In the USA, the only thing developers can get permission to build is awful sprawl. Single-use zoning with very large parking requirements in front of every buil

In the USA, the only thing developers can get permission to build is awful sprawl. Single-use zoning with very large parking requirements in front of every building and large setback requirements to keep all uses father apart than walking distance and absurdly wide high speed roads separating everything is the rule and getting an exception is very difficult, time consuming, and expensive. You could say that those rules are accidental instead of planned. Certainly when they were first mandated by the Roosevelt administration during the depression, the planners didn't envision the kind of soulless wasteland America is becoming. But those are the rules you need to make it easy to drive everywhere in a car. Changing them will require accepting that some places are nicer when you have to walk and that middle class people can bike or take transit sometimes. By not changing those rules, we are planning for nasty sprawl everywhere. Parking requirements are often called the single biggest anti-market intervention in US development, [0] but there is a byzantine network of sprawl rules. Before the dictatorial intensity of modern zoning, cities grew in a more organic fashion. Places like Tokyo and central Seoul (not the part in op) still do grow organically and do not have sprawl. They can be delightful places to live. San Francisco is very desirable for having grown before sprawl zoning as is Boston. You can't say Tokyo, Seoul, SF, or Boston are strictly unplanned but they grew under a set of rules much less distortive of market preferences. People love the less distorted cities and the prices of the limited quantity of walkable, organic real estate in America keeps shooting up because they can't make any more of it but more and more people love the healthy lifestyle it enables. [0] The High Cost of Free Parking by D. Shoup http://www.uctc.net/papers/351.pdf http://www.uctc.net/papers/351.pdf later expanded into a great long book which you should also read