>Requiring sewers is hardly "planning". You can't really plan growth. Of course you can! "Gee, we're growing like a weed so now we need to annex the areas surr

>Requiring sewers is hardly "planning". You can't really plan growth. Of course you can! "Gee, we're growing like a weed so now we need to annex the areas surrounding us." "Hey developers, you're required to hook up to city sewerage, which we'll supply because that's what responsible cities do." Done. If you want another good example of failure to plan look at all the development in Addicks Reservoir in Houston. It was trivial to plan for growth by banning development in the 100 year flood plain. We chose not to. Now 40 years too late we're trying to kinda sorta but not really regulate in the 500 year flood plain. Having the political wherewithal to just say "You know what? No building houses in the flood plain!" would have saved the taxpayers billions. But nobody had the stones to tell developers no. So those developers got to build in a risky spot and walk away with the profits while shifting the risk to taxpayers.