Housing is an issue in big cities largely due to government policies that both limit inventory (building and zoning regulations) and limit profitability (rent control) that make is extremely undesirable to create new housing.
The solution to this is NOT government housing but less government regulations about building new housing
Where and when did this work? Have you any examples?
One article to get you started (nothing special about this one, it's just the first I saw from google): https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-housing-crisis-in-japan-ho...
As to the earthquakes/natural disasters bit for why they build relatively disposable homes - does that happen on the west coast of the US, for instance? I'm genuinely interested, if anyone knows.
ugly is subjective so I won't touch on that.
The low standard one is reasonable as that is what keeps costs low. The alternative is high standard and high cost. You can't really get high standards for low costs.
If the government dictates that all housing needs to be high standard, the collateral damage to that policy is that you can only build housing that prices people out of the market.
I agree but here they're also expensive, which, in my view, is a symptom of the corruption and lack of a free market.
> ugly is subjective so I won't touch on that.
Again I agree, but if you're into industrial estates with lots of concrete and overhead wires galore, then Japan is the place for you. I'm sure someone likes it, maybe the brutalists who made the ugliest parts of my country (the UK) after the war.