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You can try, but there are failure modes.

* People don't want the things that are specified in the master plan, so there's no tenant that would be both legal and viable.

* Businesses are protected from competition (for their space, and for their niche in the area) so they charge too much and deliver too little.

* People want things that aren't in the master plan, and they aren't allowed to exist. (The politically engaged majority can get the plan amended with enough work, but these top-down designs can miss the long tail of niche interests, none individually powerful enough to get itself on the agenda).



I feel like 1 and 3 means your "master plan" just sucked all along. >:)

It's certainly a hard thing to get right, though.


The solution in most of the world is to not create too detailed plans, and often to minimize the amount of zones with pretty much all of them having multiple uses.

This means for example that people obsessed with house prices can't stop a grocer from existing within walking distance.




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