The problem is not “square footage”; aside from a few obscenely desirable urban markets, the constraints on real estate in the United Staes aren’t space to build but availability of affordable rentals and housing priced for lower and middle income families, which is largely driven by suburban housing development-oriented code restrictions, protectionist actions by incumbent residents to prevent more people from moving to their area or adjacent neighborhoods, and the general unwillingness of municipalities to restructure lucrative tax bases to a mixed use, mixed income basis even if the overall effect is a net benefit to the local economy. Pretending like this is all just matter of optimizing the use of space is like Charlie Munger insisting that students should live in a giant corporo-industrial quasi-prison to satisfy his armchair sociology architectural theories.
Stranger