Change my mind: Density increases local but decreases global prices
I feel like this (along with many discussions about urban housing) slightly misses the real issue.  A lot of these discussions center around how to make housing affordable in cities and whether denser construction leads to lower housing costs or higher housing costs.  But cities don&#x27;t exist to minimize housing costs.  They exist to maximize opportunities: job opportunities, dating opportunities, friendship opportunities, cultural opportunities, and so on.  They exist to bring as many people together as easily as possible.<p>The way that an urban economist would put it is that fundamentally cities are job markets.  I would put it a little more broadly and say that cities are opportunities markets.  For that reason housing in a dense urban environment will never be as affordable as housing out in rural North Dakota.<p>If you build more housing in a city, more people move there, and the city becomes more desirable as a result, is the city better or worse off for having built the housing?