> There seems to be a general lack of political will for big projects in the west.

The spectacular thing about the housing crisis is that you don't even need any big government projects. It just needs to be legal for private actors to build housing. On most plots of land today it is not legal to build anything but a single-family home, so cities are no longer able to naturally densify over time (just like every single modern city did 100 years ago, so that they could become the cities they are today).