In the US, and for much of the developed world, you are touching upon a very messy, complex, inter-related mesh of issues, all revolving around land-as-an-asset

In the US, and for much of the developed world, you are touching upon a very messy, complex, inter-related mesh of issues, all revolving around land-as-an-asset. Throw in population pressure, how debt is used to acquire land by different economic actors, etc., and it gets...complicated. Basically, anytime someone says the cause of a set of ills is cost, and if you can tie it back in any way to land cost as an input cost, it will be a Gordian Knot-impenetrable intermingled mess of issues that prevents one from characterizing space as "the only additional cost".