You're reading the demand/supply situation backwards. Even with all the construction in Brooklyn, supply is failing to meet demand, therefore prices are going up. We've failed to meet supply in urban spaces for several generations now and have a massive deficit to pay off before adding any supply can actually drive prices down; we're barely adding enough units to affect the rate of increase of prices.
> You're reading the demand/supply situation backwards.
No. I'm reading it exactly right. Density _causes_ higher prices. It makes it easier to create jobs near dense locations, which in turn makes it more attractive for people to move in. This in turn increases housing costs.
That's all only a problem when supply of housing is constricted, which it has been for generations in all urban spaces. Otherwise it's just wealth generation. It's also a problem when economic activity is limited to a handful of key urban spaces, but that isn't true. There are plenty of places to go make a good living. There just isn't anywhere to live.
There should be plenty of different levels of density for people to choose to live in as everyone has different preferences. What's not sustainable in any way is exclusive single family zoning. If, as so many backers of exclusionary zoning claim, people only want to live in SFH, why would we need a law to force that to be the only built form? Surely every single unit built of any other type would fail to find a resident.
This had the effect of driving all the developers into fewer land parcels, hiking up prices. New York has not substantially deviated from this zoning model since then.
That knowledge is severely out of date, then. You don't need bedrock to build skyscrapers, and indeed the tallest skyscraper in the world, the Burj Khalifa, is built on top of sand with no connection to bedrock whatsoever. You just need to pour immense amounts of concrete to serve as a foundation.
Which is cost prohibitive and doesn't make sense for any other entity other than "let's light money on fire + enslave people to flex so the cool kids like us" UAE.
it's not a good look. hope my comment doesn't flag me in unforeseen ways 20 years from now.
To be clear, I'm saying effectively yep need bedrock otherwise it makes zero actual sense. (I do take you point, and lesson learned on my part)
It's not cost prohibitive, it's a technique that is widely used in US cities too. The cost of building the foundation is still small relative to the cost of acquiring the land and building the rest of the building.
If you can build a 100 floor skyscraper on a piece of land, that land is insanely valuable!