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The problem is that infrastructure doesn't scale nearly as quickly as birth rates, let alone immigration. Cities are getting overcrowded, and many, many attempts by many different countries have proven the difficulty of bootstrapping new cities in the middle of otherwise economically underperforming land, like agricultural fields or even desert. Pretty much every existing major city is bursting at the seams: insufficient housing, insufficient transportation infrastructure, insufficient utility infrastructure.


> Pretty much every existing major city is bursting at the seams: insufficient housing, insufficient transportation infrastructure, insufficient utility infrastructure.

Definitely a problem in Canada, but fortunately our government seemingly follows OP's ridiculous logic, and plans to continue increasing our population by 1.3% every year, via an aggressive immigration push. Never mind ensuring we have housing for them or anything.


The limitations on building infrastructure are artificially imposed by NIMBYs. We have the technological ability to quickly build large amounts of housing and other infrastructure and we used to do so before we let the NIMBYs grind everything to a halt over the past few decades.

Not only are cities in America not overcrowded, almost all of them are extremely low density sprawl. There is like 1 city in America with a respectable level of density. The average American city would be much nicer and much more livable if they quadrupled the number of people living there.


> low density sprawl

Hypothetically more of these cities could start to build out subway, light rail, heavy rail networks; which would support higher density. But American cities don't seem to be capable of that. Maybe it's a lack of money, maybe a lack of political will, maybe it's American car culture. But it's irrelevant. It takes a really long time to build out that infrastructure, and in the meantime, the city has the infrastructure that it has, which is insufficient for keeping both housing costs and commuting times down.


I'm skeptical that every major existing city is busting at the seams.... What's the metric here? Cities have been crowded for centuries.


Cities aren't overcrowded, not even close, but cars sure do take a lot of space, especially with laws and regulations that required excess parking spaces.




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