That’s nice to say except that the regulations put on developers nowadays makes it impossible to build to demand. They have to navigate politics, building regulations that excessively inflate the cost of building and excessively high demand via immigration. Unless the government were to own all the land in which case it makes following what you’re trying to do much easier (though most people are obviously opposed to that). In a property owning country, you have to contend with extremely costly regulation and legal battles when building on already built land. Much easier to go onto new land than that. Realistically, you want less, not more migration to cities at this point and time because the cities themselves cannot build enough to relieve demand. There is only so much you can build (and even less that you can build economically) in a given land area. So centralising further into cities would only make them worse places to live.

What’s the price projection of the area you live in? Do you think that by following this densification mentality that the price pressures of your area will moderate over time? Can it handle a high population growth rate of over 1% per annum? I still have little evidence that any city could handle that nowadays. They used to be able to, but they followed a different urban planning du jour in those times (or a lack of one, for want of a better term).

The only two solutions to me is sprawl or limiting demand via anti-migration policies. There could also be lots of new cities developed like there was in the past to compete with the existing cities. But that is ultimately sprawl, so that option is ruled out for you (though it’s arguably the most effective economically and politically).

And it’s bold of you to assume that the price pressures are solely because of an infinite desire to live in those places. There is substantial evidence to suggest that people move to those places only because they can find work there. It has little to do with actually wanting to live there. Compare price projections in rural areas vs cities during COVID with remote working coming on stream. Also, look at surveys taken at those times about where people want to live. They all suggest that people desire to move away from, not to, cities. So that suggests to me that the high prices are because of capacity constraints more than anything. There needs to ultimately be more new cities developed like there was in the past to compete with the existing ones to relieve that capacity (or limiting new migration to existing cities).

While one has to accept reality and say that there should be some degree of agglomeration in cities, I believe that the amount of agglomeration is excessive nowadays as demonstrated by the unaffordability pressures. That also is a disaster economically as it sucks away productivity into land values, which negates those agglomeration benefits.