Check out what they are doing in Tokyo for example. I am talking about allowing more commercial and low industrial usage mixed in with residential.

I get the point of packing people as tightly together as possible and the issue of R1 having very few people paying for lots of roads and other infrastructure, driving communities into debt. (For real, how shit is this whole concept?)

But I don't think you need to go that far. Instead of everyone needing to drive 20km that way, it would already do a world of good if people had to go 2km in random directions.

Yes, this might or might not be problematic for mass transit. But you could use that to play around with different densities. Have more money? Get more land. Have less money? Get less land. But mix it up more as a whole.

I don't think you'll be able to turn north America into Amsterdam. (And trying to will get you lots of ideological pushback)

But maybe you don't have to. (This is assuming electric, maybe even autonomous, cars, renewable energy...) But just mixing things up a bit more would be a step in the right direction. Even if the rest stays the same.