Everyone agrees that more housing needs to be built. The problem is that everyone wants it to be built elsewhere. This is especially strong in wealthier neighborhood that have the resources to influence politics. That's one reason why we gentrify poor neighborhood and build nothing in wealthier neighborhoods while often times protecting them as historic.
The solution is to remove control from local groups. That also would address a huge part of the many committees you need approval from to build something which is another massive driver of costs and deterrent to build especially cheaper units.
I agree removing local control is a good idea. One way to think about it is that there's kind of a game-theory problem where we have a bunch of groups that have realized they can push a cost to someone else. This results in bad and often unfair outcomes, like less powerful (poorer) neighborhoods seeing a ton of gentrification. By moving the decision-making up a level, we can mediate between the groups to get a fairer outcome. There are not magic bullets, and people have to be engaged with politics to make this happen, but it is possible.
I think the other thing that's not talked about enough is that building more housing has benefits for incumbents. If more housing is built in my neighborhood, my neighborhood will support more local businesses and other amenities which I can enjoy. It also means there are more social connections available. Additionally, population growth drives economic growth, which ensures that their locality remains vibrant. The ideology where we view more humans as strictly a cost, and never a benefit drives a lot of problems in our society IMO.
You'd better have a really, really darn good reason for throwing out democracy. Otherwise this is basically calling for taking away what someone else has just because we want it.
The state and national governments are also elected in my country, so fortunately democracy prevails! As I said in my comment, in my view there are issues that require coordination at a higher level, because otherwise it's just a game of shoving externalities onto others.
The solution is to remove control from local groups. That also would address a huge part of the many committees you need approval from to build something which is another massive driver of costs and deterrent to build especially cheaper units.