Citation needed? In my experience, SFHowners who live in a primarily residential neighborhood generally don't want condos if they live in Texas or Maine or California.

While Houston doesn't have zoning use restrictions, apparently many neighborhoods have private land covenants that restrict redevelopment: https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2020/01/09/no-zoning-in-Ho... So in practice large projects usually will only occur in less wealthy neighborhoods where residents aren't savvy enough to enforce restrictions, and patterns of development end up looking pretty much like most of California. I'm sure it's still much cheaper to build in Texas, though, because the real costs in California aren't the restrictions, per se, but the uncertainty and time delays. Time is the real budget killer, and a silent one that helps to hide the externalities that policies create.

California has a lot of land, too, and more habitable then texas imo.

People don't want sprawl. The live in sf because it's a city with an urban center. It's why, despite hours of traffic, people live in sf instead of mountain view, cupertino, etc. It REQUIRES densification. Sprawl will not meet this demand.

You are still limited by commute time. Urban sprawl can be costly to the local government, and ultimately the tax payers.

Also, not opposed to building explody chemical plants near residential areas. But I suppose the Oracle folks moving in have enough money to avoid that.

The name "Silicon Valley" refers to the fact that the whole region is perforated with Superfund sites.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfund

That's not what the name refers to.

The semiconductor industry, which is where the name came from, sure was. Scroll to Santa Clara: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_Cal...