True. But I'd say that all that proves is that there's so much demand for not needing to own a personal automobile! And yet, cities aren't like private businesses; they don't do what's in demand. Instead of spending millions on public transportation, they spend billions on more roads to suburbs because that's what they are used to, and why the hell not? What good will come to elected officials from millions of car-free millennials streaming in from all over the country? That will just jack up rents, because, let's face it, no one city can absorb the demand anyway. My home city, Portland, put in modest light rail and painted some bike lanes, which caused some new people to move in. That pissed everyone off, and all transit development abruptly stopped. Desirable city == pissed off locals, and the locals vote!
So we have shitty apartments in Manhattan where the land is 99% of the cost and countless, cookie cutter suburban hellscapes.
A better comparable is to consider rents in an outlying section of Queens that is far from transit and compare that to Manhattan.
For that matter a person could very much live car free in a minor city like Binghamton or Ithaca NY if they work at a place that is well served by transit.
I totally disagree. Density and transit are the defining traits of NYC. What's something else NYC offers that you can't find in a similarly sized, but spread out, population? Keeping in mind that the population of NYC is about that of the entire Dallas-Ft. Worth metro area, or the entire state of Washington.
UN HQ, Wall Street, potentially one's family, etc. Cities just aren't fungible. There are way more reasons someone might prefer or be pushed towards one or another besides the traffic or transit.
Hell, if you're listing off important US map pin-points, you can't beat DC. But people would still rather live in NYC (according to the market). But even if NYC had the most destinations, that's just another way of saying "density", which is my entire point.
And I'm not talking about personal differences, like family. Paris isn't a world class city because my mom lives there. I get that individuals have reasons to live places. I'm talking about populations, not people.
So we have shitty apartments in Manhattan where the land is 99% of the cost and countless, cookie cutter suburban hellscapes.