At least in Spain, there's a lot of local control by city hall on zoning. A lot of people assume that any large development that comes up only did so because of

At least in Spain, there's a lot of local control by city hall on zoning. A lot of people assume that any large development that comes up only did so because of backroom deals, so they oppose it blindly. And that translates to who they elect. So there's less micro-control than in the US, but it still ends up with similar effects. Nowadays, the boogeyman seems to be AirBnB and similar.