Comparisons with much larger and wealthier cities are a harmful way of rationalising house prices . Beyond that the argument he is making appears to be against some sort of strawman that doesn ' t exist in real life I don ' t know anybody in Auckland who thinks or cares much about how it compares to other cities beyond the obvious need to become or remain competitive , and are much the same as people elsewhere in simply wanting their city to be the best that it can be . But the article doesn ' t really make that link or join the dots between any of the ' points ' it ' s making . Instead it ' s just a divisive opinion piece that is full of assertions most of which have little relevance to housing affordability that are unsupported by any evidence .