Ah, I see what you are saying: you think that suburbs are not planned down to the most minute of details?
I don't know where you live, but I bet if you read a copy of your local zoning code, and have a look at the zoning map, you will probably find that yes, your suburb is very, very heavily regulated, including parking minimums, minimum floor/area ratios, setbacks, uses, and so on and so forth.
Probably less than some HOA's demand, but still a lot of details. I too am not the kind of person who relishes that level of control, but I suppose some people like it.
You raise a valid point. I just looked at my local code book of ordinances and they do cover a lot, including the number of parking spaces by square footage.
In my experience, in a smaller town, these things are primarily used as a weapon to punish otherwise bad businesses.
For example, we had a bar whose patrons became a neighborhood nuisance. They began to enforce the letter of the law for every violation until the bar closed.
There's an alternate universe where these kinds of problems are entirely dealt with through nuisance and noise laws and that kind of thing: the bar is permitted wherever people want to build it, however, the local authorities come down hard on people being a PITA. So if it's a wine bar where middle aged people sip quietly and chat about business, it's not going to bother anyone. The rowdy biker bar probably won't last long in a residential area.
You could easily get the same thing out of a HOA in a city with fewer city-wide rules and regulations.
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