Seattle Times reports that an analysis of census data for 2014 reveals that Seattle is now the 10th most dense city in the US. We passed Baltimore to claim this impressive rank. And if the pace of our city's growth continues, which seems likely, we will pass Los Angeles at around the time Link opens its station in Northgate, 2021.
The densest city is of course New York City, the capital of the human world. Second is San Francisco. Both cities also occupy top spots when it comes to rental prices. Some argue, with good reason, that San Francisco became this way because it is not growing to meet market demand. Rental prices would fall if new buildings went up. But this explanation does not have much power when it comes to the recent developments in New York City. That city is still growing, condos and apartments are going up all over the place. But much of it is not marketed for those who make normal or low wages. The four-year construction boom in NYC has been for those who have not just lots of money but capital. (The difference between money and capital is: money always has a place to go, something to do; capital, however, struggles to find places to go and things to do. Money moves; capital grows.)
The Seattle Time's article also explains that many in our city still have an idea of density that has nothing to do with reality. It is an idea that was first fabricated in the 19th century, when concentrated urban poverty became a problem. But instead of dealing with the poverty (distributing wealth fairly—the solution of many urban progressives), those in power decided to blame the city itself. From this, we got the City Beautiful movement, the utopias of the garden city movement, and the anti-urban movements that coalesced after the ambivalence of the Regional Planning Association of America. Much of this is described in the essays of the great urban sociologist Ruth Glass. Blaming the city for poverty led to the suburbs and the automobile culture that's currently transforming our climate.
The hatred of the city is still with us today. Worse still, the haters of the city have no idea that these feelings are not of their making. They were cooked and baked for them by the powerful social engineers of the early 20th century.
