[sAuronas]

Zoning is not a show-stopper everywhere. You'd be surprised to know that many places you can develop much higher densities "by right." Phoenix, for example, has the density potential of Brooklyn near its downtown (just south) but it's solely ramshackle, chicken-wired single family at the moment. Downtown Oakland could be 100 times as dense as it is currently. Zoning, per se, isn't the issue there but the people who will fight it at all costs (the developer's). You could rezone all of West LA to Manhattan density tomorrow and you'd get nowhere... People will fight it.

You're right, I oversimplified because I was being facetious. I used to be a developer of both sprawl (Toll Bros and KB Home) and infill. I am bitter about how we live in the US. No one should be paying $500/SF to live in Oakland when there are empty lots and single-story strip malls occupying space for high rises. High-density development is no more difficult than suburban development from a technical matter. It is a market problem. The costs get driven up arbitrarily at times by bad actors.