[kafkaesq]

The Bay Area doesn't have taller buildings ... because the people living there keep voting against it.

This is way too simplistic. The sordid truth is that the BA (and SoCal, and much of the rest of the U.S. outside the major 19th-century cities) has a legacy of sprawl is because, for several key decades (1950-1980) people just really, really loved sprawl (and the perception of freedom that went with it). And orchards and interconnectedness and community and all the other stuff that they bulldozed to make room for the sprawl -- not so much.

That's the "cognitive issue" the commenter above you was referring to.