Local governments are widely acknowledge by political scientists to be be lower quality than national governments, believe it or not, and to have significantly less oversight. The argument for giving them huge power to dictate what people can and can't build on private land is that local regulations can be more tailored to local details. But if all the local governments are, e.g., setting high minimum plot sizes, this is not them responding nimbly to local details; it's just a way to keep out poor people.
> Local governments are widely acknowledge by political scientists to be be lower quality than national governments
Since you're invoking authority here, I'm gonna say [Citation Needed].
> But if all the local governments are, e.g., setting high minimum plot sizes, this is not them responding nimbly to local details; it's just a way to keep out poor people.
Or, it could be as simple as a locality copying what seems to have been successful in other nearby localities, with not enough people speaking up with compelling evidence to the contrary.
Believe it or not, not everything bad that happens to poor people happens out of malice directed their way. Sometimes, bad shit happens to poor people, because, being poor, attempting to change conditions to make less bad shit happen would further strain their already stretched-to-the-limit resources. And there's one resource that anyone who wants to participate in local policy making must spend without exception, one which those struggling to make ends meet will tend to have the least of: Time.
There is no Machiavellian mustache-twisting involved in keeping the poor out; the poor never show up to give their input on the policies that might adversely affect them. It's kinda hard to even know about the 90 day advance notice postings in town hall when you're working 2.5 jobs to keep food on the table and the heat on during the coldest winter months so you don't freeze, and the public bus routes you rely on don't even go near city hall. Never mind having the time to think about the Nth order effects of such proposed policies to figure out if they'd adversely affect you, or then getting down to city hall for the planning meeting to give the council or committee your 2 cents. I mean, some localities are better than others about giving all of their local socioeconomic strata sufficient advance notice and a fair chance to provide input, but there's a limit to what's reasonable. Eventually, time for input and comment will have to be ended so a decision can be made, otherwise nothing would ever get done.
If the above sounds sucky and unfair, well, you're right. It does suck and it is unfair. But if you want the conditions of the poor to suck less and become more fair, you're going to have a hard time being effective if you are too quick to ascribe results to malice.
