alt Hacker News>But the latter point is just plain wrong. Dense housing IMPROVES traffic congestion and shortens commutes, always, everywhere, markedly. And it's for a bleedingly obvious reason: pack people in closer together and they don't have to travel as far to get where they're going. QED.
You are conflating things, adding more people to an area increases congestion, period. Having dense housing vs not dense housing is better for congestion IF the people are already there.
>What you're imagining is some kind of fantasy hometown, which never increased in population and whose economy never developed. I mean, it's true. Forgotten ghost towns have very little traffic and quirky soulful architecture,
It is a highly desirable area, there is no issue with the economy, it will continue to be desirable if we don't destroy it. The "growth always good" crowd is pretty nuts in their views
> adding more people to an area increases congestion, period
Yes, but so what? That's tautological. "Adding more people" isn't an independent variable, it's the economic ground truth over which we're trying to optimize.
The point is that if you need to build N units of housing to match your M added economic activity, building them denser leads to less congestion.
I mean, duh. This really isn't a complicated idea.
Again, you're imagining a single community divorced from inconvenient ideas like "population growth" or "economic development" (and even going so far as to conflate those with "destruction").
Well, sorry. It's desirable because it's developing. You don't get to change the minds of all the people that want to live there, all you can do is help them decide where to live.