[TulliusCicero]

It's both of these things.

There's a reason we have governments at a higher level than neighborhoods and cities. Not every decision makes sense there.

We've tried city level zoning, the result is that economically booming areas fight new residents, drastically raising rents while preventing others from joining in in the economic success. It's a disaster, just look at the bay area.

Or look at the cost of sprawl in how much nature we've cut down and our per capita energy usage. What part of that looks good to you?

If you zoom in too far, people get selfish and you hit externalities. Zoning isn't unique, sometimes you need more coordination for things to work.

[Semirhage]

Another way to look at the Bay is that s previously unique American cultural center has already been irrevocably destroyed by yuppies and big tech firms who felt the need to drop anchor there. Maybe some pressure to spread out the impact of that “economic success” beyond a single city is more valuable than building ArcologySF? The world’s cities don’t need to be aggressively homogenized for the sake of affordable rents for an influx of techies. It’s a big world, stop crowding into one tiny, devastated corner of it.