"Tokyo has positive population growth of about 100,000 people a year, and rents and home prices are roughly stable for last decade.
How? Outconstructing NYC. And LA. And SF. And Boston. And Houston.
Combined.
Every year."
Houses in Japan have tended to be torn down and rebuilt every twenty to thirty years. It’s an unusual situation, owing to various factors, including code updates for earthquake resistance.
An article on this topic: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/nov/16/japan-reusabl...
I have heard (but am not sure) that the pattern is more to buy some land, knock down the previous guy's house, and build your own. On a time-scale of 20-30 years, closer to how Americans regard cars (e.g. having to buy used cars is undesirable) than how they regard houses (once built they stay in use forever, although renovated).
In the US, zones tend to be "single family home", "apartments", "town homes", "commercial", "retail". No overlap and the housing variants don't allow increased density without re-zoning, which is expensive.
In Japan, zones are more like a maximum usage. "homes", "homes+retail", "home+retail+commercial", etc. The housing zones are less restrictive - typically single family, duplex, and low-rise apartments are all allowed in the basic residential zone. High-rise would be in a different zone, along with retail, commercial, etc.
(I would blindly guess 90% for the US.)
Those are the options. You can decide which one you look forward to more.