i guess what i’d say is zoning is more the symptom than the problem. in the absence of zoning, you’d still have angry inhabitants psychologically and financially levered into their neighborhood’s status quo devoting resources with great passion to blocking development. 1/

yes. if it’s not zoning it’s environmental. if it’s not environmental it’s something else. the key point is people already live there. if you have not actually persuaded them that they *like* the changes they propose, they will find means of fighting you unless they are marginal+disenfranchised. 2/

(plus, physically, retrofitting infrastructure is harder than planning capacity and building for it de novo.) /fin

* they *like* the changes *you* propose…