zlacker

There's "housing" and then there's $5+MM manhattan apartments, which are so inflated above their value as functional housing as to effectively be NFTs. People whine about the pencil shaped buildings but they shutup fast when they see that it causes zero inflation to lower-end housing prices and a big help to city budgets.

Also, strategically, having powerful people own expensive real estate influences them to visit and maybe not bomb it... at least, it's better than them never having stepped foot there. The famous example is Kyoto not being nuked because an American leader had seen it firsthand[1]. The Nazis spared Paris was apparently spared for similar reasons[2].

The counterexample is NYC which everybody loves to crap on (Gerald Ford "drop dead", 1993 bombing, 9/11, and lots of failed terrorist attacks since), presumably as a symbol of American greed and excess, but also as a symbol of urban chaos, rot and violence.

[1] https://collider.com/oppenheimer-improvised-line-kyoto/

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=Nazis+spared+Paris