On the other hand it seems like it's functioning exactly as intended. The interests of the people who live in <area> and who elect the city council are being represented just as they should be.
The argument could equally be if you don't like it, build somewhere else.
Do you believe communities have any right to self-determination? I would feel a bit peeved if I and all my neighbors built this nice neighborhood and then am told too bad people really like your neighborhood so we're letting Alliance Residential buy up a bunch of property for a huge apartment complex. The neighborhood I grew up in is going through this. They were a bunch of lower-middle class people who bought houses in a "rough" area because it's what they could afford, made it nice and then developers saw dollar signs. They don't have the kind of pull to keep them out so it's about to get steamrolled with gentrification.
This gets problematic as what is the right of others over your private property. What is the right of an individual property owners self determination versus the communities?
If you've got an answer for how to strike that balance you'd best start writing essays for the Federalist Papers 2nd Edition.
Because obviously you can do whatever you want with your property: well not open a business because it's not zoned for that, and not build too close to the property line, but anything else! Oh and you can't make too much noise after 9pm that's just rude, or fix your own electrical work because if you do a shoddy job it'll catch your neighbor's house on fire, and...
Well, clearly it was someone else's property first, and what *they* decided they want to do with *their* property is to parcel it out and sell to newcomers, but with some strings attached such as: no opening businesses, no building too close to the subdivided property line, no noise after 9pm, no fixing own electrical, ... :-)
On the other hand it seems like it's functioning exactly as intended. The interests of the people who live in <area> and who elect the city council are being represented just as they should be.
The argument could equally be if you don't like it, build somewhere else.
Do you believe communities have any right to self-determination? I would feel a bit peeved if I and all my neighbors built this nice neighborhood and then am told too bad people really like your neighborhood so we're letting Alliance Residential buy up a bunch of property for a huge apartment complex. The neighborhood I grew up in is going through this. They were a bunch of lower-middle class people who bought houses in a "rough" area because it's what they could afford, made it nice and then developers saw dollar signs. They don't have the kind of pull to keep them out so it's about to get steamrolled with gentrification.