For urban areas where it could potentially work, corruption; classism; NIMBY; poor education about taxes, their uses, and their benefits; and selfishness.
For inter-city, some of the above but also getting the property on which to do it seems to be a huge pain in the ass when looking at projects in Cali or proposals for others such as Texas.
Japan is slowly getting better, but it's a long road ahead. There are more laws and they're actually enforcing some of them with regard to harassment and hours worked (a lot of people would clock out and keep working, but they're trying to make the penalties bit enough to stop it from what I hear. My company is certainly strict about it).
It'd be nice to have european-level vacations before I retire, but that I don't see happening