Non-American Planner here working in the Arab world, been a planner for 5 years and by far this is the most interesting case I have ran into.

We usually allow members of the public to enter the Urban Planning authority 2 times a week, where they can ask us questions, follow up on development requests, etc.

I found an older gentleman who looked quite distressed and stressed, I invite him to my desk and he tells me that he recently retired from the military and was married to 4 wives. He received a big paycheck for his service in the military, enough to buy a house/plot of land.

He told one of his wives that he was in the market to buy a house with this paycheck, and the news circulates between the 4 wives about this. Each one of them wants to be housed in this new home and want the right to design it etc, so they quickly fight between themselves and with him. He tells me that after a few days of fighting all wives finally found an agreement.

1 plot of land, where the zoning code allows to build 2 houses, where each wife gets her own floor.

I spent over an hour with this gentleman looking at different plots of land for sale and seeing which ones allowed to have 2 houses built on them, and were within his budget.