Pro-business Residents Change Tune On Development

" The county’s newest activists are increasingly drawing a line between growth and green space. They stop housing developments, road expansions and any other project that they believe threatens to disturb their quality of life. Their influence is changing the way developers do business in Oakland County, as activists learn more and more about how to make local government work in their favor. Developers now canvass neighborhoods to gauge public opinion near potential developments. They cut deals, offering parkland in exchange for permission to build more homes on less land."