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1/ A few hundred single-family homeowners want an agreement that will prevent any of them from increasing density. How can they coordinate this?
2/ Ideally, all property owners would sign a contract with mutually agreed-upon land-use restrictions. Or maybe they would form joint private ownership of all the land. Or perhaps they would find some other arrangement.
Well...what does the law say?
Well...what does the law say?
3/ The law says they can incorporate as a mini-govt (town, village, etc) that has the legal ability to decide land use. It’s not ideal, as it involves majority voting -- and holdouts end up in the minority and lose rights. But this is what was allowed, and so it was done.
4/ Libertarians and communists (however they market themselves) agree that local land-use control is bad. You’re incorporated? Too bad, suckers. Their solution is to place you and everyone else under the jurisdiction of a single central govt, presumably controlled by them.
5/ The libertarian utopia pretends away land-use externalities. “No need to worry about the house next door becoming a brothel or a methadone clinic. It’s not economically efficient -- even though it would be pretty funny if it did happen!”
6/ And a communist-socialist-progressive land-use utopia would be based on vengeance against disfavored classes in order to conform to a set of malevolent political slogans. You live as they tell you to live.
7/ When land use is controlled by central governments, the principle of property owners entering into contracts is replaced by planners, politicians, and bureaucrats making decisions on behalf of narrow constituencies -- and of course, themselves.
8/8 The solution is local control by people with skin in the game. You want 2-acre zoning? OK, you and your neighbors can form a pact & pay for it. You want a dense city? OK, pay for your subways, your bloated political bureaucracies -- and enjoy your centralized land-use regs.
