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^^OK, up there on the coast of Oregon! It's clear you don't understand water policy in places that have to irrigate. Agriculture is not always the best use of the land.
Nope, I just live in reality. There's never been a shortage of arable land in the West, especially in California, and especially in the Central Valley. What there's always been a shortage of is water. And urban water use is pretty low. Even in the San Joaquin Valley where I live we're not really running out of arable farm land due to development. We're the most extreme case. We produce most of the crops in the state. Not the most of any region but the most period. It's almost all prime agricultural land. We're one of the fastest growing regions. Specifically, I live in San Joaquin County. We're mostly farmland. 90% of the county is unincorporated, and of the 90%, 80% is ag. Less than 5% of unincorporated land is residential, mostly your 1-20 acre residential zoning, much of which is farmed.
One thing the article doesn't mention is Connecticut has kinda screwy city incorporation rules, although in practice they seldom matter today.
Essentially, cities incorporate within towns. So a city begins as a subsection of a town, having a separate government but also subordinate to town government. In all cases but Groton towns and cities have been consolidated.
Stamford had a very late consolidation, however. The northern portion was still the "Town of Stamford" until 1949. So it basically missed out on urban-style development entirely, and instead became full of estates for millionaires. North Stamford is actually wealthier than Greenwich on the whole. There's not a snowball's chance in hell it will get redeveloped.
Odd, I assume city incorporation worked similar to Massachusetts, where you can't have a city within a town; all a city is a town that changes its government organization.
Extreme large lot zoning looks rather common in Fairfield County. Nassau County on Long Island has some of that, too. The extreme low densities of the northeastern part of the county relative to the rest of the county must be being preserved at least in part by lot size rules. I'd guess the bright orange in the southern part of the county is probably mostly detached homes with about a 7500 sq ft lot size average, some a bit less. Those in turn are protected from becoming Queens-like densities by their own regulations. When they were both initially built, I suspect lot size rules didn't determine what was built; rather the towns set the lot size rules to whatever had already been built.
^^OK, up there on the coast of Oregon! It's clear you don't understand water policy in places that have to irrigate. Agriculture is not always the best use of the land.
You apparently don't realize how irrational it is to try to use agriculture as a justification for urban sprawl.
Well, usually the schools are usually better. That's not inherently a benefit of sprawl, but I'd take good schools over being able to walk to an overpriced bodega in the same amount of time it takes me to drive to a supermarket with better quality, better selection, and better prices.
That has nothing to do with sprawl. Good parents make good schools. Good schools don't just grow out of the ground. Walmart has good quality? LOL In my experience, you find much better quality at smaller stores, no matter the location. You will find cheaper prices in any chain, regardless of the location.
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