If you have not lived in the US, particularly in small towns or suburbs, you literally cannot imagine the mindset of the typical person living in them.
On the one side of the brain, you have this stubborn independent streak, where you have to own what you own. Then on the other side of the brain, you have this rabid fascist streak, where other people have to be told what to do with their property. And twixt the two, you have homeowners' associations, restrictive covenants, condominium associations, zoning laws, and local code ordinances.
On the one side of the brain, we have a burning desire to own the places where we sleep. On the other, we mortgage ourselves up to the eyeballs and beyond, NIMBY each other relentlessly, and generally spoil any effort to make housing more affordable, even for ourselves, because poverty is simultaneously a grave character flaw and a contagious disease. The cure is to make living in poverty cost more money (per quality-of-life-unit) than living middle-class, so that only the most diligent and disciplined can escape it.
You cannot understand it. It is indistinguishable from insanity to the rest of the world. Without looking too closely, it suffices to say that sensible community housing would severely impair our ability to mercilessly extract rents from each other. You can't really build a residence unless you can continue to make money from it long after you transfer title to a new owner. You have to let people think that they own something, even while you still control their use of it.
(This form of insanity often persists after an American travels abroad, even when the travel is explicitly for the purpose of building affordable housing in the destination country.)
As such, much sprawl is caused by the following pattern. Person finds local restrictions on property use too stifling, and too expensive, and builds just beyond the jurisdictional border. That person almost immediately votes to institute new restrictions on property use in their new jurisdiction.