no. one of the advantages of public projects is they take risks private projects will not, ie they can be politic about circumventing objections of dug-in homeowners and still finance new districts at scale where objections aren’t so strong. 1/

that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of regulatory reform that should happen! it doesn’t mean regulatory reform wouldn’t help publicly finance projects. it would! 2/

but it does mean the state is held less hostage to regulatory reform than developers trying to do infill in desirable places. 3/

and to me, the causality is more likely to go from more-public-sector-led development to regulatory reform (as incumbent homeowners become less threatened) than the other way around. /fin