{"id":151,"date":"2005-08-24T10:51:31","date_gmt":"2005-08-24T14:51:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2005\/08\/24\/a-community-up-for-grabs\/"},"modified":"2005-08-24T10:51:31","modified_gmt":"2005-08-24T14:51:31","slug":"a-community-up-for-grabs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2005\/08\/24\/a-community-up-for-grabs\/","title":{"rendered":"A Community up for Grabs"},"content":{"rendered":"

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There’s an interesting piece on the news yesterday and today about a community of 22 homes near Charlotte, North Carolina that has agreed to sell all of their homes collectively to a major developer. The residents realized that by selling their entire community collectively, versus as individual houses and lots, it will result in each home being sold for two to three times as much as they’d get individually. <\/P>
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Not bad. I’d be up for that.<\/P>
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Their goal is for a single developer to buy the whole thing, demolish the homes, and build a development filled with McMansions.<\/P>
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Yet, there’s something about it that scares me. <\/P>
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Fortunately, the “community” that is being sold is more of a development than a neighborhood. There were no local markets, no schools and no churches. And despite the two news reports I saw (on separate networks) claiming that this was the “all American neighborhood” (with frequent uses of words such as “charming” and “beautiful”), I found this community to be anything but charming or beautiful (unless you’re into ranch houses on flat landscapes and streets with no sidewalks). It looked as if this was just your typical commuter-oriented residential development with no amenities. I guess it’s not big loss that it will be gone soon.<\/P>
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Besides, the fact that 22 adjacent home-owners are willing to sell their properties is a pretty good sign that a “community” really didn’t exist here…it’s just a bunch of houses.<\/P>
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The part that scares me, though, is that this could potentially happen more frequently and in places where actual communities exist. I mean, losing a development is not much of a loss. But it would be tragic to lose what I would consider the true “all-American neighborhood”. The kind where you can walk to the library, market, post office, church and school. The kind where you wouldn’t want to sell your home because that would mean moving away from the neighbors you’ve come to know and enjoy.<\/P>
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I don’t know. Maybe I’m getting all Norman Rockwell on you. Maybe it’s because I was raised in what I would consider a real neighborhood and would hate to see that way of life disappear. And maybe it’s because I detest McMansions and that’s precisely what will be developed when all is said and done. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because if I had the opportunity to make three times as much on the sale of my property, I would do the same thing.<\/P>
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On an unrelated note (or perhaps it’s more related than we think), Massachusetts was rated one of the least obese states in the country. In fact, 4 out of the 6 New England states were near the top of the list. It appears that one of the reasons is the density in the area – which encourages more physical activity (walking to places versus driving, etc…). Food for thought.<\/P>
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There’s an interesting piece on the news yesterday and today about a community of 22 homes near Charlotte, North Carolina that has agreed to sell all of their homes collectively to a major developer. The residents realized that by selling their entire community collectively, versus as individual houses and lots, it will result in each […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}