I think some of the best development in urban areas I've seen happens when there's appropriate valuing of the "blight" associated with already developed land. T

I think some of the best development in urban areas I've seen happens when there's appropriate valuing of the "blight" associated with already developed land. That is, the apartment complexes aren't developed by buying up residential properties, it's in rezoning failed commercial or business land, or parking lots to support a planned redevelopment involving multiple building projects. The biggest tensions I see are when cities take over perfectly fine single-unit residential property areas to benefit multi-unit building developers, while leaving older multi-unit buildings or commercial properties that repeatedly fail. Replacing or renovating old warehouses, or manufacturing areas that are decrepit, makes a lot more sense to me even though things often don't proceed that way. I guess what I'm saying is just eliminating zoning and land development restrictions isn't really a good solution a lot of time either imho (that's not necessarily what you were pointing to but I think it's a common idea).