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I expect not. It was easy to build for the longest time and then we artificially made it difficult. The current situation is the more anomalous one.
America has famously lagged behind other cities of the world in dense urbanism. So, we have a few decades of data from tall-dense cities to read into. NYC is the only exception in the US. and it is a good exception at that. Broadly, nothing catastrophic happened. Ofc, the assumption is that densification comes with an increase in aggregate local taxes and greater investment in public infrastructure (transit, services, etc).
I would like to hear the negative side-effects that you suspect more housing will bring.
IMO, The american youth starting to adopt a nihilistic lying flat mindset, and the lack of affordable housing (esp. in urban areas) has played a role in making it worse. However, building more housing alone is not going to solve this multifaceted problem. So, if the YIMBYs win, there will be more housing and nihilism will continue (if slightly slowed down). In 50 years, some may see that the nihilism and YIMBY movement coincided with each other and wrongly draw a causal link.
Building more housing is like fixing the Ozone layer. When you do it right, nothing happens. Life goes on, and people don't appreciate it because the negative thing never happened. Classic preparedness paradox.
To be clear,
build more housing != build more ugly housing.
This is a 5+1, and this is a 5+1. This is one of the reasons I am strongly against "affordable housing". Build more market rate housing, so the buyer can impose their aesthetic preferences onto the developer.
build more housing = building more housing in urban areas with a huge shortages.
Supply-demand is alright in most of the US. Mostly limited to Boston, NYC, DC, Miami, Austin, Phoenix, LA, SD, SF, Portland, Seattle problem.
build more housing != fit a studio into what used to be 4 bed, so we can all live in kowloon walled city.
build more housing != sprawl out more
More housing means more vertical expansion and more infills.
build more housing = build better transit.
That means safer transit too. (this is a huge issue between YIMBYs and Leftists. YIMBYs are generally pro-police and hard on crime)
Austin has built so much housing that it's the only metro to have seen rents decline in recent years.
Yeah, Austin is a shining example of how to deal with the problem well.
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