You may be relieved to find that California is extremely restrictive with respect to building skyscrapers and considered by many to be incredibly accommodating of private automobiles.

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.

> It seems like there should be an opportunity to replace a lot of these with something like the 4-5 story buildings you see in Paris, for instance

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?

Every city has replaced old housing with new over time. Should there still be straw huts on the Seine?

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

>Every city has replaced old housing with new over time.

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.

> Every city has replaced old housing with new over time. Should there still be straw huts on the Seine?

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?

Certainly, but those buildings are not very old.