Big Sky or Big Sprawl? (Missoula: estate, property taxes, housing)

[DanielRead]

An excellent report on why we native montanan's or long time resident's don't want or need growth. This is a case study based on Missoula, it compairs many things that are happening now in Missoula that happend in Europe leading to what many of us here DO NOT WANT TO HAPPEN!
IngentaConnect Big Sky or Big Sprawl? Rural Gentrification and the Changing Cult...

[jimj]

Before this "suggested" reading material was posted was any bother given to looking at the author's stated goals (I mean actually read the words) or his scope of study? Google him an read it yoursevles. If anyone with a critical eye looks they will see an agenda that is crystal clear and a thought process that is clearly against any person that is lower middle class or higher.
Unfortunately while amusing reading and though it MAY have a point or two (even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes) I have to dismiss this as just another biased "belittle and despise anyone that's got more than you" article.

[jenzebel]

What contributes to the problem of urban sprawl are the newcomers who pick the darnedest places to build their homes. They just "must have" their 5 or more acres of paradise, never mind that it is in the middle of thick fire-prone timber or that it is 5 miles off the bus route and they have school-aged children, or they are told the road isn't plowed in the winter. They move in anyway and then DEMAND herculean efforts at fire fighting, or that the schools extend the route to their house or to plow the roads. They ignore the wisdom of Montanans that have for years known that these places were for WILDLIFE NOT PEOPLE, therefore we didn't build there. Secondly, we wouldn't be selfish enough to demand services in areas that didn't previously have them and raise everybody's taxes by doing so.

Most born and raised Montanans wouldn't be dumb enough or selfish enough to build in many of the places these newbies want their homes.

[jimj]

Originally Posted by jenzebel

What contributes to the problem of urban sprawl are the newcomers who pick the darnedest places to build their homes. They just "must have" their 5 or more acres of paradise, never mind that it is in the middle of thick fire-prone timber or that it is 5 miles off the bus route and they have school-aged children, or they are told the road isn't plowed in the winter. They move in anyway and then DEMAND herculean efforts at fire fighting, or that the schools extend the route to their house or to plow the roads. They ignore the wisdom of Montanans that have for years known that these places were for WILDLIFE NOT PEOPLE, therefore we didn't build there. Secondly, we wouldn't be selfish enough to demand services in areas that didn't previously have them and raise everybody's taxes by doing so.

Most born and raised Montanans wouldn't be dumb enough or selfish enough to build in many of the places these newbies want their homes.

You're right, I see it all the time on the North Fork. People build where no one has ever built, or with any common sense would unless they were willing to take on the risks and hardships of doing so. You certainly can't build in the middle of a place that's almost impossible to get to, way up a dirt road with little in the way of services and then complain that there is no services or an unpaved road or fire can't get there fast enough. That's one thing I like about Montanans, the "we'll take care of ourselves" attitude. You see it during every fire when the Red Cross shelters are opened, then shut down for lack of use.

[Anchorless]

Originally Posted by jimj

Before this "suggested" reading material was posted was any bother given to looking at the author's stated goals (I mean actually read the words) or his scope of study? Google him an read it yoursevles. If anyone with a critical eye looks they will see an agenda that is crystal clear and a thought process that is clearly against any person that is lower middle class or higher.
Unfortunately while amusing reading and though it MAY have a point or two (even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes) I have to dismiss this as just another biased "belittle and despise anyone that's got more than you" article.

Obviously you didn't bother to follow your own advice. A quick search of the author shows that SHE IS A WOMAN, a professor at the University of Wisconsin (a top public university) and that her research is indeed on the impact of gentrification, which isn't "clearly against any person that is lower middle class or higher," but rather on the impacts of the lower class when those with more money move in and push them out.

I think you're being far too quick to dismiss the author's points. They're all pretty valid, actually, and anyone who is witness to what is happening in the Rocky Mountain west will nod their heads in agreement with the points she makes.

I think a more interesting question is why exactly did you make the point you did so quickly and so carelessly? I think it might reflect more on YOUR OWN BIASES AND FEARS rather than those of the author, who from what I can tell conducted a fairly rigid scientific report. Did you even look beyond the title of the report? Did the word "gentrification" scare you?

[Anchorless]

Her stated research goal:

"My interests in social equity, urban governance and planning led me to study the processes of rural gentrification in the Rocky Mountain area as my dissertation project. Through case study research, I explored the migration of equity-rich, middle-class population from urban areas into the smaller towns of Western Montana, leading to rapid growth and urbanization. I argued that a rural gentrification processes are underway, in which the greater purchasing power of the middle class urbanites enables them to commodify and consume the rural countrysides, leading to profound changes in the social and physical environment. In particular, the escalating real-estate prices over the choicest locations within a poor local economy have shut out the local residents. Conflicts between the newcomers and the locals have ensued over the changing identity of the community and the allocation and increasing privatization of resources. Attempts to curb such impacts through planning and policy measures have had mixed outcomes. Rural gentrification is a largely undocumented phenomenon in the U.S., a decided reversal of the migratory behavior that earlier typified middle-class settlement near the work place in large urban centers. While demographers and population geographers have conducted nation wide macro-analysis of counterurbanization, they have not explored or explained the happenings at the local scale. Similarly, while urban geographers have researched the processes of urban gentrification in the U.S., the equally critical processes of rural gentrification has just begun to be noted. This research thus fills this void."

Research Interests of Dr. Rina Ghose

So basically she's doing formal research on everything this board and forum has argued about.

1. Equity rich people moving into smaller mountain areas (Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah), bringing growth and sprawl. Care to dispute this?

2. People that come in with more purchasing power tend to buy choice land and landscapes (you even said you agree with this earlier), typically outside of urban areas, to establish homesteads and ranches or simply small properties. This process changes the physical and cultural landscape or the area. Again, can you deny this?
3. This phenomenon tends to artificially drive up home and property values, as people that are equity rich can afford more expensive housing while also taking the necessary pay cut such locations warrant (if they even have to work at all). This in turn squeeze out the lower and middle class - they can no longer afford their property taxes, wages don't keep up, and they can no longer afford to buy into these areas.

4. This causes conflicts between the newcomers and the residents, over how to use local resources, the way the place is changing (where to put new roads, Walmarts, coffee shops), the political atmosphere, etc.

She also seems fairly neutral on this - I don't see much of an agenda other than accurately describing what is happening.

Can you deny anything she states above, and furthermore, explicate her nefarious agenda, please.

[JoeJoeMan]

jimj wrote:

Before this "suggested" reading material was posted was any bother given to looking at the author's stated goals (I mean actually read the words) or his scope of study? Google him an read it yoursevles. If anyone with a critical eye looks they will see an agenda that is crystal clear and a thought process that is clearly against any person that is lower middle class or higher.
Unfortunately while amusing reading and though it MAY have a point or two (even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes) I have to dismiss this as just another biased "belittle and despise anyone that's got more than you" article.

So how many papers have you written on the subject jim ? Is that the word 'zero' I hear...............
Funny that paper isn't saying anything alot of us already didn't know, or haven't been saying over and over again on this forum....Funny how that works we all keep saying it, then someone actually does some actually research on it and comes up with the same thing. who was it that said "You don't need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind is blowing"
"A word to the wise is sufficent"......in this case it's a whole paper or words....unfortunately for the pro-growth crowd all the words in the world aren't enough to put any sense in their heads.

In the time it took me to write this post I've hear a half dozen commericals on the radio for this/that and the other newest housing developemnt, condo, golf course and whatever else.

[jimj]

Darn, I've been caught! I never wrote an article so does that mean I CAN'T READ?
In the great doctor's own words "My interests in social equity, urban governance and planning led me to study the processes of rural gentrification in the Rocky Mountain area as my dissertation project". Now, I know it's tough but can you figure out what "social equity" means? There's no such thing in a society like the U.S. currently has but generally it means in some fashion taking from those that have and giving it to those that don't. I could go on and on but I've got other things to do.
I did not parse the sentence or take it out of context just so you know....

[Anchorless]

Everything you think about the report hinges on her mention of "social equality?" Especially since a) you didn't actually read it, and b) the nature of the report isn't about social equality at all, but rather a description of (the rather undisputed) what is happening here.

That's hilarious.

[jimj]

No, actually I tend to look at the persons ideas and leanings BEFORE the report was written to get a feeling of the persons thinking when they came up with the data,ideas and conclusions since all of the above are tainted by a persons agenda when it was written, and no it wasn't just the one sentence that was quoted, actually there was much more, I just didn't feel like pasting it all in the message. As for reading the report, I did, just becasue I neglected an "s" before "he" doesn't mean it wasn't read.
One of the main problems with all of this talk of clustered building and core living areas vs sprawl is property rights, and the fact that you would have to limit them or take them away in some fashion. I wish you luck with that! The county commissioners tried to pass a growth ordinance that would limit family transfers from selling within 2 years of the split thereby slowing or stopping all of these mostly locals from doing multiple subdivisions without review and slowing the sprawl. It never said it couldn't be done, just that you had to wait to sell the splits for a while. Can you guess what happened? There was an uproar like you'd have thought they were taking the land for a wal-mart. Limit property rights? Not here, no way!
So, the question is, how do you reconcile the idea of stopping sprawl when A:you don't live in a high density housing area yourself so how can you tell others to, B: The locals will not accept loss of property rights in any form and C: Most of the property is being sold by locals to developers or developed by them?