Small-Town America Is Facing Big-City Problems

A new farm-to-table restaurant selling locally sourced pork and seasonally appropriate vegetables moves into a rehabbed insane asylum. A famous director renovates an 80-year-old theater in the heart of downtown. Coffee shops, breweries and more restaurants pop up and begin serving all their drinks in mason jars. Popularity soars and the rents rise.

Sound familiar? It’s not Pittsburgh or Brooklyn or Detroit. The affordable housing crunch and fire-breathing NIMBYism often associated with America’s rapidly gentrifying cities has reached our resort towns — from the Rocky Mountains to Northern Michigan. Small towns, they’re just like us!

by Bill Bradley

Full Story: https://nextcity.org/features/view/traverse-city-small-cities-growth-planning

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A local example:
Subverting subdivisions
Nonprofit goes to court to block South Hills development

A Missoula nonprofit is asking a judge to block construction of a 68-unit housing development in the South Hills, saying the developer is using a controversial exemption in state law to skirt subdivision rules that would have given it a voice in the process.

The lawsuit, filed this month in Missoula County District Court, is the latest skirmish in the increasingly tense battle between housing developers who use the 2011 state law as a shortcut for development and neighbors who see it as an "end run" around important planning requirements.

By Derek Brouwer

Full Story: http://missoulanews.bigskypress.com/missoula/subverting-subdivisions/Content?oid=2722729