I'm not sure that squares what I see in these places. Seems to me that pretty much everywhere has the same red tape. Who is letting you build without consideration of fire safety, egress points, floor area ratios, parking minimums, etc? Everywhere across the country has such "red tape" and regulation.

But what I notice in the housing crisis cities is that this is almost irrelevant. Whatever the actual limits of the zoning are, that is pretty much what you see built. Regulation be damned, it will get bulldozed through and built if it is allowed to be built in these cities. And the real only dam preventing the flood of development becomes these zoning laws that finally say "no" to development happening at all. The red tape is just cost add that gets passed to the buyer. It isn't like there are a glut of homes too expensive to sell in these places (what you'd see if red tape were really the issue), quite the opposite, after all.