A thought experiment: What about building a new city in the middle of nowhere, with the sole goal of extremely reducing living costs , and designing the laws specifically for that ,including making housing costs extremely cheap?
From there, I think you'd want a few things: - Henry George-style taxation by the local city on land values - Maximize the place:non-place ratio. Maximize space for parks, buildings, plazas and minimize space for parking lots, roads for cars etc. - Small lot sizes, row houses, and 4-6 story apartment buildings with excellent noise insulation - Dense enough so that cars are not necessary most of the time. Saves lots of land and the costs of operating cars
So it's probably can be done better.