Consumption amenities and city population density

Population density varies widely among U.S. metro areas. A simple, static general equilibrium model demonstrates that moderate differences in metro areas' consumption amenities can cause extremely large differences in their population density. Such amenities are more strongly capitalized into housing prices than into wages. Empirical results suggest that amenities do indeed help support high density levels and that amenities are becoming a more important determinant of where people choose to live. Matching the empirical correlation between wages and density requires that amenities cause approximately one fifth of the cross-sectional variation in metro population density.