San Francisco, the densest city in the state, is 3/4 suburbia. There's no reason why it couldn't host 4 times the population without resorting to Hong Kong style urbanism (which would be great IMO, but that's a separate story). The infrastructure argument would make sense if homes in remote areas didn't also need that infrastructure, while suffering from lower efficiency in all measures.

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No more fever posting

I was surprised by the last clause in your last sentence, but you’re absolutely right. https://www2.census.gov/geo/docs/reference/ua/ua_list_all.tx...

LA edges out NYC: 7000 to 5300. Presumably in individuals per square mile.

It all depends on where you draw the lines. When people think of LA they think of that whole sprawling metropolis between the mountains (what is technically the LA basis or the LA metro area) - but the City of Los Angeles is a smaller denser portion of that.

And when people think New York City they think Manhattan, but New York City includes quite a bit more.

The City of Los Angeles is still over 4 million people, more than most states.

And on land twice the size of Singapore.

The Census has recently started adopting population-weighted density because census areas are defined at the county level, so can be misleading due to differences in county definition by state. https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollecti...

I’d love to hear how you came up with that.

During/post covid there has been a massive migration out of urban centers into rural places. Thus far the effect has been that affordable places are less affordable, while expensive places stayed expensive.

Is the affordable housing that exists int he Midwest not an incentive? Or do you think we should be giving people even more?

Many people find the Midwest winters unpleasant, and many Midwest states lack variety in outdoor terrain.

On top of that, finding a job can be quite a bit more work if it is a career that can't work from home and you don't want a long commut., Many types of jobs are much easier to come by in urban areas, even in the Midwest.

That said, there's plenty of great places to live here, and significantly lower costs of living too.

Or to factor it out, the incentive should be (perhaps) for businesses to allow "state agnostic" remote work, or give incentives to move to lower cost of living areas.

The problem with those things is the main decision is made by people who are not affected by the high cost of living; Musk doesn't notice the difference in housing cost between Texas and California, even if his employees would.

the problem is also that a lot of tax and insurance and whatnot are defined by the state you live in. supporting remote work means having to be compliant in every single jurisdiction an employee could possibly live in.