What you've described would be desirable were it not for a widespread flaw in human reasoning. When people invest time and/or money into a place, they want to m

What you've described would be desirable were it not for a widespread flaw in human reasoning. When people invest time and/or money into a place, they want to make sure it doesn't change for the worse. The default strategy to achieve that goal is to fight any change at all, which doesn't work in growing cities. You can try to keep the buildings the same as they are, but the people will change, as will the transportation problems. A growing city requires more housing to slow the rise of housing prices. A growing city requires more housing near its transportation investments (especially where capacity can easily be increased) so more people can get to where they need to go quickly. NIMBYism prevents both of those, and is the cause of many problems in the modern American city.