 25m people total.

Ok yeah ok Australia might as well be a hollow disk (no one lives in the middle) but still!

Well, compared to the rest of the world, I found US diversification much better than most of other countries, that have only one major city to where everything flows in.

The US is multi-centric. Similar to eg Germany, but different to UK or France.

Why is concentrating in cities a problem?

From an environmental point of view, it seems nearly ideal if most humans would live in a few big cities, than more of the rest of the earth could be given back to nature.