> or incredibly remote
Ah, now you're understanding why US cities are so sprawled. Those SFH's are remote, and a good chunk of the people living there want it that way. Those people want a large yard away from a large city while still having things like some stores and a large airport within an hour or so. These people reject the thought of living in a place like New York or Amsterdam or London or other dense cities. They actively vote against expansion or creation of public transit options.
I know there's a lot of media online about people being anti-suburbia, and yeah that's a growing percentage of America. But there's still a massive chunk of the population that will continue to just move out further from the city as you densify or actively fight densification.
As I suggested, those zoning laws aren't writing themselves. They're not being handed down by some far away dictator. They're being written and continued by popularity elected local politicians. Democracy at work.
I've absolutely seen densification efforts massively fought by the people who currently live there. I know people who purposefully moved further out from the city. I've seen neighborhood after neighborhood that seem like nightmares to me get built way out in the middle of nowhere with people clamoring to buy into them even if there are similar purchase-price denser options further in the city. Because, they want a large yard, they want a three car garage, they want five bedrooms and a study and a theater room and a wine humidor closet.
Which buying way out there, it's cheap to have some massive house because the $/sqft for just the lot alone is massively higher in the city. A massive chunk of the value of the home in a city is the land it's on not the structure itself, unless it's a really fancy structure.