I don't think it has much to do with population growth. I think it has more to do with planning in advance where you want your growth to be. In the US we just l

I don't think it has much to do with population growth. I think it has more to do with planning in advance where you want your growth to be. In the US we just let developers put new houses pretty much wherever they want, which turns out to be where land is cheap, which is usually far from existing developments. In Europe the govt has more direct involvement and only allows development to happen where they want it to happen.