> Housing...? I think that we've seen laissez faire markets can build a certain type of city (car-suburb) in certain conditions (green-field). In cities that already exist... IDk. Housing in europe is not that much better now that socialism is gone. The stuff in the house, way better. The house, nope.

I can't speak for europe's cases. Can you share some data, anecdotes or articles? Housing is also one of the things where every country has its own rules.

For example, in San francisco you have 3 story buildings galore, and in argentina you have 8 story buildings much like spain does. And yet both places, by similar criteria, restrict higher buildings: in SF they dont want taller than 3 stores, and in argentina they dont want anything taller than 12 stories.

Housing has also, globally, been part of a very particular cycle in the last 20 years. First the run up to 2008, and now a decade of rising city populations, pent-up demand and low interest rates.

> Free markets work well when there are nicely sloping supply and demand curves, plenty of competition, and coordination can happen via prices. Price systems can't coordinate the infrastructure & public service requirements of cities. They can't usually affect supply much. All they can do is "allocate" a limited supply, based on wealth. Allocation always happens, whether you use ration cards or markets. At this point, I think half the population might prefer ration cards.

More than half the population are owners, at least in the us and most countries I looked at. So no, they do not want ration cards. Moreover the biggest issue of implementing housing policy is that the locals are permanent but the visitors , even though they are more, dont stay long and dont have the capacity to vote. If San Francisco made a law about construction, and allowed any person that lived more than 1 year in san francisco in the last decade to vote, the renters, foreigners and visitors would land-slide any vote where the local property owners would like get their way. But because that is impractical and impossible, the locals get to put the rules, rules like prop 13, rent control, etc.

Housing IS unique en the aspects you say: land is limited, and thus deciding how to split it is a hard problem. Thankfully the solution old, known and consented by economists: just put a land value tax. Let every piece of land be responsible for the local taxes, and suddenly the locals themselves, being responsible for their expenditures, will vote for construction themselves.