The flipside of the coin needs to be mentioned too. What Europe is doing around zoning and infrastructure is, as is often the case, the "Big Government" model,

The flipside of the coin needs to be mentioned too. What Europe is doing around zoning and infrastructure is, as is often the case, the "Big Government" model, compared to the U.S.'s more "Small Government" approach. I get the impression that, outside of a few major metropolitan areas with real estate booms, most areas within the U.S. have been comparatively more successful than most areas within Europe at enabling decently-sized real estate at affordable prices and at enabling the younger generation to get on the real estate ladder without their parents' help. Cities where infrastructure is super-dense and everything is walkable, like NYC and many European city centers are nice for young people, students, urban/digital nomads, tourists, etc. When you get to a certain age and want to settle down and start a family, priorities start to change and you realize how trapped you are, with the European model. You're paying a fortune to rent a shoebox. Add to that the high taxes and mandatory social security that exists in Europe. This means, you find yourself in a situation where you're wealthy but cash poor, and have little opportunity to accumulate wealth in the form of cash. (The kind of cash that would be needed as a down-payment on larger real estate). The option that people exercise in the U.S. is "move to the burbs". ...but this option is not so readily available in Europe. Here, high standards of infrastructure are enforced before planning permission for residential development in suburbs/exurbs can even be granted. This means that this kind of real estate is pricey pretty much the day it becomes viable to build there. Further out, in properly rural areas, zoning laws will often permit building there only when buildings have an actual agricultural purpose. The car plays a pretty important part in that: Rezone a bunch of agricultural land into residential. Build some roads that go there and connect it to the powergrid and telecommunication network. Boom. Affordable real estate. People can move there, and after you have enough people, you can start to think about public transportation, schools, things to do, and all that other stuff. But you do that AFTER it has become economically viable to offer that stuff, not as a prerequisite for allowing people to build there. This is, in my mind, something that the U.S. has a lot of and that we could really use more of in Europe.