The housing crisis gripping cities across the Anglosphere - from Vancouver to California - isn't caused by a lack of building. The dominant narrative pushed by our Canadian federal and provincial governments, echoed in policy circles worldwide, insists that simply building more homes will restore affordability through basic supply and demand. This view is profoundly mistaken. The real driver is the explosive rise in urban land values. Until the late 20th century, housing/urban land prices largely tracked use value tied to local incomes. Today, urban land has become a premier asset class for parking global wealth, its speculative value far outstripping the cost of the buildings atop it. In places like Vancouver, land often accounts for ten times the value of the structure atop it. Adding density without capturing this uplift only inflates land prices further, leaving per-square-foot costs for high-rises roughly equivalent to those of duplexes or detached homes. No real relief reaches buyers or renters. Evidence from North American cities is stark. Vancouver has added more housing units per capita than any other North American center city - yet it boasts the continent's worst affordability relative to incomes. Cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, which have built far less, paradoxically offer better relative affordability. The correlation isn't between more supply and lower prices; it's the reverse in many high-pressure markets, where upzoning fuels speculation rather than relief. This crisis hits the middle class hard, with even professionals facing unprecedented housing stress. The solution isn't blanket deregulation or unchecked density. Politically feasible reforms must target land speculation directly. Taxing land value through taxation could anchor prices to use value, but such a global shift of taxation from income to land remains politically unlikely. A practical alternative lies in regulated density. Local zoning can link increased density to mandatory affordability. Cambridge, Massachusetts, demonstrates this effectively: developers can double density beyond standard zoning, but only if the resulting units are permanently affordable relative to median household incomes (typically up to median income and below). No taxpayer subsidies are required; such a policy captures the land-value windfall for public benefit at the rezoning moment, preventing speculative inflation. Until policymakers acknowledge that urban land - not construction costs or NIMBYism - is the core problem, efforts to "build more" will continue enriching landowners while affordability worsens. We must prioritize capturing land-value gains for the common good before the crisis deepens further. Professor Emeritus Patrick M. Condon School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture.  University of British Columbia New book on housing crisis:ubcpress.ca/broken-city