Agreed. And local NIMBY can get surprisingly personal and politically vicious fast.

I have a friend who argued in public forums (local newspapers+blogs) for denser housing being more walkable and sustainable (in a wealthy small neighborhood we both lived in.) "Small towns" was/is the nationwide name for the trend.

Unknown opponents dug up and published dirt on him that even his wife, friends and employer didn't know. It was quite sobering.

You're gonna go to those meetings and find that it's not "what's allowed" that's fucking people out of the ability to construct things, it's all the capricious requirements that the process saddles them with before being allowed to do what is allowed.