Population and Housing

[taylortbb]

The cities could also require new subdivisions to include a certain percentage of land used for medium or high-density housing.

Or stop micro-managing zoning. Just have a residential zone that excludes noisy commercial/industrial but allows everything from single-family up to 4-story apartment buildings. Let individual landowners decide what to build, and allow the neighbourhoods to evolve naturally over time.

I like the theory, but that would almost certainly result in exclusively single detached homes. We don't split up the land and then let individual landowners build what they want, single developers buy acres and subdivide them in to lots. Most buyers want nothing but single family homes, and developers would be all too happy to provide.

Unless we appropriately price the externalities of cars, which we're nowhere close to doing, leaving it to the free market would be terrible. 

I'd certainly rather we fix the car externality problem, but I see it as much less feasible.