Why Invest in Cities? There's Always Another Boise

Not the crux of the article, but:

> This doesn't mean that they, or the even higher-cost, more congested coastal metros, will adopt Manhattan or Tokyo-style density and transit patterns. Instead, Austin and San Antonio might be the new Houston and Dallas.

My goodness, can we /please/ stop this false dichotomy that a city either has to be a Tokyo megalopolis or a suburban sprawlfest?

I don't think any reasonable person is advocating to turn San Francisco into Manhattan, even though that seems to be what everyone is scared of. Clearly the OP has never left the US.

Average density in Paris: ~6 stories. Barcelona: ~4 stories. Most cities in Germany: 3-5 stories. Moscow: maybe 6-7 stories.

Maybe those aren't perfect by a story or two, but point being, there IS a sustainable growth model, and it's a lot more than SF and LA's paltry 2 story average height, and certainly less than the skyscrapers of Midtown Manhattan that everyone is so scared of. You only have to look across the ocean to see it, and until the US realizes this, Boise et al. will just become another congested, sprawling, expensive suburb with an increasingly poor quality of life. If you want to live in the not-countryside, then density is the only sustainable model.

EDIT: And to respond to what I think the crux of the article actually is, that we'll never invest in sustainable urban planning because there will always be another inexpensive 100k population town that we can ruin instead, well that sure is a losing attitude. There probably is some truth there, and it makes me sad. Sure, it'll take a while for the coasts to get their act together, but let's continue to promote a vision of what a viable and sustainable solution looks like for America's cities. Any comparisons with Tokyo or the next Manhattan is just furthering a destructive narrative which, for the record, is what got San Francisco in this mess in the 1980s in the first place.

The impression I got from the article was that he was using a recent WSJ article[0] about Boise as an impetus to bash urban development.

The WSJ article is basically, that it’s cheaper to buy a house in Boise. Sure it is, but there’s nothing about what these people moving to the Boise metro area (population 700k) are doing. The two Californians they talk to are, a CEO who bought a second house, and a soon to be retiree. As it is, this is more of a cutting indictment of California, than Fort Lauderdale is of NYC.

Yes, the housing in the desirable parts of California is too high, but at the same time, it’s high because it is desirable. It’s cheap to live in places where no one wants to live. If I wanted, I could move back to where I grew up and a buy a house for $27,000[1], but then I’d be Royalton, Illinois.

[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/boise-idaho-feels-the-growing-p...

[1] https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/209-5th-St-N-Royalton-IL-...

Plus, cost of living doesn't account for everything. Most consumer products, e.g. cars, computers, shoes, and clothing, cost about the same everywhere. Living in San Francisco with a higher salary and paying a high rent, your spending on such products will be a smaller percentage of your income than if you lived somewhere with cheaper housing and made less money.

Segregation.

Many American cities feel like they've just suffered a bombing raid and are in the process of rebuilding. It's parking lots, abandoned buildings, and other junk for as far as the eye can see.