It's interesting that both extremes are actually signs of the same problem. First, why didn't other countries become too scare to build? The neighborhood I gre

It's interesting that both extremes are actually signs of the same problem. First, why didn't other countries become too scare to build? The neighborhood I grew up at in Moscow was built in bulk in place of a village of the same name in the early 80ies. Nobody cared about the village; in fact it wasn't even replaced by housing - it was demolished to build a stadium and other assorted sporting venues; the housing was added shortly after. Did it make Russia too scared to build? No, it didn't. During the aughts oil boom, they demolished some 5-story flats to replace them with 20+-story flats, giving the residents better flats in more remote neighborhoods, with no real choice to stay in their neighborhood in many cases (like my grand aunt's). They just keep doing things the same way, and that has its own tradeoffs. Nobody is "scared". The difference in the US is that there's a stronger notion of individual rights, and it was obvious that the bureaucratic nightmare machine was running ramshod over those. So it was great that it was reigned in. The not-so-great part that instead of just respecting those as was the original intent, US has replaced an incompetent bureaucratic nightmare that ran ramshod over the local residents, with an incompetent bureaucratic/legalistic nightmare that tries to protect them instead. Or rather, some perverted collectivist distortion of "individual rights" where frivolous lawsuits from rich neighbors, disgruntled unions, idiot activists or basically anyone can hold up the project forever instead of just individuals negotiating their narrow concerns... If this thing was done properly, in some cases the weight of many individuals would counterbalance aggressive projects when it makes sense, but loonies would end up like Edith Macefield, with a house surrounded by a mall. As it stands, Edith Macefields of the world can delay and block entire projects forever, other property owners be damned.