It is difficult to evaluate. In some sense a city is either growing or shrinking, and shrinking very negatively impacts municipalities because it is hard to 'sc

It is difficult to evaluate. In some sense a city is either growing or shrinking, and shrinking very negatively impacts municipalities because it is hard to 'scale down' the local bureaucracy. On the other hand too much growth makes the city less desireable for current residents--lots of new infrastructure gets built but most of it isn't for current residents. (Or in the case of SF no infrastructure gets built and the housing market becomes a knife fight in a phone booth.) In the long term I think that density is too valuable to large cities, and passing up an opportunity to increase density is short-sighted.