Why Do We Have Such a Disdiscretionary Planning System?

We live in these cultures where there is such an aversion to apartments. And then you combine that with the planning system that we see in all these parts of the world. In the UK, it's completely discretionary. So every time someone wants to build something, they have to put in an application. There are all sorts of different outcomes that could result. People can raise objections, that kind of thing. But every English speaking country seems to have some version of it sort of go to excuse the why we can't have this kind of thing."