I think there are a big range of opinions people have. There are some hardcore housing resisters whose opinions get a lot of sway because of the way processes work (public consultations, activism, etc). Lots of people are a bit sceptical because of pretty legitimate reasons – noise, traffic, disruption, aesthetics.

I think there probably are balances where people could generally be happier with new construction and that opinion could be clear enough to overrule those who would never be happy with it. Things like:

- ways of having locals vote on new development with small enough constituencies that they can be paid off (ie some of the gains that would have gone to developers or other positive externalities can be captured by those who are more effected) with lower taxes or new roads or parks or whatever

- making residents vote instead of having consultations will lead to less bias in favour of the most obnoxious

- allowing apartment blocks to vote to accept offers of redevelopment (eg you get a newer apartment; more apartments are added to the block and sold to fund the redevelopment)

- having architectural standards that locals are happy with for new buildings

- allow streets to vote to upzone themselves (I don’t love this as it’s basically prisoners dilemma – if your street does it, land value increases and you gain; if every street does it land value only increases a bit but now you are upzoned)

I basically think that there are developments that can be broadly appealing and we are in a bad local minimum in lots of places of having bigger governments trying to push development on unwilling smaller governments/groups