Developers have and always will be parasites. They swoop in, swoon cities to get sweet deals and tax write-offs, rezoning, whatever. Then they short term profit, cash out and run. I’ve seen so many homes over the years with random design flaws, entire neighborhoods with design flaws. Developers are long gone and the homeowners get stuck with the bill.

They play the same game as oil drillers. Form an LLC, fly in, shit all over the place, dissolve the LLC, and leave a mess behind. Laws around development of any kind should be structured so they can’t cut and run, but since the rich write the narrative, they’ll keep getting away with it, with occasional feel-good fines to make it look like the system works.