Yeah, just color me a little confused. I'm not sure what underlying problem you are talking about here. The fact that people want to live in some cities more t

Yeah, just color me a little confused. I'm not sure what underlying problem you are talking about here. The fact that people want to live in some cities more than others is not a problem in and of itself. The fashion of the times will dictate whether people want to live in suburbs, rural areas, or more densely packed urban centers. Refusing to build housing because you don't want developers to profit from it deals serious harm to the people who can't afford to live here because supply is short. Saying that we should make other cities desirable doesn't work because it takes too long by comparison—because of the high political and social complexity of urban planning. You say that development damages quality of life, but I'd argue that denser cities have higher quality of life, subjectively speaking, and if you disagree then maybe you want to move to a less dense city. This is exactly what everyone else is doing—moving to improve their quality of life. That and voting for NIMBY policies which make it hard on people who move to your city. I've lived in Portland since the 1980s, and the same forces that made life better for those who live here pushed out the disadvantaged, the black, the artist, the musician, the immigrant. It sucks but protesting development or throwing bricks at CATs is only going to make the problem worse.