Comment by dguest

I think what you are talking about is called "tragedy of the anticommons" [1].

Who gets to decide if an airport or data center gets built is a complicated question. But there are other options to keeping one party in the dark via NDAs. On one extreme we have eminent domain, on the other there's just buying out the local community transparently.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_anticommons