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I've seen this argument before and it's not a clear-cut relationship to desire at all. Did home buyers absolutely demand more and more space, or did developers

• Dunan 10y ago
  "many, many young people looking to move to cities would be perfectly happy with smaller living spaces at associated smaller costs, but those properties straight up don't exist, and also aren't being built" This is it right here. Many municipalities won't even allow them to be built. I would love to live in a small town but such towns are designed around car ownership, total separation of residential and commercial districts, and massive housing lots. If you can't drive, you're stuck living in the big city. And that's only getting more difficult if you're middle income.
• fps 10y ago
  The space doesn't cost as much as it once did. In almost every market, the land is the expensive part, not the house. Modern building materials are cheap and energy efficient. I moved from a 1400sqft 1930 built house to a 3600sqft 2014 built house, and the new house costs half as much as the old one to heat and cool. For a builder, there's hardly any reason not to build the largest house that fits on the property, because most of the high cost components are the same if you have a small house or a large house.