alt Hacker News> nearly every city in the Western world banned densification.
I mean thats not true, as you well know. London put a massive belt around it to stop it from growing, which means its artificially dense. Its population density is 4/5x of amsterdam.
The US has a predilection for urban sprawl, but elsewhere thats not the case so much in Europe because land is expensive.
"Residents of the London neighborhood South Tottenham recently persuaded their local councils to let them double the height of their houses", says the article, so evidently there was a restriction on height there. Elsewhere in London there are tower blocks, of course.