The other lesson might be that 'city' is too broad a term. Some cities are standalone, some are just arbitrary boundaries within a metropolis. Maybe the latter should be eliminated and replaced with a metropolis-wide city.
Agreed, there should be a strict framework within such planning happens, to avoid the housing crisis that CA cities have created for those that don't own land. Japan is a great inspiration for planning like this. US planning, the entire field, is absolutely abhorrent, and should really be scrapped and rebuilt from scratch.
