You can blame property tax funded roads and state sales tax funded electrical.
In absolute dollars, especially on the order of decades, medium density (3-5 stories, depending on foundation needs up to 10) is the "maximally" efficient housing right now. As building materials and efficiency improve, denser structures become more economical, but the fundamental reality is that the cost of the infrastructure to support rural or suburban areas are gigantic, on such an order that while building wood houses in the forest is cheaper in the immediate term than concrete, supplying it with infrastructure access is dramatically more costly.
But we subsidize private real estate with public infrastructure paid for by not-the-developer. It biases the market towards less dense housing because the costs are absorbed by either an entire township, the entire state, or the entire country.
In absolute dollars, especially on the order of decades, medium density (3-5 stories, depending on foundation needs up to 10) is the "maximally" efficient housing right now. As building materials and efficiency improve, denser structures become more economical, but the fundamental reality is that the cost of the infrastructure to support rural or suburban areas are gigantic, on such an order that while building wood houses in the forest is cheaper in the immediate term than concrete, supplying it with infrastructure access is dramatically more costly.
But we subsidize private real estate with public infrastructure paid for by not-the-developer. It biases the market towards less dense housing because the costs are absorbed by either an entire township, the entire state, or the entire country.