Building dense cities was California’s cure for the housing crisis. Then came coronavirus

For more than a decade, California lawmakers have pushed with increasing urgency to build more housing near transit stops and job centers. Density, they’ve reasoned, is the best way to control the exploding cost of living and reduce residents’ reliance on carbon-spewing vehicles in a state best known for its sprawling suburbs.

But now density has a new foe: the coronavirus.

Skeptics of greater urbanization say the pandemic has proved that they were right all along, pointing to orders from public health officials to use social distancing to slow the...