There’s an abstractly interesting way in which the aesthetics of building frontages are a positive externality basically because of what you say here, but ofc if the public cares that much they should subsidize pretty facades instead of demanding the developer and thus the tenants fund them

Frederick the Second did not conquer Silesia to be disrespected like this!

I’d love to see research on the actual safety benefit of car horns and whether we could safely just eliminate them. How many situations really would have led to tragedy but for someone honking their horn? Do they outweigh the social harms of giving everyone a tool to effortlessly yell at strangers?

Make a movie better by adding lmao: “Oh, she met her match in the end - but it wasn’t a man - it wasn’t a woman - it was the sea lmao”

Also, if my representative in congress said that it was common for their constituents to beat people up for being different, I’d be pretty outraged!

JS Mill addresses this in “Considerations on Representative Government” but his proposed alternative, involving special constituencies for educated professionals, is silly and unworkable, and maybe every other alternative would be too

The hell of it is because the fundamental sub-unit of representative government is almost always geographic (not just in the US) people whose most salient political identity is the region they live in are structurally privileged in most systems

Not sure about the city level, but there have been notable reforms at the state level

That said, unclear how much of the permissive permitting regime is due to the Live Local Act vs the effect of FL local govts being like little babies compared to blue state local govts in the game of weaseling out of having to permit housing

Florida enacted a major housing reform last year that effectively allows pretty substantial residential density in commercial zones, with high affordability quotas, and funding available for affordable housing