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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 17th, 2023

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  • This is an interesting one. The old law allowed ANY challenge to delay building construction, as long as it had a basis in environmental protection. It was primarily used by NIMBYs to block apartment buildings near houses, or by businesses to protect their service area from competition. It would cause builders years of paperwork headaches just to get where they would have been at the beginning. It isn’t even setting rules for what studies need to be done to protect the environment, just that if someone challenges your project based on environmental rules then a judge has to put a hold on it while studies are done to show things are fine.
















  • I grew up in the suburbs of a midwestern city, where we could run into the woods to play army or ride bikes in a closed neighborhood (not gated, just no through traffic) or walk from yard to yard with no fences except for houses with pools or walk to the next neighborhood over. We were free to explore as long as we didn’t cross certain streets and came home by dark. We walked to the bus stop to go to school.

    Contrast that to where I live now in a major metropolitan city where kids never see “the woods”, can’t safely ride bikes anywhere but bike paths, have tall privacy fences blocking both socializing but also blocking multi-yard sports areas, have no “neighborhoods,” and have to be driven by parents in a car directly to school (where they have to wait in a line of 100 cars to pick up kids everyday). How can kids ever become self sufficient? They have to be parented every minute of their lives until they are 16. It’s wild.

    But that is in the US. When I visit Europe there are kids by themselves on the subway going wherever a 10 year old needs to go.