Yeah, cities don't get cheaper as they grow in size and density. They become more desirable due to better availability of jobs and services, and therefore more

Yeah, cities don't get cheaper as they grow in size and density. They become more desirable due to better availability of jobs and services, and therefore more expensive. Of course a myopic analysis of building a single tower is not going to capture long term effects of building a hundred of such towers over many years. Especially if your incentives say you should build. If governments want cities to be affordable they need to - make cities less desirable compared to currently semi urban areas by spreading out the location of government services and jobs, providing incentives for private companies to do the same - allow for building reasonable amounts of housing, but only the kinds and locations that match policy objectives - cut off all "investment" demand for housing by eliminating the expectation of risk free profit. Ban foreign money, add much higher property taxes on anything but primary residences and purpose built rentals, etc. If you set up a proper incentive structure for everyone, things will settle in a much much better equilibrium than today. Desirable places will still be expensive, but general affordability would improve a lot due to layers of profit seeking parasites exiting the market.