Daniel Herriges writes,

The biggest problem with “Make developers give something back to the public” is that a city’s efforts to do so end up ramping up the cost and complexity of development until the game is even more stacked in favor of the biggest projects and the deepest pockets. And that, in turn, even more dramatically raises the incentive to shout “Make them give something back!”

Let the community be heard in the abstract about what its zoning and development vision ought to be—let them hash it out in the zoning code and the comprehensive plan. But let’s not let each individual project become an existential battle. When we do, Goliath tends to stomp all over David.

Pointer from Scott Sumner.

I noticed the same phenomenon in Montgomery County. The county nominally has a “master plan” that governs development. But in practice the County Council gets involved in approving every project. We have the rule of men (and women), not the rule of law.

The net result is that we get none of the “livability” that supposedly comes from planning. All we get is a de facto requirement that to do real estate development around here you have to be a big-time Democratic donor. In the bootleggers-and-baptists model, the baptists are all the anti-development Progressives, who end up not really getting what they want, and the bootleggers are the big crony developers, who do.

Approving development processes by having elected officials decide on a case-by-case basis is unfair and harmful.
But as Glenn Reynolds would say, it does create opportunities for corruption and graft.

And of course requiring developers to add “affordable housing” manages to subsidize demand and restrict supply at the same time.