If you lived in a small rural village that was at risk of being swamped by unwelcome development, and you lacked the finances to compete with the developers's lawyers, would you resort to direct action to prevent the disaster?

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dragonfly forty-six Profile
dragonfly forty-six answered

Although I personally find merit in fighting for what I believe in or what is mine, I find using my brain as a far more effective tool.

We went through something like this. We lost but so did the developers. We lost our house, but they can't develop the land. The government took over the land and it is now a historic state park for all to enjoy instead of a privileged few.

Walt O'Reagun Profile
Walt O'Reagun answered

If the majority of the people don't want the development ... They just get the city council to create regulations making it virtually impossible to develop the land.

That's the route a couple local cities have taken towards development ... Which has created a "boom" in the nearby city that actually welcomes development - and the jobs it brings.

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Walt O'Reagun
Walt O'Reagun commented
The latest thing they've used in America are "urban growth boundaries" ... prior to that, of course, they just put the land in parks/reserves. If there's historic significance, they also use that to limit development (has to meet historic look, etc).
Ray Dart
Ray Dart commented
Yeah, we have those too. Most of rural England is historic. (We had a murder here in 1170, we became a local administrative area in around 1350).
Walt O'Reagun
Walt O'Reagun commented
One thing that holds up development in the US is native artifacts. The old "It's an ancient {native} burial site (or camp site / village / religious site / etc), so can't be disturbed."

We just had a local highway change (they were planning to straighten a curve) put on hold indefinitely because there was a native village sited where the new road would go. Nobody cared about the local church or houses that had to be moved, at the owners' expense ... but disturb the old dirt of a village of a people who aren't even living in the area, and all hell breaks loose.

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