No developer gets rich by building housing and projects that people dislike. Los Angeles is relatively densely populated. Most people throughout the country are choosing to live away from commercial areas, enjoying the private spaces afforded by single-family homes set back from streets and the mobility and accessibility offered by the private automobile. This lifestyle is not imposed by malignant U.S. policies. Compact development is not a cure for traffic congestion.
Rail transit has an impossible fit to modern cities.
U.S. rail transit investments have been costly failures that have paradoxically resulted in less transit use as bus funds were cannibalized for rail. Los Angeles, as a typical example, has lost more than a fifth of its transit riders since it started spending billions of dollars on rail. Ridership has not increased because most of the rail passengers were lured from buses. Improving air quality has been a major rationale for growth management and other anti-sprawl measures, often by quoting Los Angeles. But air quality in Los Angeles has been improving dramatically year by year, even during its rapid growth phase of the 1980s.