New York and California loses over 90 billion

[ZoWie]

In our part of LA the strip malls are being torn down for larger buildings. A lot of this is going to "silicon beach" branches of Big Tech. Even some of the larger malls are going, such as the one on Pico Blvd in WLA which is now Google or some other company.

Some of these replacements include condos, but these usually are too expensive for first time buyers. Whole streets are currently disappearing. For example, they've pretty much completely cleared out the old commercial and apartment zone in Santa Monica. It's becoming all 6-story condos, medical buildings, and large expensive retail complexes for national brands. The result is gentrification, overcrowding of remaining affordable housing, breakdown of what little support network we ever had, and ever more homeless camped in the streets. Also traffic, since the same streets are being asked to move three times as many cars at rush hour.

All this creates the illusion of overpopulation, but it's more about underserving the majority of the existing population.