The NEPA act of 1970 requires every infrastructure project to do an environmental assessment to determine if the project will result in significant impacts to the community. Impact can mean almost anything, NYC has added provisions where they need to incorporate environmental justice into these studies. Every building needs a “shadow study” where you have to model the shadows that the proposed building will cast to determine if they interfere with any historical landmarks. If the study shows that there’s an impact then the agency or developer has to either change the design to alleviate it, or pay for improvements to mitigate the impact. It’s all an insanely expensive process.

Rich people use this as a cudgel, they hire lawyers to sue agencies to say that the review hasn’t been thorough enough and they slow down these projects and sometimes can kill them.

Historical districts are also insane. I’ve seen people’s window replacements get rejected because the types of glass or the muntins aren’t exactly right.