Half the men in Seattle are never-married singles, census data shows

When people get married and think about settling down and maybe having kids, they usually leave high cost of living cities. They want stability, something they can own or rent long term, and usually more space, especially if kids are coming.

Sometimes they move to the suburbs, sometimes across the country.

The only people who stay tend to be rich people who can actually afford to get some space and stability in the city. Even then many of those decide to leave anyway for other reasons, again especially if they want kids.

High cost city centers are basically an extension of college dorms at this point. They are where people go to start their careers or level up, not stay.

This is like saying “study shows that most people in a shopping mall are looking to buy something” then extrapolating some larger conclusion from that.

On the other hand, forcing people outside of the city to afford a family means more GDP from building roads, selling tyres, replacing cars, petrol sales, oil refining…

Cities tend to be vulnerable to this effect, which ruins them for long term family and wealth building (which are closely related things).

Cars are only incidentally about transportation. A car is a machine that offers leverage in property markets. That’s its primary function. They do move you around but if I could get around without one I’d prefer it that way.

The only antidote to this in cities is very liberal zoning and construction policy, and that’s hard to maintain because city residents love seeing their property values rise. Cities tend to become real estate cartels of property owners.

It’s easier to get another twenty miles of roads and infrastructure built in the exurbs than to fight political trench warfare against NIMBY urbanites. If you want to blame something for car dependence and sprawl, blame zoning and city planners not cars.