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Lest they get too close. :-)
We allow unrestricted building because politicians only see the next election. Those building and living in floodplains and in other risky areas pay taxes and vote; tell them to move, and you have to reimburse them. Let them pay for the damage to their property, and they vote you out of office.
Same for building cities out West. No politician wants to preside over desert. They like public works, esp. large ones that hire lots of people and provide lots of jobs. No politicians wants to tell landowners that they can't sell their water, or that their land is going to revert to desert. No politicians wants to buy out those property owners, and leave the state/city/county holding desert.
We don't have parks because usually instead of annexing land and then controlling growth, cities let growth happen and then annex the built-up areas. And if they impose growth controls, then you get either a ring-effect (as people build outside of local controls), or politicized, not intelligent, land use.
We have little mass transit because our population densities are too low and our probably destinations too dispersed.
We build cities with little housing for the poor because nobody wants to be forced to build it, and nobody wants it in their back yards. When we do build it, it consolidates the poor into the equivalent of ghettos. When we disperse those raised in ghettos, the middle class areas the poor are dispersed into scream as their crime rate goes up and their school's test scores go down.
It's not just *. It's not just capitalism. It's people.
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