Japan is an excellent example to follow, but that’s mostly because they a) don’t treat housing as an investment, Japanese homes basically get written off after 30-50 years and b) don’t have any local control over zoning: if the national or prefectural government says housing is going here, any locals who object can go pound sand.

Both of these would be excellent norms to import into America, but it would come with fierce resistance from the most-likely-to-vote segments of society. I don’t see it happening.

How about we have neither? That sounds good to me.