It's environmental as much as it is zoning that drives the development you see.

You literally can't build the kind of "concrete jungle" that you used to be able to because of environmental.

Like a store with a few parking spaces up front, the building and an alley around the back to one parking space (for the staff) and the dumpster is literally illegal without a multimillion dollar stormwater treatment system or a bunch of extra land (i.e. suburban sprawl).

This is also why you only ever see <low number> family houses on 1/16th to 1/8 acre (depending on the sqft of the house + parking) and the it jumps right to N-over-Y megacorp apartment blocks (maybe with retail on the bottom).