I would say that building regulations are precisely what is causing the the area to following an LA-style trajectory. San Francisco is one thing, and reasonably dense. But the huge sprawl of Palo Alto, Mountain View, Santa Clara, Cupertino, Gilroy, Los Gatos, etc., is caused by all these communities wanting to be LA-style suburbs with no dense housing, and enacting laws accordingly.
Hmm, there's a HUGE difference between LA-style suburbs and the Bay Area. In LA-style suburbs, you have drive about 10 miles to a shopping mall, i.e., residental areas have no businesses apart from the occassional gas station.
That's because these areas were unpopulated desert or something which got converted into housing.
By contrast, each of the towns in the Bay Area was a standalone town of its own with its own downtown and rail station etc for a long time. Even today, most Bay Area towns are reasonably mixed wrt residental and business.
All (afaik) new construction for about 10 years has been townhomes, not single-family homes, so I'm not even sure this author is correct wrt housing code.
I have to say - whenever I drive the 101 - I'm reminded of LA. It's actually less dense than most of LA. I live in the Richmond which is probably about twice as dense housing wise as most of LA's working class neighborhoods.
