In a metropolis, most of the gains of agglomeration accrue to those people with high skills and little need for housing. Suddenly, many opportunities for rent-seeking open up. People elbow their way into jobs by lobbying well-connected relatives; they pay tutors for the extra study that gets them more credentials; they go to hundreds of interviews. Or they squeeze their need for housing by delaying marriage, or delaying children. Each of these is a form of rent-seeking. Behaviour gets distorted in the competition to capture the lucrative rents of agglomeration.
