Shanghai has lots of high rises; well, they are mostly 30 story apartment buildings that can be reliably built with concrete and unskilled labor. Yet, there is a lot of speculation market in the China so prices are still high even if supply expands (and many apartments are empty because they are just being used as speculative investments). One of the reason I didn't look at Shanghai was commute times (Microsoft's Shanghai office is in the boonies vs. Beijing where the office is at least inside the 4th ring rood).
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "high rises", but I don't think this is true. I live in Tokyo, inside a 10+ floor building, that's surrounded by similar buildings.
Just off the top of my head, I can think of a lot of places with multiple blocks full of high rises, such as Ginza, Shibuya, Akihabara, etc
The solution is to peg it to job growth. Today in nyc you have nimbys in greenwich village who hope it stays as it looked the last 50 years for the next 50 years. Such a neighborhood near so many jobs and transit cannot remain a mid rise tenement district until the end of time.
Why do so many people here take for granted that living in Asian-style megacities is inevitable, or even remotely desirable? I really don't want to live in such a place.
You don't have to. All it takes is a few that will soak up the population that want affordable housing. 99% of the rest of the land will be left for you to live in as you see fit. Just don't expect your housing to be an investment or subsidies for your extra cost of infrastructure and energy.
1) build high-rises
2) build more metro lines
Look at Tokio or Shanghai, as an example.