> New York accommodates more people per square mile than anywhere else in the country, and your reason for why it's expensive is that it's not doing a good job

> New York accommodates more people per square mile than anywhere else in the country, and your reason for why it's expensive is that it's not doing a good job accommodating even more? Yes. Zoning restricts what can be built in the city, so less housing is built than the market demands. Skyscrapers everywhere probably wouldn't be too pleasant, so there's a place for regulation, but if you want prices to go down, loosening regulations will help. > Meanwhile, Portland has a strictly enforced Urban Growth Boundary, and it's cheap. Portland is only cheap relative to California and a few other cities. The growth boundary is part of the cause. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done, but there are costs. http://www.kiplinger.com/tools/bestcities_sort/index.php?sortby=cost&sortorder=DESC http://www.kiplinger.com/tools/bestcities_sort/index.php?sor... > California hasn't exactly been anti-growth overall. ... And yet it's still expensive. California and most of the rest of America don't really control growth; they just force cities to grow horizontally rather than vertically. This is generally more expensive, and results in cities that are less walkable.