> Are there more housing units in Manhattan or Dubuque? Which one has more expensive housing units?

That's an interesting question, because it's often — not necessarily in this case, but often — asked by people who ignore capitalism when it's inconvenient to their case. Other askers simultaneously claim things like "Dubuque has a lower cost of living" and "Dubuque is a better place to live". That ignores the fact that Manhattan is more expensive because more people want to live there, to the point that they're willing to pay several times more for the benefits they believe it gives them.

When someone argues that city X is n% more expensive than city Y, it's another way of saying that residents believe they're getting at least n% more value from Y than they would from X.