Tyson Dirksen: We Don’t Need Skyscrapers to Fix Housing — We Need Walkable, Mid-Rise Cities

America’s housing crisis isn’t just about cost. It’s about form.

For years, the debate has been framed around extremes: preserve single-family neighborhoods at all costs, or build skyscrapers and megaprojects to force density into a few downtown blocks. That false choice has stalled progress and distorted what actually works.

“We’ve convinced ourselves that housing has to be either low-density sprawl or high-rise towers,” real estate developer Tyson Dirksen says. “But most of the cities we admire solved housing without either extreme.”

This article is a continuation of the argument laid out in Housing in America Is Broken — Here’s How Tyson Dirksen Thinks We Fix It, which focused on the structural causes of the crisis: decades of underbuilding, restrictive zoning, slow approvals, and a construction industry that hasn’t modernized. The next question is straightforward: once we fix those systems, what should we actually build?

Dirksen’s answer is clear. Across most urban neighborhoods, cities should allow four to eight stories by right. Along major transit corridors and high-capacity nodes, they should allow eight to twelve stories. Not as exceptions, but as the default.

“This is the height range where density works, neighborhoods function, and projects actually pencil,” Dirksen says. “It’s not radical. It’s how successful cities have been built for over a century.”

The Precedent Is Hiding in Plain Sight

Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Vienna are often cited as models for livability, affordability, and density. What they share is not skyscrapers, but consistency. Most residential buildings in these cities fall between four and seven stories, with modest increases near transit or major boulevards. Paris alone houses more than 20,000 people per square mile without a skyline dominated by towers.

“They didn’t build taller,” Dirksen notes. “They built mid-rise everywhere.”

That distinction matters. Density distributed across entire cities produces more housing, more stability, and less risk than concentrating supply in a handful of megaprojects. Research from the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation consistently shows that restrictive zoning and limited areas for multifamily housing significantly constrain supply and drive up per-unit costs.

Why Mid-Rise Density Changes Daily Life

The real advantage of four- to eight-story neighborhoods isn’t just unit count. It’s what that density enables.

At this scale, neighborhoods can support corner stores, bakeries, cafés, childcare, small clinics, and everyday services within walking distance. Residents don’t need to leave their neighborhood for basic needs. Streets stay active throughout the day. Small businesses have enough foot traffic to survive.

“This is the density where neighborhoods become complete,” Dirksen says. “You don’t need a car for every errand. You can walk for food, services, and daily life.”

Single-family zoning spreads residents too thin to support local commerce. High-rise districts often concentrate residents vertically while separating uses horizontally, forcing people to travel for basic needs. Mid-rise neighborhoods strike the balance—dense enough to sustain walkability, but still human in scale.

Urban economists and planners have long noted that walkable density correlates with lower household transportation costs, improved public health, and stronger local economies. In the U.S., where housing and transportation together account for nearly half of household expenses (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics), that matters.

The Construction Sweet Spot

Mid-rise density also aligns with how housing can be built more efficiently.

Traditional U.S. construction is slow and fragmented. Every project is treated as a one-off prototype, driving up costs and timelines. That inefficiency is well-documented by the BLS, which shows construction productivity lagging behind nearly every other major sector.

Four- to twelve-story buildings sit in a critical sweet spot for modern construction systems. Concrete cores provide fire safety and seismic resilience. Mass-timber structural frames reduce embodied carbon and speed assembly. Prefabricated, panelized facade systems compress schedules, improve quality control, and reduce labor risk.

“At this height, manufacturing principles finally work,” Dirksen explains. “You get repeatability without triggering high-rise costs. That’s the difference between housing as a one-off art project and housing as infrastructure.”

Why Skyscrapers Aren’t the Answer

High-rises have a role, but they are a poor primary solution to a housing shortage. They cost significantly more per unit, take longer to permit and build, rely on volatile capital markets, and provoke political backlash. When one tower fails, thousands of units disappear with it.

Freddie Mac estimates the U.S. housing shortage is in the millions of units. That gap cannot be closed tower by tower.

“Small increases in height, multiplied across a city, outperform a handful of towers every time,” Dirksen says. “It’s math, not ideology.”

A Practical Path Forward

If cities legalized four to eight stories by right across most urban neighborhoods, and allowed eight to twelve stories at transit-oriented sites, they could unlock faster housing delivery, lower per-unit costs, and more walkable communities—without overwhelming infrastructure or neighborhoods.

Paired with streamlined approvals and industrialized construction, this approach offers a realistic, politically viable path out of the crisis.

America’s housing shortage is not a height problem. It’s a consistency problem.

“We’ve underbuilt the kind of housing cities actually need,” Dirksen says. “The fix isn’t building higher. It’s building smarter—and building it everywhere.”

The solution isn’t hiding in the clouds. It’s been standing at five to seven stories all along.