It has been argued that the high property values of dense central city neighborhoods demonstrate the attractiveness of such a living style to the market. The data above compares the distribution of high-income households in the San Francisco Bay Area, which at its core has the city and county of San Francisco, the nation’s second most dense major municipality. Generally property values and the cost of housing is higher in this dense core than in the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area. At the same time, average densities in the urbanized portions of the San Francisco Bay Area are one-third that of San Francisco.

If higher density living were generally more attractive to the market, then it would be expected that a higher density area, such as the city of San Francisco, would contain a higher percentage of the higher income people able to afford the higher prices. This is not the case.

• The city of San Francisco contains 13.6 percent of the Bay Area’s households, but only 12.3 percent of the households with annual incomes of more than $100,000.

• Even at the highest US Census category of $200,000 and above, San Francisco has a smaller share of households than its overall share (13.4 percent).

What this suggests is that high density living is attractive to some people, and not others. In the San Francisco Bay Area, perhaps the nation’s best example of a high density vibrant core surrounded by similarly vibrant suburbs, high density living is a niche market.