In their new book Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson make the case that laws and regulations designed to block the government and private sector from doing bad things have now made it far too expensive to do good things, especially to build what we need the most: housing and clean energy. They put the challenge starkly: “Changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard now requires confrontations with whether the systems liberals have built really reflect the ends they’ve sought.”   

As public policy mediators, we share Klein and Thompson’s view that there is a need to reform unbalanced approaches to public input, requirements for many agencies to sign off on the same project with a myriad of permits, and legal challenges that focus on procedure rather than impacts.  But in our view, Klein and Thompson don’t spend enough time highlighting strategies that can work. We have been working for more than 30 years in Massachusetts and across the United States with government agencies, communities, and interest groups. We know that collaborative processes structured to include the concerns, needs, and expertise of citizens can lead to wise, sustainable, and effective outcomes when paired with clear policy goals, firm process constraints, and effective leadership.   

Massachusetts is a case in point. It’s a blue state with plenty of obstacles to development. But state and local government, housing and energy developers, and environmental and community advocates have begun serious work on reforms that can make it easier to build while still providing for meaningful community input. Experience here offers three practical lessons on getting to more abundant housing and energy supply while ensuring public input and influence.  

The first is to set clear goals in legislation and agency policy, and to constrain the opportunity for excessive procedural and legal challenges to those goals. Elected officials must set the “what” — what change in the world we are trying to make — while communities should have a say in the “how” — how that change can come about. In Massachusetts, Gov. Charlie Baker and the Legislature passed the MBTA Communities Act, with quantified multi-family zoning requirements for each of the 177 communities served by the greater Boston transit system. The act also allowed each community flexibility to decide where to put multi-family zoning districts, enabling residents to draw on their local knowledge and experience to help shape the future of their community. Most of the designated MBTA communities have responded positively, using their planning boards, town meetings, and citizen input to find good sites and avoid places where multifamily housing would not be viable or desired. At the same time, the courts have made it clear that creating these multi-family districts is a mandate that all towns must meet.      

The Healey Administration has gone further with two recent multi-stakeholder groups. The Housing Advisory Council has just produced the first statewide housing plan with a target of 220,000 new units of housing by 2035, allocated across the state. The Unlocking Housing Production Commission (whose work our organization facilitated) has recommended additional, state-wide reforms of zoning and other regulations to remove barriers to housing development, while still giving local communities a significant voice in deciding where those developments are sited.  Both of these bodies represented diverse interests in housing and started with the premise that the need for more housing is not up for debate. Both have the backing of the governor. Now the Legislature needs to decide how much further it wants to go in addressing state and local barriers to housing production while continuing to allow communities a role in development decisions.  

The second step is to reduce the number of veto points in new infrastructure development while providing better public processes. For many years, the conventional wisdom was to engage local communities early and deeply in big development projects, aiming to meet as many of their concerns as possible, and then secure the necessary public permits. That approach has reached a dead-end in the face of overwhelming, politicized “not-in-my-backyard” opposition to almost any new infrastructure project in most of the country. Instead, legislators can consolidate infrastructure permitting at the state level, provide funding for meaningful community input, and then decide on larger scale projects – without an option for opponents to mount legal challenges on issues already decided by the permitting authority. These authorities must still take and respond to input from individual citizens, local governments, interest groups, and state agencies. But they should ultimately make decisions on issues that the stakeholders cannot resolve.   

Michigan, Illinois, Massachusetts, and other states are heading in this direction with new state energy siting legislation. While this approach does constrain avenues for participation, it provides far more clarity, predictability, and accountability than the typically convoluted multi-stage, multi-agency infrastructure permitting process. With a more consolidated siting approach, citizens actually know where to go to make their case, instead of chasing multiple authorities and jurisdictions.  

In Massachusetts, the Commission on Energy Infrastructure Siting and Permitting brought together representatives from state agencies, municipalities, electric utilities, agriculture, labor, and others to hammer out an approach to energy siting that would expedite and streamline permitting. The approach would also constrain the ability of local interests to stop energy projects of a certain scale that would benefit the commonwealth as a whole, while providing more technical and financial support for affected parties to participate in the process. The commission’s recommendations, themselves a collaborative effort, led to the 2024 Climate Bill codifying these recommendations in law.  

Finally, we must avoid over-representing those whose main goal is to oppose new housing or infrastructure efforts. We can do so by making sure that those who have something to gain also have a place at the table and support for being there. For example, we can find ways to give voice to young people who are not currently residents of a community but would wish to live there; those who grew up in the community but were displaced by high housing costs; or the policemen, teachers, and firemen unable to live in the communities where they work. We can bring representatives of these groups into local advisory bodies, to balance the voices of those who resist change to their neighborhoods. To enable working families to participate, we can use social media, surveys, games, hands-on tools, and online meetings. When we need in-person meetings, we can hold them where these residents live and provide childcare stipends or on-site day care for parents.    

As Massachusetts’ experience has begun to show, communities and states across the country can overcome the obstacles making life less affordable and restricting opportunities for change. As mediators and facilitators, we have seen that people can and will get creative to solve problems if they’re given a mandate to work together and help to seek common ground. Diverse groups representing all the key interests at stake can produce broadly supported recommendations for the elected leaders who will make final decisions. We now need to apply that insight systematically in our municipalities and our state — and across the country — to create the abundant housing and energy supplies we need for the next generation.   

David Fairman and Patrick Field are senior mediators with Consensus Building Institute, a nonprofit that helps leaders solve complex problems.