I hope we don't just settle for substandard housing cobbled together from ADUs and converted office buildings... I would like to see governments stepping up to raise the funds to buy out neighborhoods at a fair price and converting them into efficient, humane urban areas.
You take what you can get, but in my area it seems most new housing is either smashed up against a freeway or a mish-mash of car-dependent ADUs. Future generations deserve better.
Given government regulations are the reason many neighbourhoods turn into the things you dislike, I sincerely doubt giving them yet more responsibility and control would help.
Just like many other big cities in the US, downtown Boston definitely has brutalist areas, probably due to being built back when brutalism was a common style -- for example, Boston city hall is in brutalist style [1]. However, the most common architectural style in Boston is red-brick. Even some modern high-risers are built to look in this style.
I'm trying to say that I hope we do not stop putting significant effort towards housing once we have fulfilled whatever quota we're trying to achieve. If we add units with converted office buildings, ADUs and other quick fixes, we may lose the drive to create dense, humane, pleasurable environments which we will need to coax folks back to efficient living in the urban areas(which must happen absent a serious commitment to carbon-neutral energy).
You take what you can get, but in my area it seems most new housing is either smashed up against a freeway or a mish-mash of car-dependent ADUs. Future generations deserve better.