Mom and Pop America Win Sometimes

If you look at a satellite photo of northeast Ohio, you can see the outline of my county manifested in physical form. You can spot the transition from urban sprawl to trees, lawns and fields.

On the west side of the county, there's a natural topographic feature--the Chagrin River--that forms a physical impediment to development, but on the north, it's due to policy that was set by the citizens of the county. Over the years there has been pressure to build commercial and higher density residential development, but it's been resisted.

It's not resisted by some organized corporate group, or non-profits, or anything like that. I think it's just a widely held goal to keep the county more rural, and that occasionally manifests in political or legal action to stop commercial and residential development projects through legal or administrative means. Even though there's no central coordinating intelligence, people have acted strategically to block future development, for example, by preventing the expansion of water and sewer infrastructure.

There's been criticism of this anti-development stance in Geauga county over the years, and debate about the merits of development, e.g. it would bring in more tax dollars. However, I think that strategy is mostly vindicated. To me, development and infrastructure expansion in adjoining counties looks like a sort of ponzi scheme that will lead to higher taxes and lower quality of life for residents. Infrastructure like city water and sewer are expensive to maintain and therefor, they often aren't, which can even lead to dangerous conditions. Infrastructure like roads and bridges fall into the same category.

The county is effectively shaped by and for the people who live there. Policy isn't directed by corporate interest, which is really pretty rare in the US and policy isn't directed by ideologues. In fact there is quite a bit of criticism about Geauga County from "liberal" academic organizations in northeast Ohio--they want to build infrastructure for poor people and want to tax the population heavily to redistribute wealth. If life was "easy" for poor and homeless people here, there would be more poor and homeless people here. It's not though--partly due to harsh winters with lots of snow.

I think, however, that the county's "go rural" strategy has been so effective that it will continue, and maybe even go harder in that direction in years to come.