The basic problem here is that there is a limited resource: land that is close to the downtown area where most of the workplaces and other attractions are. Some

The basic problem here is that there is a limited resource: land that is close to the downtown area where most of the workplaces and other attractions are. Some people (such as yourself) want that land to be filled with a certain kind of housing, and others ("YIMBYs") want that land to be filled with a different, much more dense kind of housing. They both have their advantages and drawbacks. The sparse areas have advantages like less traffic, less noise, and lower crime rate per capita (I haven't actually read any studies on that last one, but I'll take your word for it). The dense areas have the advantage that they can house a heck of a lot more people. Also the prices are cheaper in the dense areas, so you're more likely to be able to live next to your friends and family, even if they make less money than you. Different types of people will tend to like different types of housing. A wealthy and noise sensitive person might prefer the sparse housing, while a poorer extrovert might prefer the high density kind. In a command economy, deciding which of the two types to build would be a very contentious issue. In a market economy, it's no problem. Just let people buy land and build what they want on it. Some regions of sparse housing will be built to cater to the folks who like that, and some regions of dense housing will be built to cater to everyone else. The low density folks tend to pay a premium for the fact that they're occupying an area of land that could house 40 times more people, but in general, everyone is happy. The problem comes when one group or the other tries to bring a bit of the command economy back into it. They institute bans on building high density housing, or require a quota of parking spots to be built with new construction. This artificially decreases the supply of housing, which jacks up prices. This makes landlords happy, but pretty much everyone else is hurting on rent. Fewer people are able to be housed, and it's costing them more. Similarly, if laws were passed requiring all new housing to be high density, we'd end up with loads of dirt cheap apartment buildings, but the low density preferring folks wouldn't be happy, even though they're willing to pay a premium.