comment: >
  
  So, why not use examples of dense yet cheap cities, instead of picking two of the cities with the highest cost of living in the world to compare Toronto to, while trying to make a point about housing affordability? 
  If London and New York have better housing supply than Toronto and are still more expensive, how is that proof that increased supply increases affordability? You compare Chicago to Boston where Chicago has a reputation for crime, violence, and other reasons making it less desirable to live in than Boston. Detroit was paying people to buy houses there during their collapse so maybe that was affordable, but not at all desirable. 
  You are pointing out that if people want to live in a city, that city becomes more expensive because of the demand/desirability. I agree with you. That's why people are building and expanding into less desirable areas, which are more affordable. 
  People need a place to live. If they can't afford to live in Toronto, then they are going to find a smaller community they can live in, which is outside of Toronto. If they want to commute or maintain connection to Toronto, or find affordability, that's not another city, but a small-medium sized town in the Greenbelt, which is fueling the expansion of those communities. Why should people who cannot afford to live in Toronto not have access to roads and highways and schools and hospitals close to where they live? And if they should have those things, where should they build those things if everywhere they look they are surrounded by land that should be protected?
context: Well, the alternative is buying existing housing and tearing it down to replace it with higher capacity housing. This form of "build up, not out" doesn't require the use of more land. >
  
  There used to be surface parking lots all over Toronto, and a ton of those are now giant apartment/condo buildings. I absolutely agree that was a "better use of land" but it also drives up the cost of living as the city grows. 
  There are small-medium sized town examples where maybe it's a townhouse development or low-mid rise that goes in where there previously was a factory or mall, and where single family homes used to be there are zoning changes happening. A lot of that is adding people to existing land used for housing in ways that I can get behind, and I agree that form of "build up, not out" does seem like a great housing solution.
  Until you see the giant big-box stores that buy huge chunks of the land outside of the town you just "saved from houses" to service the significantly expanded population in that town because the increased density downtown made large property with big parking lots more expensive, because most towns with 1000 - 20 000 people can't afford to put in underground parking or vertical garages, but they can build a bunch more surface lots outside of town. 
  If towns and cities in the Greenbelt are going to continue to grow because affordability is driving people away from the GTA/other urban centres, they are going to have to build housing, roads, schools, hospitals, nursing homes, grocery stores, and the things people need in their environment to live there. I don't see how they can build all of that "up not out" without impacting the surrounding environment, AKA the Greenbelt. >
  
  Is housing affordable in either of those cities? Aren't they some of the examples we often point to of cities that are more expensive to live in than Toronto, with even more of an affordable housing issue than we have?
  20 years ago people might have been leaving the city to single family homes, but if you drive around the Greenbelt and look at modern housing developments in small towns, the majority of them are semi-detached or townhouse "villages" on undeveloped land close to those communities, and the bigger places are building low and mid-rise housing in their cores. 
  People are leaving Toronto because they can't afford to live here, to move into (arguments to be made about how well executed they are) denser forms of housing than single family homes or single family homes on smaller lots than traditionally available in those communities, because "more house for the same money, or more house for less money" is one of the driving factors pushing people towards purchasing in the Greenbelt. 
  If you have to leave all of your friends and family and social connections and the places you used to go in order to afford a home, I understand why you would want the house to be more desirable to make that trade off hurt a little less.
  I'm not convinced London or New York are good examples of cities that have affordable housing because of their density, I think they're great examples of cities that are even more expensive that Toronto and while increasing density might help accommodate the growing population, it will also continue to drive people away as they look for more affordable housing close enough that they can still visit, and that puts them in the Greenbelt. >
  
  Housing is a free market. How expensive a city is, is all about supply/demand.
  It's not about the size of the city and it's not about the density of the city. There are dense cities that are cheap and there are dense cities that are expensive. There are low density cities that are cheap and there are low density cities that are expensive.
  London and NY have huge demand, sure! But they also have much better supply. Toronto has much lower demand, but also terrible supply. Chicago for example is huge, but has fairly low demand for its supply, so housing is almost half the cost of say, Boston, which is far smaller but has huge demand.
  Toronto needs to expand its supply. NY, London and others have shown how to do this: build up. There is no need to build into the Greenbelt, and even worse, that will cause environmental and traffic nightmares.
  If Toronto also expands demand, nothing will help. The Greenbelt, building up, both, etc. nothing will ever make housing cheaper if the number of people who want housing is always high compared to the amount of housing. The Greenbelt even from its most optimistic proponents can only add 1.5M homes. Extra demand can easily soak that up and more.