Let's say every local government in a country operated that way - all doing their best to maximize attractions for the rich (and 'profit') and limit attractions/spending for the poor.
Obviously poor people must move somewhere, so the end result is society has just conspired to make their poverty and misery government's permanent goal.
I think this attitude is fairly common in the US. Look how many people think punishments or burdens need to be attached to welfare, without any proof of fraud reduction. Things like mandatory drug testing, work requirements, restrictions to what TANF and SNAP and be spent on.
Perhaps "profit" isn't the best way to put it, but "wellbeing per dollar" in some way - ultimately a measurable optimization factor of some sort needs to be decided on and used.
Instead we see cities without any sort of optimization, repeatedly trying failed ideas, flushing tax dollars down the toilet. "This clearly isn't working, let's just keep doing it" ought to be the slogan for many midsize cities.
You're joking, right? Broken transit systems, barely maintained roads, large backlogs of intersections that need lights leading to safety incidents even deaths, planners that accept everything a developer or NIMBY can say... No, we don't optimize for shit except perhaps councilors pocketbooks and re-election.
We wish these systems were optimized, but they're not. If they were, we'd at least see pushes to get people to live closer to work, the rejection of NIMBYs in favor of multiunit developers in central areas while in distant areas we'd see rejection of developers in favor of improved transit.
Many areas in my city have terrible access by car or public transit because the city has kept pushing back road and transit improvements while allowing developers to keep going. It's gotten so bad a few developers were offering to do road widening for the city on an interest free loan as their property values were taking a hit due to a reputation for long commutes - unfortunately that fell through even, it's a mess, a completely unoptimized mess.
Obviously poor people must move somewhere, so the end result is society has just conspired to make their poverty and misery government's permanent goal.
I think this attitude is fairly common in the US. Look how many people think punishments or burdens need to be attached to welfare, without any proof of fraud reduction. Things like mandatory drug testing, work requirements, restrictions to what TANF and SNAP and be spent on.