[bombcar]

Which brings us full circle to the whole question of government and local government in particular; Californians in general and certainly Santa Crucians would be directly opposed to Texas voting to redevelop Santa Cruz into a highrise metropolis - so who has the say and who gets to make that decision? Obviously the people who want to live there don't live there, but should it be a county decision? State? Federal? World?

Even many of the people who are rabidly pro-transit will be at least mildly against "transit right through my bedroom"; most people don't like being eminently domained.

This usually results in the solution being "motion" of some sort; a city that is run down or out of the limelight begins to modernize and upgrade, and it becomes the new center, and the towns that don't chance ossify and eventually die off.

It may be that the "California problem" is solved because everyone eventually moves away.

[millimeterman]

Why should development be a matter of formal voting and government mandates? Why should it be any more complex than private entities buying land and then constructing what they want on that land? (Within reason - zoning is still important to keep housing away from industrial waste or garbage dumps. But the externalities of disallowing dense and mixed-use development are profoundly negative.)

[bombcar]

That's likely to be involved in at least part of the solution, but you could still have the situation where everyone refuses to sell to developers (or enacts HOA-like contracts that forbid it).

[millimeterman]

> you could still have the situation where everyone refuses to sell to developers

There's nothing wrong with this - no one is obligated to sell their land to developers. But considering that NIMBYs have to fight hard and continuously to block new development that would have otherwise proceeded, clearly that's not the case.