Inefficiency in public infrastructure works might be a cost of a much higher degree of personal and political freedoms.
Apparent efficiencies in public infrastructure works might be short-lived in a centrally directed economy and/or hides deep inefficiences elsewhere in the system.
(It might also be that 1960s stucco houses are preferable to dense apartment living for many people, and that Op misses the forest for the trees in the wider context of why and for whom anything is built anywhere).
I'm not in the USA or China though. Take with grains of salt.
As always when talking about housing, only contrasting between HonkKong style density and US subburban sprawl is completely false view. Housing should be very diverse and historically was. Townhouses, Rowhouses, mini-apartment buildings, courtyard style, twin house and so on and so on.
If it was about preference one would think it would result in a lot of diversity (as it has historically), and not 2 pretty strict categories.
We also have evidence that old streetcar subburbs now fetch an insane price. So these kinds of neighborhoods are impossible to build now, but have high demand.
Where I live in Europe, you can still have single family homes but there are also lots of other building types around it. So there is clear evidence that if there are fewer restrictions, people have choices to live in lots of different places. Japan has the same thing as well. It seems pretty consistent, in most of the world that if you give people options, many people choice many different things.
That just outside of all the historical knowledge we have about everything that was done to enforce these patterns. There are to many things to list here but I assure you, there are a lot of them.
Roads and highways are inherently public infrastructure and cars doesn't indicate personal and political freedom. They are just a mean to achieving personal mobility just as trains and bikes are.
Look at China, there are highways and roads and streets filled with cars and traffic congestion.
To say that political and personal freedom indicates why we are stuck in this quagmire is to ignore the role of suffocating zoning regulations and other mechanisms that enforces a car centric worldview of American politicans and planners.
Apparent efficiencies in public infrastructure works might be short-lived in a centrally directed economy and/or hides deep inefficiences elsewhere in the system.
(It might also be that 1960s stucco houses are preferable to dense apartment living for many people, and that Op misses the forest for the trees in the wider context of why and for whom anything is built anywhere).
I'm not in the USA or China though. Take with grains of salt.