> decreasing the cost of living is a critical component as well.

Hi Sam,

I'm going to not read through 747+ comments, I'm sorry.

Right now, in the best cities in the nation, the cost of living is rising significantly. These cities have a deep job pool, they are making serious efforts on sustainability, have wide and varied culture and are generally more efficient (and often better) ways to live[0].

However, because of the cost of living is rising so steeply, it is forcing people of median income and below to spread out into the suburbs, increasing commute cost (and pollution), as well as the variety of issues suburbia causes for the environment and sustaininable living[1]. Among the contributing factors here is childrearing, which takes extra space - space which is extremely expensive to rent or purchase in a city. This is an incredibly significant issue as we iterate this game several times.

I'd like to bring to your attention several interlinked aspects that play out here:

- higher housing density is more sustainable

- highly effective transit networks decrease pollution

- dense housing suitable for long-term family residences is very hard to find.

I'm not persuaded that a start-up (a rapidly growing, high growth company) will be able to achieve success in these areas, because of the time horizon needed for these problems to be dealt with is on the 20+ year timespan. However, I'll argue that a company could make a dent in several of these areas:

- mixed use high-rises that are designed for families: offices, schools, playgrounds, etc included[2]. This would be a shift from the typical luxury condo build and, I'd argue, would find a very solid niche in the modern urbanist movement. I would argue that an affordability policy could go hand in hand with this, with certain entities eating some of the rental/purchase cost of these properties.

- Increase transit effectiveness. YC is already making a play in this area with Remix[3], but I think that doubling down on making transit costs and benefits more effective could really be a game changer. Demonstrating the very real cost of commuting would assist in the people inclined towards Green thought; figuring out how to make transit a pleasant experience would assist in getting the people not inclined to deal with the occasional horror story to support and vote for transit.

- In the same vein, platforms and tools that directly support pleasant densification will help. An example of this for someone in a dense neighborhood is Walc[4]. But, looking at policy and assisting policy becomes a major political play here.

Ultimately, what I fear the actual solution will look like here a broad-based housing price/rent control system, where everyone who isn't a multimillionaire who wants to live in a city has to be in a rent-controlled system, paid out by the local government. What we're seeing in Seattle is a bit of a tulip situation: people buying are buying at high prices because the sellers are aware they can sell at high prices, this ratchets the next unit price up; the demand is so high that it's forcing prices up very fast.

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/magazine/19Urban_West-t.ht...

[1] http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/1/26/second-life-cyc...

[2] An arcology, yes. :-)

[3] http://getremix.com/

[4] http://www.walc.me/