> Central planning is almost assured to fail miserably tiling the power more into the hands of rich people while screwing up small people. This is not true. I

> Central planning is almost assured to fail miserably tiling the power more into the hands of rich people while screwing up small people. This is not true. I encourage people to study the growth of Asian cities like Bangkok, Shanghai, and Tokyo. Central planning, contrary to simplistic ideological beliefs, is an excellent way to ensure the cities actually grow and grow equitably. Leaving these decisions to minor localities is a recipe for exactly what we see in California where residents vote in their own favor which is very often not for smooth, long-term growth. > The best solution is to relax zoning laws so that the average rents go down till they reach a point where they meet the average. More fantasy. It's very strange how Americans are obsessed with this idea that all their urban problems are due to zoning. At this point it's like this purely mythical enemy, a la Communism, which is rampaging across the land and must be fought on every street corner. This despite that we can look abroad and see very clear examples of cities that grow because of strong regulation. (Here Singapore is the classic example.) It's almost like zoning can be used for different purposes? > The real problem with California is that the politicians have put ridiculous elitist objectives such as climate change over sensible and practical objectives such as roof over the head of working middle class people. This is just meaningless nonsense. But all of this does highlight why things won't get better. Americans are ideologically committed to policies that just don't work. SB827 was a bold attempt to reverse this -- remove power from local governments and rezone the already-dense cities to promote growth rather than restrict it -- but it never even made it out of the committee.