I think the problem is generally legal, not administrative. Development in germany would typically be held up by people suing the developers to stop it from going ahead, so the city or state itself wouldn't be in a position to speed things along in a majority of cases.

> the principle that the use of renewable energies is of overriding public interest and will be given priority over other concerns until greenhouse gas neutrality is achieved.

would probably be something like a silver bullet, though, because if it is as strong as it sounds, any judge would basically have to agree to any reasonable planning proposal that was intended to increase renewables capacity.

This is how you get 15,000 new 15% profit margin luxury housing units sold to Chinese investors and left empty and 0 new affordable housing units.

We just need higher property taxes. This will mean that these store-of-wealth investments eat losses & stop consuming all the good land while city coffers start to fill up with money that can build public housing.

If you want lessons on how to solve an urban housing crisis look to 1950s Singapore not the building developers salivating over 15% margins on newbuild luxury apartments whining about NIMBYs getting in their way.

We desperately need property rights in the US if we want to build our way out of the housing crisis.