You can in fact build a new single family home in Manhattan, if you can afford the land to do so.
Meanwhile, regardless of land price, dense housing is illegal to build pretty much everywhere that is not currently dense, due to zoning laws. Why shouldn't someone be able to build dense housing in a suburb?
What it sounds like you advocate for is that everywhere currently dense can stay dense, and everywhere not currently dense must stay not dense. That doesn't make sense unless you want the dense area to continue to skyrocket in price as more people want to live there and we have no new housing to accommodate them.
> You can in fact build a new single family home in Manhattan, if you can afford the land to do so.
Really? Where? Note that I don't mean a townhome or a row house, I mean literally a detached single family home.
> What it sounds like you advocate for is that everywhere currently dense can stay dense, and everywhere not currently dense must stay not dense.
Obviously this won't be the case long term; areas will evolve. Some will become more dense, some will become less dense.
What I am saying is that people have a wide variety of preferences, and that is just a fact of life. Talking as if one particular way of living is "better" does not recognize that.
> That doesn't make sense unless you want the dense area to continue to skyrocket in price as more people want to live there and we have no new housing to accommodate them.
Why would there be no new housing in urban areas? New construction is going on in cities all the time.
Meanwhile, regardless of land price, dense housing is illegal to build pretty much everywhere that is not currently dense, due to zoning laws. Why shouldn't someone be able to build dense housing in a suburb?
What it sounds like you advocate for is that everywhere currently dense can stay dense, and everywhere not currently dense must stay not dense. That doesn't make sense unless you want the dense area to continue to skyrocket in price as more people want to live there and we have no new housing to accommodate them.