People who intend to continue living somewhere don't care about the price of their asset per se (they're not going to sell it), and dense zoning tends to increase land prices anyway. Opposition to density is about quality of life.
In a related phenomenon, people will pay more to be around better neighbors (which you can see reflected in price differences across similar houses in similar areas but in different school catchment areas). It makes some sense that people will pay as much as they can to be in a better area with better kids when you look at the state and direction of public education. If you can't afford private school, that's basically your only lever to try to buy quality. If you can, you still have a tradeoff that you could spend ~13k/yr/kid on tuition or add 200k/kid to your home budget to live in an area with better public schools. Living in a more affluent area carries other QoL benefits as well of course.
In a related phenomenon, people will pay more to be around better neighbors (which you can see reflected in price differences across similar houses in similar areas but in different school catchment areas). It makes some sense that people will pay as much as they can to be in a better area with better kids when you look at the state and direction of public education. If you can't afford private school, that's basically your only lever to try to buy quality. If you can, you still have a tradeoff that you could spend ~13k/yr/kid on tuition or add 200k/kid to your home budget to live in an area with better public schools. Living in a more affluent area carries other QoL benefits as well of course.