I can tell you that no one is "freezing anything in time", or "micromanaging the living spaces of other neighbors", or "doing it for their own convenience", or attempting to "morally marginalize people I'm afraid of".

I'm making no assumtions, merely responding to what you put in print. Maybe you are merely playing dumb, but you show little evidence of knowing how any of this actually works, or evidence of having even participated in a town meeting, much less actively worked to get any changes done.

>>I'm not in favor of big developers or corporations or profits.

Actually, that is EXACTLY who you are in favor of - that is how it works.

I've seen in multiple locales how developers make alliance with the old-timers that don't like rules, and then they push through zoning variances, overrides, or elimination. And what goes up is NOT anything in remote characterization related to the neighborhood -- what goes up IS as many units as possible, stacked as high as they can go, or shopping malls/factories if that's more profitable.

If you don't want "single use zoning", you WILL get multi-use, because the appraisal of everything is done by "best and highest use", which means whatever brings in the most money. So, if they can develop a high-rise or factory within an inch if your property line and make the most money, that's what you'll get.

>>words like steal, destroy, trash, etc. This seems to be something that you are emotional about.

Yes, I care about it a lot, but my direct experience is that these are the most accurate words to describe what actually happens (not in your idealized concept).

We literally have right now, on my backyard, a 50+ acre lot that a developer recently bought in a 2-acre zoned area, with typical lots 3-7 acres. This area is very hilly and includs the wetlands that also stretch onto more than half of my lot and harbor multiple endangered species and a great variety of other wildlife. we and our neighbors literally enjoy this wildlife multiple times every day (and some of it also enjoys our gardens).

Did he propose to put up a handful of homes to increase the density but in keeping with the neighborhood? No one would have seriously objected to that, and he could put up a handful of quite profitable high-end homes.

Instead he proposed 5 different plans with 60-300+ 4-story condo units. These 60-300+ units would all add that miultiples of the current traffic to a street that now only serves 20 houses.

It would also completely trash the environment- Their plan was to literally strip-mine the place, put up 35ft+ retaining walls, plant a few trees and some grass. And tap into the same water supply that feeds the 30-odd wells from the same lot - so this could easily run us all out of water. AAnd the land is so steep that the roadways would exceed the allowable specs for fire trucks in the summer, and this is New England which has winters, so people could easily be trapped in multi-unit buildings with fire & rescue unable to reach them.

So, whether you want to talk environment, community, traffic, water, or safety, these interloper developers -- yes, they come from out-of-state and have zero local investment -- are perfectly happy to trash all of it for their own profit, then leave town.

This is literally taking paradise and putting up a parking lot - you don't know what you've got till it's gone.

And this is typical. There are these multi-hundred 3-4 story projects going up everywhere in the region - anywhere they can find a plot and push it through.

And yes, upon finding out about Planning Board meetings to get variances for this, we worked late and weekends for about a month, and shut down this abomination for at least a few years. More people showed up at that Planning Board meeting than ever before, by an order of magnitude. ZERO of them were concerned about their property values. I literally never heard it brought up in a single conversation, email, or meeting. Everyone had concerns, whether it was traffic, safety, environment, water supply, waste treatment, infrastructure, or whatever, but:

ZERO ever even mentioned property values.

ZERO ever mentioned who might move in (and some of these were proposed to be low-income units, because that gets the developers lower regulations).

Yet those are your first accusation, that everyone is greedy and just cares about their prop values, and is "afraid" of who might move in.

And your concerns about "steal", "destroy", "trash" are not emotional, they are simply accurate descriptions of what happens.

And yes, this is a democracy, and you do not have a vote in the towns which you presume you should improve their rules. If you don't have any skin in the game in the locale you propose to change, your are literally an interloper - just check any definition [1-5].

If you like Japan, go there. If you want to make a difference here, then go to a town or city. Get involved in the governance. They are always looking for people to help. run for a position - you will be welcomed in any decent place. INVEST your money and your time in the place. THEN you will legitimately have a say in how it is run.

Until then, stop being so entitled and stop the clueless rhetoric.

While you think you are helping yourself and some other poor people, all you are doing is literally helping developers 1) steal value from others who have spent generations building it, 2) destroy the existing environment and culture where they build, and 3) trash the surroundings.

[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/interlop...

[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/interlope

[3] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/interloper

[4] https://www.thefreedictionary.com/interloper

[5] https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/interlo...

[6] specifically, in the Vladimir Lenin sense of a person who is unaware of what they are doing, but nevertheless helpful to the cause.

[edits: formatting, grammar]