Citation needed. I have traveled and built stuff Why should I, you're not. That's not a citation. That's a clear call out that you have no idea how planning and city utility networks work.

Not sure why you would want to buy an expensive property with presumably bad electrical (residential stuff is shit)

Most Junk yards require no serious power outside of lighting AND who says there's not three phase on the pole already, even industrial power has to get from point A to point B AND your own assumptions bite you in the backside, IF YOU DON'T HAVE ZONING, they'd have to put three phase everywhere because you don't know where someone might need it. That'll make power costs a few times more expensive. For the record, "residential stuff" isn't shit, it's just 2/3 of the nominal commercial stuff. If you pick up the third phase and use a different transformer you've got three phase 208v assuming the current network isn't already oversubscribed. If you wanted to upgrade house service to run a car crusher, that's just a new transformer and service line. When I built my house, I could have had three phase for another 10k.

Housing, I have been told, is an investment not an asset. That is how we justify

Great idea, but your asset is still worth 10% of what you paid. And that mortgage you got to but the house? it's underwater now. Want to move? Tough crap. What can you do about that? Nothing, no zoning. They can put whatever they want next door. Cemetery? Industrial waste storage? No problem folks. Come on in! Without zoning to protect properly value, even the banks would baulk at giving you a loan.

Only for 12 out of the last 15 years.

You're a plant engineer. Not a civil architect. You're not educated sufficiently to design or build large scale distribution and delivery systems and honestly you have almost no idea how any of that works outside of your plant even though you've "been places" and "built things" You are insufficiently trained to comment on the necessity or apparently even the uses of zoning.

What about all the sewers that are overflowing because you have six tons of excrement at the end of the line? They don't install gigantic mains ever where. Who's going to pay for that rework? You can't stop them from building there, there's no zoning. You can't plan for it, there's no zoning. A bigger plant doesn't help with every piece of hardware in the field is underspecced to bring the waste to you.

When you properly employ zoning. You don't grant licenses to places you can't service. When a place REALLY wants to put in a new residential area, a study is done to find the price to upgrade all the necessary infrastructure to support the new community. That price is then either pay for by the developer or passed on as a large amortized payment to each of the residents. If the price is too high, the community won't be be built. But you can't just openly design water delivery and waste removal that way. You can play looser and faster with power, but there are still limits.

Really? So how come the last meeting of my city zoning department was involved in them yelling at a local motel because the cops caught some Johns?

That has ZERO to do with my statement you quoted. I don't really care if your zoning meeting sat around with hookers and blow while you all look on. That's not what zoning is about, the meeting are there to give you a voice in where crap does or does not go, if they run your zoning meetings like a circus start leaning on your administration as a collective. Somewhere there us a mayor, governor or councilperson where that buck stops.

Zoning doesn't make crap more expensive for the sake of price, it makes planning and intelligent utility design possible. It keeps greedy companies from installing toxic, putrid and noisy things right next to residential areas because a company doesn't give any fucks about your property value or making you or your children sick. The don't care about ground water or runoff.

It's not zoning that's making housing expensive, It's not a lack of houses because they can't build anywhere. It's the people profiting off building houses. It's the landlords, the slumlords, the ridiculously rich that need to make as much as possible on the properties. You're being lied to. They'll tell you it's the zoning, because the less restrictions they have, the easier it is for them to put whatever business they want wherever they want it. It's cheaper for them to make money. Then they'll tell you that it's the taxes they have to pay and how they need to have them lower. It's all a sham so they can buy another boat or buy up another block or two of row homes and charge the people there top dollar while providing them minimal product.