Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: New Towns

[Buzz Burrell (72253.2101]

> I have been seeing a number of articles and stories about the 
>depopulation of the upper tier and midwest towns of the US, such as in 
>the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, etc.  A lot of those small towns would 
>love to have new residents interested in community.  My suggestion would 
>be to take a trip accross these areas, and see what you find.  It would 
>be a heck of a lot easier to settle there than to build a new town on the 
>coasts,  and the land would be highly productive for those 
>self-sufficiency buffs. 

This is a fine idea with little to unrecommend it.  However, birds of a feather
really do flock together.  People like us want to be around people like us, and
thus find themselves in the Catch-22 of being bound by massive and often
contradictory land-use regulations.  When people like us graduate from college
and get hired as County Planners, they take that excess energy and idealism and
make lots and lots of rules.  Planning and rule-making must be in our collective
astrological charts;  I don't know.

About 12 years ago Exxon suddenly pulled out of their zillion-dollar oil shale
project in western Colorado.  The entire regions economy suddenly collapsed (the
boom/bust cycly is quite normal in resource extraction regions).  The upshot is
that Exxon has started a town - Parachute, Colorado - and now the entire town
was for sale.  It had a nice residential district, bank, PO, supermarket,
government, water and sewer systems, etc.  "Nice town in sunny Colorado, needs
no work - make offer".  The ads offerred new residents free groceries,
utilities, (and haircuts?) for the first month they lived there.

I really thought that was a great opportunity.  However, the Community craze
hadn't started yet, and there were no takers.  I'll let the List know if I see
any more good deals on towns.  

Buzz Burrell
72253.2101 [at] compuserve.com
In Delta County, Colorado, where Republicans rule and the UBC has NOT been
adopted...yet.