I live in Wilmington, NC and they are building THOUSANDS of apartments. Everywhere you look there are 3 and 4 story buildings under construction.
First off, that doesn’t encourage home ownership and secondly, it tells me that the powers that be are doing everything they can to discourage it and prevent it. My mortgage payment on a 4 bedroom/ 2 story 3 year old home is less than half of a 2 bedroom apt here.
Here in North Idaho there is construction everywhere. Lots of new housing developments going in as well as apartment complexes. They seem to have shrunk the minimum lot size for a house down to 1/6 or 1/7 of an acre. You can pass the sugar bowl back and forth between houses without going outside.
Traffic, overcrowding, noise, congestion...ugh. People moved here to get away from that.