>>1348168Many of them are, or at least nowhere near full, and the big problem is that they're destroying more affordable housing to build them and pushing up the prices on everything around them. The issue isn't urbanization or that they're building towers, it's that the towers they're building are composed exclusively of multimillion dollar condos and $4k+ a month high-end apartments and it's causing an ever-increasing surplus of upper-class housing and a worse and worse shortage of middle and working class housing. What we need is more of the latter in those urbanized areas, but nobody wants to build them because they're not as profitable, especially in the short term.
What's actually happening with all of this is that it's becoming less and less possible for lower- and middle-income people to live close to their places of employment, and that's an absolutely massive problem in a city that's already notorious for its traffic and poor transit infrastructure. The effects just stack on, too - skyrocketing rents are one obvious example, but there are many others, for example increased fuel and car maintenance costs for people whose commutes just keep getting longer, medical issues from more stress and less sleep because of those commutes, higher insurance costs and higher risks of being a crime victim because of being forced to move into worse areas, kids being forced into ghetto schools because of the same, etc.
It's hard to know what to do, other than passing laws that force (and/or subsidize) developers to build more affordable housing downtown and in similar areas, but that's never going to happen because there's way too much money behind opposition to any law like that. You'd think that maybe improving mass transit might work, but that isn't having much luck either, because developers are well-aware of that option too and are putting up high-end housing around every transit stop that isn't in a completely ghetto area too.
