When you liberalize zoning you get slum cities. This has already happened many times in latin america, india and africa. It also happened in America when we had

When you liberalize zoning you get slum cities. This has already happened many times in latin america, india and africa. It also happened in America when we had liberalized zoning. (See, for example, the history of San Francisco, and New York). I am all for increasing density in places where there is high demand for housing. But a lot of people are living in this libertarian fantasy that all you have to do is liberalize zoning and you will magically get a perfect high density city like Singapore (which ironically has some of the strictest zoning in the world) and not a sea of slums (which actually happens in the real world when you combine high demand with no zoning). I think cities should increase density when they see high demand for housing. But they should do it smartly by providing services and infrastructure for more citizens when allowing higher density buildings. The most important service for high density living and the first pain point a city hits when population increases is transport. So if you want higher supply of housing, the most important thing to do first and foremost is to vote for all mass transit initiatives and try to convince your city leaders to put in more mass transit. Once the mass transit is there it will be far easier to put in apartment buildings and increase density without choking the city in traffic.