I'm more in line with the new urbanists here: I'd like to see increased housing stock in general instead of focusing on enforcing the NIMBY's to deal with affordable housing, which is a loaded term these days. I mean, I want the NIMBY's to be in pain, but by requiring them to accept the construction of town-appropriate housing stock.

Rich town? Luxury Condo's/Townhomes/Duplexes, split lots, ADU's, Luxury Apartments within small MUDs.

Urban? MUD's as far as the eye can see, getting taller and more dense as you get closer to public transit.

Working-class Burbs? Smaller lots, Townhomes, Duplexes, ADU's, and moderately sized MUDs with a focus on building walkable neighborhoods suitable for regional transit.

Rural? ADU's, smaller lot sizes, support for transforming town centers into walkable areas potentially suitable for spoke transit.

How you do it? This is the hard part. This is my idea, but I can't point to anything guaranteeing it would work:

• In a state this small, you can codify zoning at the state level. Lot size, min house size, ADU allowances, commercial/industrial usage, home business usage. Put those together in a package of different zones. You would have a lot of these in various combinations. Ex:
  • h2 - min lot size 2 acres, min house size 2000 sq ft, 1 primary residence allowed, 1 ADU allowed per 1 acres
  • h4 - min lot size 1 acres, min house size 1600 sq ft, 2 primary residence allowed - or - 2 ADU allowed
  • c1 - min lot size 1 acre, residential & commercial use allowed *insert limits on commercial space*
• Towns & cities get to carve out neighborhood tracts as a higher-level abstraction
• Towns & cities develop their own progression ladders (h1 -> h2 -> c1 -> c3 -> ...)
• Towns & cities apply progression ladder to neighborhood tract
• Neighborhood tract automatically advances to the next stage on the progression ladder when the current tract is filled with 50% of the properties fitting the current level.
• Towns & cities are still allowed to create neighborhood overlay districts when they wish to promote some dramatically different form of development, as well as historic district overlays when they wish to maintain areas.
• Towns & cities are not blocked from adopting "look & feel" amendments, but appeals process should be codified

Benefits:

• The zoning laws are cohesive across the state, improving predictability and enforcement
• Towns & Cities still control how their neighborhoods are developed. Tracts can be as large or small as they feel. Adding more lots to a tract protects it from advancing quickly along the ladder, but also opens more lots to be developed in a more dense fashion.
• NIMBY's still have some measure of power, building long progression ladders before any density is truly added, allowing tracts to be declared historic and protected from additional development
• YIMBY's & new urbanists get to design the transit centric developments of their dreams.
• Towns can develop naturally as population patterns demand more housing, creating new or larger walkable town centers
• Tracts, over time, will be a dynamic mix of 3 different density patterns: leftovers from the earliest, majority from the previous, new developments from the next level of density.
• Discourages huge, suburban housing developments as the next tier is likely to be a modest increase in density rather than a bunch of small lots.

Downsides:

• Getting it through the NIMBY's in the first place will be hard because by its very nature it's encouraging a change in current density
• Doesn't explicitly force transit-centric development, this would need to be intentional
• Doesn't explicitly force affordable housing construction, which wouldn't make the progressive camp happy