For me the answer is because that’s not the kind of place I want to live so it’s not the kind of place I want to build. We don’t really have a shortage of conve

For me the answer is because that’s not the kind of place I want to live so it’s not the kind of place I want to build. We don’t really have a shortage of conventional suburban housing. We have a critical shortage of walkable urban housing, the so-called “missing middle” which is denser than conventional suburbia but still single family. A great example of that is the older parts of San Francisco, where I lived for years. There are lots of old Victorian homes that are comfortable single family residences with nice back yards, but at about twice the density of typical suburbia because they don’t have side yards (aka they are townhomes). Mixed in there are lots of 2-3 story buildings with shops and offices on the ground floor and apartments above. That was a wonderful place to live! So wonderful, and also so scarce, that every place like that around the country is skyrocketing in price over the last 10-20 years. What I would love to do is build a new town of middle density, “European style,” if you will. But that is so scarce because it’s illegal to build in the vast majority of US land area. Hence, to do it, you need to be building somewhere outside the jurisdiction of cities and counties with conventional zoning, which really limits your options. And finally, 200 homes isn’t enough to form the critical mass of a European small city. You probably need more like 10k homes (for a population around 25k) for it to work.