LOS ANGELES—At a recent Urban Land Institute breakfast market experts Wendell Cox, principal of public policy consulting at Demographia and Dowell Myers, professor at the Sol Price School of Public Policy at University of Southern California, went head to head about housing affordability and demographic trends. The contrarian viewpoints looked at urban sprawl as either the enemy or the answer to affordability and density issues. In the end, however, both parties agreed that L.A. needs more multifamily development.

Cox took the position that smart growth or urban containment was the cause of affordability issues. He explained that Los Angeles in the most dense city in the country, with some suburbs that are twice as dense as suburbs of New York City. For this reason, sprawl, according to Cox is a myth in Los Angeles. His solution is to develop more multifamily housing on the urban fringe to spread the densities and increase the urban sprawl.

Myers, on the other hand, is a supporter of smart growth, explaining that while we have a dense population, that population growth has slowed. Los Angeles is predicted to achieve a population of 12 million by 2060, a dramatic decrease from previous predictions. Immigration as well has slowed to 1970s levels. These issues are due to the affordability crisis, he explains. His answer: build more apartments in dense, infill settings. This, he says, will curb sprawl and help affordability. Additionally, he notes that the millennial generation is not moving toward home ownership, and will remain apartment renters for a longer period of time than previous generations.

Although the two market experts presented contrary views on density, they agreed that more multifamily development was a necessity. “The demand we're worried about is for rental and ownership housing that allows families to ideally spend no more than 30% of their income for housing costs. We must find ways to reduce the cost of housing in today's anemic wage-growth environment,” Ehud G. Mouchly, principal at READI LLC, adjunct professor at the MRED program in USC's Price School and chair of ULI-LA Housing Council, tells GlobeSt.com. “One way to achieve this is in permitting higher densities, whether in multifamily structures, like apartments and condominiums, or townhomes and single-family-detached typologies. We need to encourage solutions such as small-lot subdivisions, accessory dwelling units. Another way, not mutually exclusive, would be to reduce unjustified regulatory pressures, which increase the cost of land and production.”

Some audience members challenged the presentations for not noting the loosening restrictions of R1 zoning, which will allow for backyard housing and granny flats in single-family neighborhoods. Myers said that parking is an issue in these neighborhoods, so many millennials choose denser multifamily living; however, his theory, as one audience member said, did not account for public transit and new transportation, like Uber and Lyft.