I enjoyed this piece. As an urban planner who sees a lot of these issues in the development approvals process, I'm heartened to see people asking how regulations should work (rather than just jumping to "de"regulation).
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I saw liability as a promising model a few years ago, but it doesn't work well for the kinds of harms urban planners cause, like people dying slowly over decades of diabetes. It works better for buildings falling over and the like.
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Traditional Islamic urban planning offers a useful model: anyone is allowed to build anything without a permit, but if it doesn't follow the law, it can be torn down & you can be punished. Carpenters were therefore trained in the appropriate laws.
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When things do need to be approved in advance (like an 80 story tower, or expanding the city's sewage system), I have another idea: build in 3rd party arbitrators as a standard part of the process.
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Right now, there's little incentive for urban planners to approve developments quickly, or stick to reasonable requests. They often ask for things that are not stated in policy, due to personal preferences, or because someone asked for sth at a public meeting.
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Having a built-in 3rd party would provide a consistent source of discipline for both the developer and the planner to be reasonable and follow policy. It seems irresponsible to *not* have any kind of backstop like this.
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I mean, some bureaucrats will be especially idiosyncratic or risk adverse. Currently the system provides no way for an applicant to raise a red flag and say, "something's wrong here." The system should, ideally, push to improve quality & consistency in both directions.
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The key question is how to establish the right incentives for the 3rd party arbitrator. I envision them like a judge: the developer brings their arguments, the planner brings theirs. The arbitrator stands outside both their interests, and so can weigh them equally-ish.
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What if, instead of 3rd party arbiters who need to properly incentivized and overseen, a state adopted the Finish school’s system modus operandi.
Instead of explicitly forcing each teacher to follow specific curriculum, they let them to teach however they see fit but test… Show more

