If you limit "markets interest" to people who already own property in the area, then yes. It's a sort of bad mixture of politics and markets. People who sit on

If you limit "markets interest" to people who already own property in the area, then yes. It's a sort of bad mixture of politics and markets. People who sit on zoning boards tend to own property in the area (or get money and support from such people), and thus it's not in their interest to increase the supply of housing, as that would decrease the value of their investment. OTOH, the people who'd like to move into the area are not represented in the zoning boards. One partial solution is to make zoning a national level decision rather than a municipal, like in Japan: https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.htm...