In many places (including virtually all of the US), if you try to turn a single family home into a few apartments with a shop downstairs, or build a restaurant without parking, put a grocery store or a corner shop in an area zoned residential, etc. then your local authoritarian government will stop you.
>>CalRob+(OP)
Is it really your local authoritarian government, or your local/city/state government bowing to your neighbours' (admittedly immoral) desires?