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I wonder how this would practically work in somewhere like America, where the cities are so diverse. I have a hard time believing that the rules that are the best for a big city like LA and San Francisco are the same rules that would work for middle of nowhere Iowa.

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I don't see why we can't just make some modifications to Japan's model. There may be a smaller population and land area, but how many cities of 13 million people with 43 million people in the metro area do we have?

I think the only problem with adopting Japan's model is we are so established with the current one.

There are just a few major metro areas in the US where much of the rent-seeking for wealthy landlords is much of a problem starting with SF, LA, SD, Boston, NYC, DC. Not all cities bow to the wishes of wealthy landlords by making land scarce through artificial political means with the resulting huge financial windfall for wealthy landlords at cost to renters and millennials trying to buy a home.

And the Japanese zoning model mitigates more than just the problem of exploitative rentiers buying and corrupting local government

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