In California, there's currently a fight between the state government, which wants cities to allow more housing, and local governments, which are opposed to higher density housing because the NIMBYs ("not in my back yard") fight it. The restrictive zoning laws are at the local level, not the state level.
> The restrictive zoning laws are at the local level, not the state level.
True, but the restrictive zoning laws are made possible at the state level.
A thread here on HN a few weeks ago mentioned Japan which they described as having basically 5 classifications for "types of things you can do on land you own", ranging from "essentially anything at all" to "notable limitations". Within whatever classification your land is given, you can do whatever you want, local neighborhood be damned.
I don't know if that's an accurate description, but it sounds like a system with a very different set of tradeoffs than the one found across the USA.
