If we just removed the arbitrary legal barriers which stop urban areas from densifying according to demand, they might never need to spread any further, given the global fertility slowdown.

We need to remove the incentives to erecting those barriers by taxing land.

Otherwise property owners will rally together to declare even an ugly launderette as historic, just to inhibit supply in their area:

https://missionlocal.org/2018/06/the-strange-and-terrible-sa...

A bit of rent control wouldnt hurt either - it helps keep a lid on property values and hence keeps NIMBYism down. The average economist's salary is, of course, dependent upon them not understanding this.

> taxing land

Absolutely. One can only dream of a future where LVT covers almost all of a nation's tax needs...

> A bit of rent control wouldnt hurt either

> The average economist's salary is, of course, dependent upon them not understanding this

Huh? If there's one thing that is in almost universal agreement among economists of all political bents, it's that price controls, including rent control, result in worse outcomes for those that they are ostensibly designed to help.

They were in almost universal agreement that raising the minimum wage caused unemployment until the mid 90s too. Where the interests of capital are at stake their vision of reality is distorted.

They're one of the few types of scientists who are essentially paid to be wrong by people who benefit from the policy decisions that result as a side effect of them being wrong.

The strictest rent controls in NYC in the last 80 years were in the 1950s. The fastest rate of home building in NYC was also in the 1950s. It didn't hurt then, it won't hurt now.

> So then the question is whether we should just remove barriers that stop urban spread

Depends what barriers

Increasing desnisty? Sure, remove them

Increasing area? Nope

Why not both? If you constrain area, you only have one dimension to expand in to maintain density: height.

Not that I have anything against high rises, but they aren’t suitable for every person or geography.

Because when you don't maintain a given density then you lose all the benefits of a city and just have suburban sprawl

> it's just plainly more efficient to have dense population centers.

Sure, if we put on blinders so we only look at economic effects.

Socially I estimate the value of me not living too close to anyone else at somewhere between $500,000 - $2,000,000 USD.

More efficient yes, clearly so.

I wonder though if it is more fragile than the alternative. Are social and economic systems more robust when they're distributed across smaller urban and rural areas?

Are megalopolis settings susceptible to long tail risks that smaller urbs don't face?

Susceptible? The whole system is a house of cards.

You don’t need anything exotic like a terrorist attack or a war, you can simply have a power outage and the whole system would collapse if it wasn’t rectified in a couple hours. I like cities but I’m not willingly putting myself into a mouse trap.

> It's not a trend, it's just plainly more efficient to have dense population centers.

This is the perfect example of min/maxing society while completely missing the point. We’re not insects, we’re humans. Most people are happier when they have space, space for a family, space for pets, somewhere to grow a garden, a sense of ownership.

Sometimes, efficiency be damned, maybe we should prioritize happiness and well being over trying to stuff the most amount of humans in the smallest space.

On the other hand, most people are happier when they don't have to spend hours every day in a car for basic things like going to work, picking up the kids from school, or buying groceries. Most people are also happier when they live close to their friends and family, when there are resources like libraries and universities nearby, or when they can choose between multiple restaurants in town.

There are plenty of people who are actually happier in cities, believe it or not. We're social animals, after all.

People also need transportation, healthcare, entertainment, shopping and restaurants, their children need schools, universities etc. Automated delivery may solve some of these problems in 5-15 years, but not all.