The Rent Is Too Damn High: What To Do About It, And Why It Matters More Than You Think

The service economy has made location relevant again. Many people, from dentists to chefs to yoga instructors to security guards to surgeons, are in lines of work where access to other people is a key input of productivity.

We should, however, worry about whether urban reforms will actually end up benefitting poor people. The only way to ensure that it does is to ensure that if demand for living in a particular neighborhood increases, so does the quantity of available housing units.

To say that some of America’s neighborhoods—especially in coastal cities with strong economic opportunities and limited space—should be denser is not an argument for infinite density. Nor is it an argument for central planning and coercion. It’s an argument that places ought to grow to the point where the costs of additional density outweigh the be

miles traveled are not just a source of obesity; they have a stronger correlation with being overweight than any other lifestyle factor.

An agricultural economy starved of land will suffer. An industrial economy starved of raw materials will suffer. And a service economy starved of proximity will suffer.

Metro areas that preserve green space while curtailing vertical density are really pushing people to other, less ecologically minded cities.

More subtly, cities choke density with rules mandating the quantity of parking that must be constructed to go along with any new residence.

Where land is expensive, a lot of people occupy a given patch of it. Where density is low, by contrast, land is typically cheap. The ability of real estate developers to ride the currents of supply and demand ensures that land should always be a low portion of overall housing costs.

Those who do move toward opportunity end up giving back much of their higher productivity in the form of expensive housing and high cost of living.