It works that way because we have encoded agreed upon negatives into law and/or regulations. By contrast, the positives are still highly subjective and not broadly agreed upon.

So the actual process is dominated by "Does the project avoid X?", "Does the project ensure that Y cannot happen?", "Will the project ever exceed limit Z?" rather than "Does the project bring <positive-good> to its location?", because people have not yet agreed upon a clear definition of <positive-good> things. In contrast, the stuff to avoid makes itself known, and the stuff we can mostly agree on becomes part of our civic codes.

Related, the law usually compensates for government "takings" but doesn't work in reverse, except in a few places:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_capture