Build concrete instead of wood, and the added cost simply comes out of developers' profit margin? That one is pretty amusing. First of all, that would need to be developers plus their financiers, the latter representing most of the money. Financiers invest where they'll get a good return, with good odds of not losing their money instead. If your project is a worse bet than the stock market, you won't get money and won't build. Profit margins vary, but they tend to pull themselves back to a certain range -- pulled down by competition, pulled up because things don't get built if the margins aren't projected to be good enough.
You can legislate taste up to a point, with marginal success. The cost is almost universally higher prices due to process, materials, and so on. If the process makes developers control land for an extra six months that's a significant cost. If the process means more design work, that's cost. Any uncertainty means fewer will even start the process unless the margins are higher (equilibrium can be higher margins in some cities for this reason, but that omits the increased percentage of projects that don't get built).
As a general contractor that gets hired to build concrete and not much woodframe (in another city) I'd love for more projects to go concrete. But a lot of woodframe happens in my city too, for the same reasons.
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"Alot" has never been a word.
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