"to" or "from"

[Nancy Holmes <ncmholmes@moscow.com>]

And Now For Something Visionary!

(a few more words about development)


Perhaps even more noteworthy than the creation of baseball and jazz music
is our country's invention of private property and the almost inviolate
rights of ownership. Over the decades, citizens and their governments have
tried to backpedal from the pervasiveness of this concept and its
consequences with a myriad of methods; zoning ordinances, comprehensive
plans, planning commissions, scenic easements, the imminent domain concept,
neighborhood covenants, et cetera. These counter measures tend to be weak
and reactionary.

Development and construction in Moscow (and vicinity) seems to have always
happened piecemeal  and those charged with "regulating" it do so on a case
by case basis. As Mike Curley has pointed out, the "regulators" become part
of the process only in the final stages when the land owners and developers
are ready to present their proposals. They usually have the high ground by
then - legally, procedurally and in terms of preparedness. If the citizens
of Moscow (and vicinity) want to challenge this venerated process then they
must present a unified front and they must be able to articulate why.

I believe that during the past few decades development here has been
forestalled more because of local economics and weather than because of
anybody's conscious attempts to control it. The appealing paradox to this
is that Moscow (and vicinity) has thus retained its overall status as a
place to move to rather than a place to move from. The obvious question
arises: How do we prevent turning the corner from "to" to "from". And whose
to say when this happens anyway?

Probably the easiest way to build a consensus on this is to define the
conditions that make a "from" place. Then begin to put in barriers to
prevent them. These "barriers" might be development plans, citizen advisory
groups, traffic limits, greenspace fees, land use restrictions or things
that nobody has invented yet. The main point is that the citizens and their
government must switch from being reactive to proactive. The intent, I
suppose, would be to build higher hurdles and tighter hoops for would-be
developers and builders. But, in fairness, they need to know what the hoops
and hurdles are ahead of time.

Remember that the rights of private ownership have legal precedence in this
arena. And the  American model for economic prosperity includes a "develop
and construct" cornerstone. We must ask ourselves how much we want to mess
with this paradigm.

As for me, personally, I'm willing to mess with it a lot.  I'd love to
start the process of describing Moscow as a "from" place and defining those
things we'd like to prevent from sneaking up on us. Maybe my kids will
dress up as developers for Halloween! They can go door-to-door with a front
loader...


				- Evan Holmes   October 4, 1999