That is an incorrect framing of the problem. People do not want land, they want residential units. Strong demand can be handled by building up. Making it possible to build up where land values are high would solve a lot of problems.
California high speed rail is a different, specific, and complex system to evaluate. Just to throw out one major issue there is increasing demand for travel between LA and SF but capacity of existing roads, air corridors, railways, and ferries is already approaching fundamental limits. Space for roads is limited so the only other real option is more airports everywhere which might end up being necessary either way.
People want to own residential units. Ownership is and should be more expensive than occupancy.
A residential unit also needs power, sewer, water, schools, fire dept, police dept, parks and recreation, sanitation and other services, transportation, commerce, infrastructure and roads. And staff to run all this. Building up vertically on a x30 multiplier doesn’t mean that city can provide all the services and access resources to service the multiplier effect of said parcel of land. This is why high density cities end up being unaffordable.
If high density cities are built up to accommodate more affordable homes and below market value homes, the residents effectively pay negative taxes by benefitting more from the city than they pay in as taxes. The math doesn’t work out. If it did, we would have more townships with high density as well as affordability..and cost of living going down. But in my observation,such things never happen. At least from the data I had collated from Bay Area cities. I would love to be proved wrong.
The only way..as I see it..high density home ownership can be feasible is if we have clustered communities between 150-300 households and each of the homes comes with assured employment. It’s closer to ‘company towns’ or military townships.
> Building up vertically on a x30 multiplier doesn’t mean that city can provide all the services and access resources to service the multiplier effect of said parcel of land.
You're right, all the services are more expensive per square foot of land. But, it's more efficient per person, and per square foot of property, to provide those services in a smaller area. Cities are more expensive because of simple supply and demand: a lot of people want to live there, and there's a limited amount of property.
California high speed rail is a different, specific, and complex system to evaluate. Just to throw out one major issue there is increasing demand for travel between LA and SF but capacity of existing roads, air corridors, railways, and ferries is already approaching fundamental limits. Space for roads is limited so the only other real option is more airports everywhere which might end up being necessary either way.