Would it even be highly desirable without any of the restaurants, retail and other services that don't provide a high enough wage to live there? My guess is that for a lot of the people living there now the answer is no.
We require these services but don't don't provide an acceptable living to those offering them, expecting them to sacrifice their health and comfort for our benefit.
I don't have a solution to how to "allocate" who "gets to" live in a certain city, and it's not in my role or expertise to. But the problem exists currently regardless of that, and what we do have is not a solution.
> Would it even be highly desirable without any of the restaurants, retail and other services that don't provide a high enough wage to live there?
My guess is yes. Temperate weather, world class scenery, cheap electricity, clean water, a convenient deep and protected harbor, and a productive workforce.
All are subject to change of course, but that combination precludes the existence of businesses with low elasticity of demand (and hence higher value). The luxuries like restaurants and retail follow after those other businesses.
Of course, they do enhance the desirability, and it very well could be that rents are too high in the short term, and that landlords are making Seattle less desirable in the near future, but that is always a dynamic relationship.
This perspective is key, in my view. In short, we have a supremely myopic and isolated view on what "accounting" is.
Value is defined based on counterfactuals, similar to opportunity cost -- if that thing didn't exist, what would be the effect on the local economy? My suspicion is that if you price all the chefs out of a downtown, no one will like spending their time (and therefore money) there, and it will die. So if the singular act of removing chefs collapses an entire economic engine, then their value is defined as the economic activity before their removal minus the economic activity after their removal.
We require these services but don't don't provide an acceptable living to those offering them, expecting them to sacrifice their health and comfort for our benefit.
I don't have a solution to how to "allocate" who "gets to" live in a certain city, and it's not in my role or expertise to. But the problem exists currently regardless of that, and what we do have is not a solution.