Housing can be built vertically.

At significantly higher cost. If you’ll excuse a very broad brushstroke, this is why California — with lots of land — builds so many single-story buildings compared to the UK where there is so little land available for construction. (That the difference is in part due to policy doesn’t change that there is less availability).

I’m looking forward to more automation in construction so that vertical is not significantly more expensive.

==At significantly higher cost.==

Significantly higher building costs, but lower land acquisition costs.

Excerpt from a BuildZoom analysis:

"The high cost of housing in expensive coastal metros is not driven by construction costs. It is driven by the high cost of land which, in turn, reflects a scarcity of zoned units, not a scarcity of land per se."

https://www.buildzoom.com/blog/paying-for-dirt-where-have-ho...

==That the difference is in part due to policy doesn’t change that there is less availability==

Except the current policy explicitly limits the availability, they are one in the same.

Is this some special case? I can’t find sources listing it that high.