Downvotes for this are unwarranted. This is a plausible mechanism, even if it's wrong, and should be engaged with. The key thing is the margin for "even more

Downvotes for this are unwarranted. This is a plausible mechanism, even if it's wrong, and should be engaged with. The key thing is the margin for "even more expensive". Fundamentally, yes, development makes cities more valuable / expensive, in aggregate (after all, that's why cities exist in the first place). The key thing is how many units that value is spread out over. If you tear down a slum and replace it with $1M condos in a supply-constrained market, rents will rise. But, there are a limited number of people who can afford to buy 7-figure condos, and it is possible to build enough housing to saturate that demand all the way down the curve. If you're actually able to tear down a single-family unit and replace it with 4-unit low-rise apartments, and rent / sell them at a decent price since people want to move into the city, and all your competitor landlords can do the same, you'll see more units, more total dollars going to landlords, and lower prices per unit. The key thing is to make it cheap to build. Excessive regulation of the kind the article talks about often does the exact opposite - they make it so you can build, eventually, but it's only worthwhile if you can be sure of extracting large rents. Even worse, the high value of land & rent in a supply-constrained environment puts a lot of vested interests in keeping supply low, in a vicious circle. A sure sign you're trapped in that vicious circle is if developers have "community engagement" and "affordable housing" dollars to throw around.