I've worked in the field of urban construction for 45 yrs or so, and I think qwern's point is well taken. Urban planning meetings are complex affairs involving many competing interests. To expect a group of humans, with differing agendas to always make rational decisions is not going to happen in the near term.
Until something is worked out to improve human thinking and decision making we'll have to keep muddling along. Having worked with it I am amazed we do as well as we do.
I'm not sure, I could do that. I work in a highly regulated business. Urban housing has a range of zoning and technical regulations 90% of which work 100% of the time. The other 10% seen like normal considerations, changes in fashion and legacy issues that are always being resolved. For me a general case for or against regulation wouldn't map on to my experience of the world.
In my view signalling a strong view for or against regulation suggests the need to properly think through the idea of contexts. The situation in which a regulation is applied is essential to determining its usefulness. For example; in my business we have had serious and expensive problems with substandard copper pipe imported from under-regulated manufacturers. Short term cost advantages turned into long term cost disadvantages. The difference at the initial construction end was less than $500.00. A re-pipe, in a condominium development costs betwee... (read more)
63 year old carpenter from Vancouver, been lurking here since the beginning and overcoming biases before that. heuristics and bias was what brought me here, and akrasia is what kept me coming back
Nietzsche by a wide margin