It's not so black and white. It's both. Local governments are the gatekeepers but they allow outside interests with sufficient power to rewrite their zoning laws.
A local twp near me as expressed in their meeting minutes let's outside interests redline and rewrite their zoning laws, given enough capital and sway. It's very specific to the municipality, the mechanisms and processes they have in law to change the current ones, and the local base it is comprised of.
Anyone with money and persistence can get variances in the local government. Try to be a regular person and get things done--you'll rapidly end up giving up.
Last time I checked it was the government preventing me from building more dense housing
Mega-corp didnt have problems with getting approval (and a healthy cash grant to build it) for the exact same application. I wonder what they did differently?
Simple: they actually benefit from the status quo. If only a very limited land supply is available for densification (say like maybe 5% of the city) then that land supply is fairly easy for a few players to corner.
Comments
Last time I checked it was the government preventing me from building more dense housing as well as requiring parking minimums.
It's not so black and white. It's both. Local governments are the gatekeepers but they allow outside interests with sufficient power to rewrite their zoning laws.
A local twp near me as expressed in their meeting minutes let's outside interests redline and rewrite their zoning laws, given enough capital and sway. It's very specific to the municipality, the mechanisms and processes they have in law to change the current ones, and the local base it is comprised of.
Anyone with money and persistence can get variances in the local government. Try to be a regular person and get things done--you'll rapidly end up giving up.
Mega-corp didnt have problems with getting approval (and a healthy cash grant to build it) for the exact same application. I wonder what they did differently?
Simple: they actually benefit from the status quo. If only a very limited land supply is available for densification (say like maybe 5% of the city) then that land supply is fairly easy for a few players to corner.
And they "left" a Cadillac with $200,000 cash in the boot on the driveway of the person making the planning decisions.