> So back to cities. Here's my pet theory. You build more apartments, or faster trains or whatever to expand the availability and affordability of 1 be apartments within a 1 hour commute, and it will work for a while, but within a few years people chasing opportunity will have moved to the city until the rents and costs of living eventually return to previous levels.
That's still okay, though, as during the process (and even at the end point in your scenario) much better lives and opportunity have been provided to much greater numbers of people.
If people like the QoL benefits of density, we should do what we can to provide it, even if it causes the same sort of CoL squeezing down the road with whatever optimizations we can put in place. It will still benefit more people, and maybe we can come up with yet more optimizations.
That's still okay, though, as during the process (and even at the end point in your scenario) much better lives and opportunity have been provided to much greater numbers of people.
If people like the QoL benefits of density, we should do what we can to provide it, even if it causes the same sort of CoL squeezing down the road with whatever optimizations we can put in place. It will still benefit more people, and maybe we can come up with yet more optimizations.