There’s a second requirement. People have to want to live there, AND not enough housing is being built there for all of them. I think the second part is what’s not working where I live. People are just against high density housing. Sometimes you’ll hear this resistance in terms like “let’s keep our neighborhoods walkable” or “neighborhoods with green spaces are good for our community’s mental health.” But this translates to: hell no don’t build that 10 story apartment building here.

I live in California, where housing is insanely expensive. We are not even close to exhausting the available land as a resource for this. It is much more an issue of development dollars, zoning restrictions, and economics. Finite land is not the reason.

Housing shouldn’t be “wealth accumulation.” It can only be so if we assume housing becomes more expensive for subsequent generations. Why should a house double in value every ten years? It makes no sense whatsoever.

“Strong” in this case is tensile/shear strength. Glue two pieces of wood together. Then pull them apart with great force and chances are the wood will splinter somewhere that’s not the glue line.

However this doesn’t mean that a big hunk of dried wood glue has any strength under compression. A chair made of solid glue would probably buckle if you sat in it.

Yes, because this works by physical action. Salt is recommended because it’s always around and it has a fine, consistent grit that is small enough that it won’t force your pieces apart. Personally I wouldn’t do sand because its grains are all different sizes but in a pinch it could work.

They also have a reputation of lasting forever because they sit in so many garages forever without being touched.