Subject: Re: Zakaria, for the usual suspects who
Conservative areas practice more of a 'benign neglect'...

Basically, deregulation.

Build anywhere you want, do anything you want, damn the consequences.

Local city councils in the Phoenix metro long have been dominated by developers. Which is why we're sprawling rapidly. City infrastructure (in the suburbs) has struggled to keep up; one suburb actually tried to impose a moratorium on new builds because they couldn't get adequate water and/or sewage installed.

Portland is smarter about it. They allow you to build up to a line, and no further. Eventually, they move the line. Assures infrastructure and services can keep up.

Is that why lots of FL buildings get swallowed by sink-holes? The "benign neglect", so nobody bothers to survey areas that will be prone to that? Queen Creek locally has an issue with fissures (the AZ equivalent of a sink hole), in part because builders didn't care to do the work.