Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Americana
Four Sundays. One development proposal. Four different layers of the same question. We started with a farmer’s heirs who wanted to sell. We followed that proposal through the future land use map, through agricultural land use policy, through the gap between the zoning code and the comprehensive plan, and finally through the thirty-year cost calculation […]
The development application is straightforward on paper. Twelve residential lots on forty acres of prime ag land, five miles outside of town. The heirs of the family that farmed it want to sell. A developer has found buyers. The parcel is accessible from a county road. No wetlands. No floodplain. Nothing obviously wrong. The planning […]
The call comes on a Tuesday afternoon. Three siblings have inherited a half-section of ground from their mother, and they all moved to California or Texas years ago. A developer has offered to buy the west forty for twelve rural home sites of three acres each, on a gravel road five miles from the nearest […]
