I think you are right that a lot of Americans do not want dense housing. One thing we are missing, especially on the west coast, is good public transportation. Its not that I don't mind driving as much as that I don't have a choice. I'd love to take a train/subway to work or to the next town over or to the big city nearby - but those trains do not exist.

I just moved back to France after living 2 years in Phoenix. You can't rely on public transportation, I don't want to wait for a freaking bus to go get milk. I want density enough that there will be a shop I can walk to. public transportation, is good for important planed travel like going to work, but not for small stuff like going to the pharmacy or the gym or going from shop to shop to find the couch of your dreams.

Where I live I can walk or bike to shops easy enough but getting across town is something else entirely.

Without dense housing, trains are just unfeasible. It'd take an absolutely massive network to spiderweb out into the vast suburbs of most cities and the costs would be beyond belief.

Are there buses?

I used to live in Palo Alto. There’s VTA (bus) and Caltrain. Stops are few and far between so getting to and from the stops are in and of itself a problem. Buses tend to arrive every 15 minutes (or longer) I believe? Pretty infrequent. And outside peak hours there’s usually like one Caltrain an hour, so missing one really sucks.

I had a colleague who had to travel frequently between Stanford and Berkeley (slightly unusual); it’s a sub-hour drive, but easily takes ~3 hours or more via public transit.

P.S. At least the Valley is fairly bike-friendly by U.S. standard.

Yup - and everything is 2 stories or less. Nothing gets built, not because of demand, but because zoning laws. There’s no reason other than the city of Palo Alto won’t allow tall buildings to be built - the less that is built the more wealth homeowners and real estate investors get.

> the less that is built the more wealth homeowners and real estate investors get.

that's not the motivation of many people who don't want tall buildings. Many of them don't want them because they don't like living near them.

In town, yes. Between towns, maybe/sort of/infrequently.

I can drive to work in 15 minutes. The bus takes over an hour including 30 minutes of walking. There are no bike lanes between home and work, its possible to bike it but really not safe - I'd guess the bike would take about 40 minutes.

I'd imagine if a larger percentage of people took the bus, there could be much more frequent buses and dramatically less traffic on the roads making for faster busses.