We could but it’s not always just “good” to make things dense.

My hometown has had a huge push to add more housing to make things more affordable. What happened? Rents went down for a couple years then right back up. Except now the city has a bunch of more soulless condos and is horribly congested.

Sometimes preserving things and keeping them nice and simple even if it’s costs a bit of a premium is better.

Rents went down for a couple years then right back up. Except now the city has a bunch of more soulless condos and is horribly congested.

So there were a bunch of people who wanted to live there and now can.

> now the city has a bunch of more soulless condos and is horribly congested

The first bit is a taste thing; obviously lots of people view modern sprawl as "soulless" too.

But the latter point is just plain wrong. Dense housing IMPROVES traffic congestion and shortens commutes, always, everywhere, markedly. And it's for a bleedingly obvious reason: pack people in closer together and they don't have to travel as far to get where they're going. QED.

What you're imagining is some kind of fantasy hometown, which never increased in population and whose economy never developed. I mean, it's true. Forgotten ghost towns have very little traffic and quirky soulful architecture, c.f. Detroit. Everyone agrees that's a bad thing, though.

more soulless condos

If you want soul move to New Orleans. Meanwhile people need comfortable places to live that don't make them indentured servants for the rest of their lives. I'll take a neighborhood with walkability and density over an old drafty brick building with no grocery stores any day.