Comment by 10111001
13 hours ago
> And this is why the local community absolutely should not have any more say about a new development than a hypothetical someone who would like to live there, but can't, because there is no available housing.
If you start giving "hypothetical people" a say, you stop having democracy. You can invent as many hypothetical people as you want to force any outcome.
And real democracy requires local control. A distant democratically-elected government making centralized decisions may just as well be replaced by a tyrant, given how unresponsive it will be to your concerns.
The "hypothetical people" are in actuality all the other voters in your country. Lots of people are "pro-development, just anti-development near themselves".
Do you think that the Japanese system where permitting is centralized away from local government antidemocratic?
A real democracy requires local control for some things, but what makes zoning one of those things?
> A real democracy requires local control for some things, but what makes zoning one of those things?
Because it's one of the biggest things that affects your local environment?
So it's the "bigness" of it?
But aren't there other salient factors? Is energy policy any less "big" than zoning in its effect on your local environment? The thing is, it's just really hard to get certain policies to work right when they are set at too small a scale -- even if they have a big effect at a small scale.
When I consider the housing situation, I am starting to think that land use policy seems to be that kind of thing.
Ultimately, cities are granted a charter by the state. It's not a given that they can control zoning, the location of people's garage doors, &c. We can think about these things and decide.