> All the places he lists as beautiful, especially in Europe have some of the most regulations regarding what you can build. A community design review, where a

> All the places he lists as beautiful, especially in Europe have some of the most regulations regarding what you can build. A community design review, where a council literally has input upon the visual design of your building is almost unheard of in America but is common in European countries. The closest you get in America is some CCNRs saying you can't have a metal roof or the like. Parts of Switzerland literally require you to build a frame which represents the shape of the house you want to build so community members can walk by for some weeks and see how it affects the neighborhood skyline. I can’t tell you what’s more revolting to me—the idea of a bunch of neighborhood busybodies having that amount of power, or the fact the busybodies themselves are shameless enough to participate in this nonsense. You know what neighborhood I want to live in? A neighborhood as far away as possible from those types of busybodies. Maybe somewhere across a vast ocean on the other side of the world, where people have come up with handy expressions like “it’s a free country” and “mind your own business” that you can use if some obnoxious busybody shows up to complain that they don’t like the architecture of your house.