72M people in New York would be AMAZING for many reasons. Each person living there would have higher productivity than they have today. Which means they'd take home more income, and spend less on rent, (if zoning restrictions were removed) than they do today.

Cities have an incredible property in that they have "increasing returns to scale" - they make their residents more productive the larger they grow. [1] A 72M person NYC would be the most productive city in human history.

Now that may require the city government to improve the productivity of trash collection, and the subway - but those are great things to improve! And such a city may not be efficiently served by cars - so bring on the electric bikes!

Every day that a 72M person NYC does not exist, is a day that roughly 72M people are being robbed of the life they could have. Please recognize that denying the efficiencies of agglomerations has real world consequences!

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Healt...

This is the kind of article that is written by someone totally lacking in domain expertise, as for example, compared with Harvard Economist Edward Glaeser, https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Healt...

A 2014 Op-Ed by Glaeser: https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/build-big-bill-article-1...

The writer clearly did not look at housing trends in Manhattan (where I live), Boston, DC, Seattle, SF, or (parts of) LA.

If he had domain expertise or actually read something by a domain expert like Glaeser, the author had the opportunity to communicate correct information.

That information is that because of Democratic City Councils (NYC, Boston, DC, Seattle, SF, LA), that have artificially created in scarcity of land primarily through zoning density restrictions but also through overuse of historic landmark status, overregulation, and more that cost of housing is very high.

Japan solved the problem by having federal laws that override zoning density restrictions in Tokyo. The result: in 2014, 20,000 housing units built in NYC, about 90,000 for all of California, and 140,000 for Tokyo.

Honestly, it takes little time to read domain experts like Glaeser and to report the law in Japan used to fix the housing shortages caused by local government.

Yet, for reasons that I don't understand, people (I guess are too lazy) to actually spend a short time investigating the problem.

Good. https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Healt...

The author of the article is also author of https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Healt...

He is an expert on cities. I live in NYC and much of Manhattan is low density (4 story brownstones). It may not be building 100,000 apts. per year, but it would be far, far greater number than what is being built today.

Highly recommend Ed Glaeser's book if you'd like to further understand the socioeconomics and urbanisation aspects of this trend: https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Healt...

I strongly recommend "The Undercover Economist" written by Tim Harford, A Financial Times columnist with a BS and MS Economics from Oxford. It is fun to read and focuses on microeconomics (market inefficiencies, market failures). He has a chapter dedicated to the failing economy of Cameroon which he visited and the growing economy of China.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199926514/

Harford also as a book on macroeconomics, "The Undercover Economist Strikes Back" https://www.amazon.com/dp/159463291X/

Harvard Economist Eduard Glaeser is an expert on cities and he will help to explain (as does Harford) that the reason for the high cost of housing in NYC, London, SF, SD, LA, DC, Boston, and other cities is because of "economic rents" which is a market inefficiency that in this case uses politics to create artificial scarcity in housing through zoning density restrictions. These economics rents benefit landlords by transferring wealth from apartment renter to landlord.

Glaeser: Build Big Bill: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/build-big-bill-article-1....

Glaeser book: "Triumph of the City" https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143120549/

The book Left Coast City (https://www.amazon.com/Left-Coast-City-Progressive-Francisco...) describes the characters of the anti-highrise “growth wars” of the 1980s. In short, San Francisco’s 1980s-era progressives believe that the private market is greedy and irrational (since big business redeveloped slums in the 1950s and overbuilt vacant downtown offices in the 1980s) and can’t be trusted to build what people need, and therefore we need community veto power and strong eviction protection. These activists also grew up back when the media taught that urban life was un-environmental (see the chapter on ditching the Lorax in Triumph of the City https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Healt...), so they support height limits too. The same anti-development activists of the 1980s (e.g. Tim Redmond, Calvin Welch, Sue Hestor) are still active today to oppose all big development including housing.

Once again — why everyone needs to be in Bay Area to work productively

This has been answered by the field of economic geography; if you keep asking the question, read Glaeser's Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier for a definitive answer (https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Healt...).