But they blame the lack of finance, not land, for the problem.
In other parts of Europe, lack of finance, complex land ownership and divided public opinion made radical replanning after disaster too difficult: after 1666, London was rebuilt on its ancient plan, though new extensions to the west were partially on a grid system.
"We got the discount because we are a good project, something the government really wants to promote," Mr. Huang said, adding that the company could borrow against the value of the land to finance expansion.
He sold one third of the land to finance the project, and began work in 1730.
Land sales, through acts like the 1980 Santini-Burton Act (which sold small tracts of Las Vegas-area land to finance land purchases in the Tahoe basin), were also laborious and the take often meager.
But it also includes two central European countries – the Czech Republic and Hungary – and the northern bloc of Belgium, Finland and the Netherlands – the land of Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Dutch finance minister and chair of the Eurogroup finance ministers, fresh from the Cyprus bailout "triumph".
Of more enduring importance was the sale of church lands to finance the war.
In response to the problem, they created the Bank of Indiana and sold nine million acres (36,000 km²) of public lands to finance their projects.
While each had their own particular issues, concerns, and offers, there was a consistent message: there is no shortage of land or finance, and certainly no lack of housing need.
Having earned a Ph.D. in business economics from Harvard in 1994, he set out to be a professor of finance, landing a job at Dartmouth's Tuck Graduate School of Business, with a starting salary in the low six figures.
In the system that helped turn the country into an economic superpower after WWII, banks were the primary source of finance, and land the basic form of collateral.
