| Who's more instrumental in driving housing policy? Homeowners? Mortagage generators & holders (that is, creditors)? Developers? What of markets with significant concentration of property ownership? Or of commercial property owners, who can also skew zoning and construction / land-use patterns? What of interest groups which can create red-tape nightmares even through good intentions by various mandates: setbacks, offsets, minimum clearances, ramp requirements, etc. Podcats / video channels / blogs such as StrongTowns or Shane Philips (UCLA Lewsi Centre) are all great starting points for how a tangle of minimum requirements and/or prohibitions starts blocking any possible change from traditional urban-sprawl patterns. Most have observed that the highly-desireable dense development of older cities and towns (1870s -- 1950s, typically) simply isn't possible under current laws and regulations. I'm generally a fan of regulation, but it's got to be good and effective, rather than simply piled on. As with software, code requires occasional refactoring. |