Cities are still too low of a government level, because cities can choose to reap the rewards of a booming metro area economy, while pushing housing supply and the associated growing pains onto everyone else. See: my native bay area, and its disastrous housing situation.
Bare minimum, you need to solve this at the metro area level. But since metro area governments don't really exist (at least in the US), it has to be the state. Which is exactly what's happening right now in the bay area (state law coming into force that's forcing cities to either adopt a serious growth plan that accommodates significantly more housing, or lose their zoning powers entirely).
edit: also note that this
> Individual neighborhoods can’t block a city-wide vote.
isn't really accurate. It's common to have zoning that allows for more housing on paper, but then the existence of community meetings that the housing commission or whoever listens to means that developers have to abide whatever the neighborhood residents at the meetings say they want, and sometimes what they want is no denser housing near themselves for any reason.
Just because you can build more on paper doesn't mean you can actually build. The US largely doesn't have "as of right" development rules. There's one set of transparent regulations that are put there democratically, and another set of opaque regulations that exist only in the minds of whichever locals are most motivated to show up to the neighborhood meetings.
Bare minimum, you need to solve this at the metro area level. But since metro area governments don't really exist (at least in the US), it has to be the state. Which is exactly what's happening right now in the bay area (state law coming into force that's forcing cities to either adopt a serious growth plan that accommodates significantly more housing, or lose their zoning powers entirely).
edit: also note that this
> Individual neighborhoods can’t block a city-wide vote.
isn't really accurate. It's common to have zoning that allows for more housing on paper, but then the existence of community meetings that the housing commission or whoever listens to means that developers have to abide whatever the neighborhood residents at the meetings say they want, and sometimes what they want is no denser housing near themselves for any reason.
Just because you can build more on paper doesn't mean you can actually build. The US largely doesn't have "as of right" development rules. There's one set of transparent regulations that are put there democratically, and another set of opaque regulations that exist only in the minds of whichever locals are most motivated to show up to the neighborhood meetings.