Posted on 03/22/2006 9:29:52 PM PST by Lorianne
The 1980s and 1990s were the Belle Époque - the beautiful age - of commercial development, a time when getting project approval could be as simple as shaking the right hand or making the right campaign donation. And Americans were all for it, ready to embrace the next mall or Home Depot or Starbucks Coffee outlet that gave them easy access to consumer products.
Mike Saint was there for it and remembers when making proposed developments reality was simple.
No more.
"At a conference in 2004, I heard a developer say 'Up until 1999, anything I wanted to do was built,'" says Saint. "Since then, 45 percent of his projects get shot down - and he only develops in Nebraska."
Saint's company, The Saint Consulting Group, is a hired gun outfit that works to get developments approved or nixed, depending on the client. The firm has released a study quantifying such as the Nebraska anecdote that confirms what most developers and commercial real estate insiders suspect: Many Americans oppose new development of some kind.
The Saint Group commissioned The Center for Economic and Civic Opinion at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell to administer the study, which includes responses from 1,000 people from all parts of the country, in November 2005.
The results show 73 percent of Americans say their community is fine the way it is or that it's overdeveloped. More than 80 percent say they don't want new development in their communities.
And those most likely to oppose new development tend to be suburban homeowners between the ages of 36 and 55, with annual family incomes over $50,000 and high levels of education - in other words, those who are likely living in safe, attractive, mid- to upper-middle class neighborhoods with access to efficient government services and plenty of high-end shopping.
NIMBY-ism - "Not In My Back Yard" - isn't new, but the numbers of people engaging in active protests against new developments represents a shift in activism.
"If you don't do anything, two-thirds of the people will be against you," says Saint of developers. "No matter what a politician promises you in a back room, he's going to change his mind when hundreds of citizens show up at a meeting to protest a development," adds Saint.
Like other trends that start on the East and West Coasts, land use activism has spread to the interior of the country.
Saint says in 1984, when he began working in land use politics, he encountered opposition to development primarily in Massachusetts and California.
Nowadays NIMBYans have very powerful tools at their disposal, e.g., NEPA, ESA, Environmental Justice EO, to name a few of the Federal regulations. There are many additional State statutes which consumers can use to stop or hinder development.
NIMBY's normally don't own the property in question.
I see. Business as usual.
It imposes other costs as well, including significant traffic burdens, and various "improvement projects" in existing areas to alleviate the traffic problems. It also increases the burden on things like drainage, sewer, and water services. Further, the design of new developments (no front porches, drive-in garages, etc) has a significant impact on something called a "neighborhood" -- it's harder to know your neighbors.
Finally, sprawl inevitably invites a similar "sprawl" of local government....
It doesn't always happen, and development isn't always "bad," but the costs imposed on those whose BY's are affected, are real.
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