Comment by solidsnack9000

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.