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The free market approach would work but the real-estate markets are not free markets: There is rent-seeking zoning density restrictions that make the land artificially scarce.

Reverse the zoning density restrictions and this will be a return to eliminating the market failure in real-estate.

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Allowing more denser zoning would help, but it doesn't fix the problem I mentioned. As I said, new construction is often replacing higher density affordable housing with lower density luxury housing. This is motivated by profit and not zoning.

Mandating density increase would solve this.

Of course the problem is that US cities are legally small, the metro areas are big sprawling low density money sinks, and there's very little zoning coordination between cities in a metro area.

Los Angeles county is enormous and can address this.

Can a country override city regulations effectively?

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