If you went looking in China, you'd find plenty of really stupid or bad things that happened as a result of the government's ability to easily requisition land for public use. Ruined ecosystems, displaced families, corruption, the works.
But it's quite obvious that any large-scale building would result in at least some of that. There is no way to "figure out" how to avoid all harms or how to avoid at least some broken eggs in the basket. Personally I'm all for North Americans figuring out what a "greater good" is, but the idea that it'll actually happen is laughable; we can't, we won't, we'll simply fester in what we have.
Just this wikipedia page will give you a sense of the scale of just one of those issues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_evictions_in_China
But it's quite obvious that any large-scale building would result in at least some of that. There is no way to "figure out" how to avoid all harms or how to avoid at least some broken eggs in the basket. Personally I'm all for North Americans figuring out what a "greater good" is, but the idea that it'll actually happen is laughable; we can't, we won't, we'll simply fester in what we have.