It happened in Southern California. In the area where I grew up the cities allowed developers to build hundreds of homes at a time - it's probably four times as dense as it was when I lived there.

Orange groves and strawberry fields and outdoor movie theaters and old military bases were all leveled and turned into housing tracts. But housing didn't get any cheaper - the state added 20 million people from 1970 to 2010, because there were jobs and it had the reputation of being a nice place to live.