Landlords invest in city centers by buying land and then developing it. If they rent it out, then they need to spend money to maintain it. Or they can sell the

Landlords invest in city centers by buying land and then developing it. If they rent it out, then they need to spend money to maintain it. Or they can sell the land to new landlords. Whoever owns the land takes on the risk that it might decrease in value, such as during the time of Cold War subsidies of white flight,[0] or during the time of NAFTA destruction of inefficient manufacturing. Again, you are using island mentality, that it doesn’t matter where the land is as long as you can drive there. In reality, location matters tremendously because infrastructure doesn’t scale that much. The San Francisco Bay Area now has the most ridiculous commutes in the country,[1] yet a couple Bay Area suburbs have gone bankrupt recently (in accordance with the other links that I posted in this thread). Increasing density is not just about maintaining greenbelts,[2] but it is also about creating more financially sustainable patterns of living. Also, I find your idea of destroying everything to build more to be very odd. Surely, in physical terms, it should be quite possible to tear down a 2-story single-family home and replace it with a 4-unit, 3–5-story multi-family home. And in a functional market, you can clear out a 3-unit building to build a 5-unit building, because everybody would be able to find another place that they can afford. Developers don’t all have to be mega-developers with skyline-altering skyscrapers.[3] But Prop 13 has perverse incentives against that, too: Creating a taller building will trigger a tax reassessment and increase your property tax rate; not to mention all the stupid costs of zoning and the approval process. Currently, only the mega-developers have the resources to build successfully. Thus, the rules that were intended to improve social equity have instead increased inequality. [0] https://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/why-sprawl-was-caused-nuclear-arms-race-and-why-matters-more-ever-today.html https://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/why-sprawl-was-cause... [1] http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/11/02/job-boom-intensifies-traffic-and-housing-woes/ http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/11/02/job-boom-intensifies-t... [2] http://www.sfhac.org http://www.sfhac.org [3] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/6/12/the-power-of-growing-incrementally https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/6/12/the-power-of-g...