Around the country, small, rural towns are experiencing the same political conflicts related to land use and planning more commonly associated with the city.
[Updated 3-10-2016] "The affordable housing crunch and fire-breathing NIMBYism often associated with America’s rapidly gentrifying cities has reached our resort towns — from the Rocky Mountains to Northern Michigan," according to an article by Bill Bradley. "Small towns, they’re just like us!" adds Bradley.
Green lists Traverse City, Michigan; Portland, Maine; and Breckenridge, Colorado as examples of small cities facing challenges more commonly perceived as urban. The question posed by the article, and by the residents experiencing these new dynamics firsthand: "What happens when the affordable backwoods dream town turns into an urban destination?"
After reading Bradley's article, follow up with recent coverage from Planetizen on these subjects in Traverse City, Portland, and Breckenridge.
[The article was updated to give proper credit to the author of the Next City article.]
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UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research