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Mark A's avatar

Really enjoyed this. Thanks, Russil.

Hard for projects to get strong community support and approval when the people that will benefit from a new project don't live in the community and are essentially voiceless at these community consultations. What would make their voices heard, as you point out, is if is city-wide planning and policies we set, not project-by-project approval because we know project-by-project approval results in lopsided representation. So many issues are collective action problems, and good institutions use tried and true decision rules to counteract the incentives that end up hurting the most people.

Also, nice to see you link to an older Joseph Heath article. We need more public intellectuals like him. Speaking of, he may touch on housing in one of his newer books, the Machinery of Government.

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