The only real factor here is supply/demand. There are no good ways to control demand, so the only solution is to increase supply. Here are some ideas:
* Get rid of anti-dorm laws. There are laws in a lot of places that limit dorm style living by limiting the number of unrelated adults who can live in the same residence. However, this is the most economically efficient living situation.
* Change zoning. A lot of cities have most of their residential land zoned for single family only. Just change everything to multi-family. Remove requirements like having to conform to the character of the neighborhood, having to build parking spots per residence, having to have increased height based setbacks, needing to have a certain amount of land reserved for green space, etc.
* Remove construction limits. A lot of places have a building plan where they only approve so much building over a period of time. Just say yes. Change to a "shall issue" model, where the government needs an affirmative reason to deny a permit and has to do it within a certain time period for certain well-recognized reasons.
I'm not saying that all of these are good ideas. There are problems with all of them. And all of them will be unpopular.
But they should all increase the supply of housing. Which is the same thing as decreasing property values. Which is why they're all un-popular.
Cities are far more efficient than having everyone smeared across vast swaths of suburbia. And changing culture in a targeted way is not exactly an easy thing to do.
I don't think that's possible (other than indirectly such as by improving high speed rail so people can benefit from cities without living there). By their nature cities provide greater access to desirable amenities such as art, culture, museums, and niche hobbies.
For what it's worth, when I moved to NYC I was surprised that there were so many parks. I haven't looked into the history in order to confirm this, but it looks to me like as rectangular buildings were constructed on pieces of land the extra "corners" got turned into parks; resulting in tiny triangular parks all over the place.
There are: instead of just letting every DAX or international megacorp to settle in Munich/Berlin or expand at will, force them to go to other cities instead.
The only thing in that list that reduces the quality of living is removing green space requirements. Having a multi-family building in your neighborhood doesn't affect your single-family home.
Reducing parking requirements _may_ reduce quality of living, if public transportation isn't an option.
Japan solves the parking problem by requiring you to have an off-street parking space to own a car. Removing street parking increases the amount of land available for use, makes the city more walkable (and bikeable) and reduces car ownership.
The only real factor here is supply/demand. There are no good ways to control demand, so the only solution is to increase supply. Here are some ideas:
* Get rid of anti-dorm laws. There are laws in a lot of places that limit dorm style living by limiting the number of unrelated adults who can live in the same residence. However, this is the most economically efficient living situation.
* Change zoning. A lot of cities have most of their residential land zoned for single family only. Just change everything to multi-family. Remove requirements like having to conform to the character of the neighborhood, having to build parking spots per residence, having to have increased height based setbacks, needing to have a certain amount of land reserved for green space, etc.
* Remove construction limits. A lot of places have a building plan where they only approve so much building over a period of time. Just say yes. Change to a "shall issue" model, where the government needs an affirmative reason to deny a permit and has to do it within a certain time period for certain well-recognized reasons.
I'm not saying that all of these are good ideas. There are problems with all of them. And all of them will be unpopular.
But they should all increase the supply of housing. Which is the same thing as decreasing property values. Which is why they're all un-popular.