"Building anything important in America requires layers of approvals from multiple levels of government," wrote Philip K. Howard in his 2014 book, The Rule of Nobody. "Environmental review has evolved into an academic exercise, like a game of who can find the most complications….Courts have become enablers of people to use the law for selfish ends."
That sounded radical then, but 10 years later, such assessments are becoming mainstream. Recent commentators have included Ezra Klein in The New York Times, Jerusalem Demsas in The Atlantic, and Matthew Yglesias in a Bloomberg column. Demsas' article was provocatively titled, "Community Input is Bad, Actually."
