Community Input Is Bad, Actually

Making it easier for people to lodge their disagreements doesn't change the distribution of power; it only amplifies the voices of people who already have it.

The community-input process is disastrous for two broad reasons. First, community input is not representative of the local population. Second, the perception of who counts as part of an affected local community tends to include everyone who feels the negative costs of development but only a fragment of the beneficiaries.

Instead of empowering communities that most suffered under urban renewal, the local-review process has again privileged wealthier people who routinely block new projects, and many of the projects that do get built are in poorer areas.

In the U.S., moving decision making from the hyperlocal level to the state level is the first step to fixing the broken development process. This would ensure that a larger proportion of voters had a say, though an indirect one, in housing, transportation, and renewable-energy policy, because more people vote in these elections than hyperlocal ones... See more