Yes there definitely are possibilities to make more out the existing urban area's. But wherever someone has an idea for building more houses, there always are others that are against it. In your case, building 4-5 story buildings would be seen by some as disturbing the skyline of the city. They'd rather keep their current small city atmosphere.

Sure just replace the rowhouses with skyscrapers and burn the cars.. looking the results of the last elections sounds like your Californian and not Texan values are what worries the Dutch people.. unbelievable

Anyway, this is a gross mischaracterization of my comment. Wanting my child to be able to bike to school safely doesn't mean burning cars. And I explicitly noted Paris since it's an example of a dense city with surprisingly low building heights.

You know what "replace a lot of" means right? Concretely, you are saying that people should leave their homes to make more place for new people..I can imagine why people won't like it.

> I'm originally American and if there were large groups of people moving here from Texas, not learning Dutch, and bringing Texan values I'd be pretty worried.

I think you did a mischaracterization of the Texan values in the first place.. no?

Texas values libertarianism, individualism, the right to bear arms, etc which might be fine but seems out of place here.

They have. But arguably it's hard to move the needle a huge amount by piecemeal replacing 2 story buildings as they come onto the market with 4 story ones.

Where? I remember staying in a 19 century house in Utrecht, which still there... I lived in Germany until some years ago in a 1910 building, which I don't think they will rebuild it that early. I think you came to Europe with a different expectation maybe?

Wealthy. That probably explains some of it.