I just read a new piece by someone who is quickly becoming one of my favorite columnists – Jerusalem Demsas, a staff writer at The Atlantic magazine.  Her column from about a year ago titled Community Input is Bad, Actually has become an iconic one for me, as it has been a beacon for why we need to rethink how we do public input for administrative land use review processes.  Be sure to see the presentation I’ll be doing on this topic at the ULUI Spring Conference in St. George on April 7.

In her latest piece, Demsas talks about how well-meaning environmental laws, particularly NEPA and several similar state environmental protection laws, have evolved to stymie change of any kind, even the normal processes of growth and change in our communities.  The column is titled The Great Defenders of the Status Quo, and she gives some discouraging examples, including in the world of land use and growth.

She tells the story, for example, of the moves in Minneapolis to eliminate single-family residential zoning, which was passed by the city council successfully.  But then:

Invoking Minnesota’s state environmental law, … the Audubon Chapter of Minneapolis, the Minnesota Citizens for the Protection of Migratory Birds, and Smart Growth Minneapolis sued to block the rezoning effort, claiming that the city hadn’t considered the environmental harms of higher-density living. Never mind the research showing that higher-density is actually beneficial for the environment. “If this ruling establishes precedent … anti-housing groups could very well challenge any comprehensive plan they don’t like on vaguely environmental grounds, forcing cities into years of litigation and zoning chaos,” a local scholar warned.

At the University of California, Berkeley recently, in an effort to address the severe shortage of student housing, school officials announced plans to build a new dormitory to house up to 1,100 students.  The University had been repeatedly blocked in its efforts to build new student housing over the years, and so it happened again.

… local homeowners and historic preservationists sued to block the development, citing, among other concerns, the potential environmental impact of “loud student parties.” A judge recently ruled in the homeowners’ favor, acknowledging the legitimacy of this concern. Is this what environmental protection means now? Shielding the ears of wealthy California homeowners who knowingly moved next to one of our nation’s preeminent universities?

To bolster her case, Demsas cites how the federal permitting dashboard shows the many renewable-energy and electricity-transmission projects that are being held up in the environmental approval process because of how federal environmental permitting processes now take so long and are frequently delayed by objections.  This for projects that are intended to reduce the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels and thereby improve the environment, which are now being held up over objections about the effect on – the environment!

In Utah, while we don’t have comprehensive state or local environmental laws that are employed in the attempts to stop new developments, the same kind of mindset is, I think, at work.  People fear change.  They don’t want things to be different.  This is demonstrated on a regular basis whenever new development projects are proposed in most communities.  The objections often come fast and furious in the public hearings and meetings that are held.  The meetings themselves rarely see any expressions of support for a new project.  At the apotheosis of some of these, citizens actually invoke referenda to overturn actions by their own elected officials they don’t like.

These review processes, intended to help improve proposals for new development, are, according to Demsas, often hijacked by –

Lawyers—the answer is always lawyers. … Listen, some of my best friends are lawyers. But development is supposed to flow through the democratic process, which elects mayors, city-council members, state legislators, and governors to decide what to build and where. Subordinating that to an adversarial legal process is by definition subordinating the voting public to the small group of people with the time, resources, and incentives to sue. (or, I would say, show up to public hearings and object to new housing developments and start referenda – ws)

Putting more abstract concerns for democracy aside, in practice, NEPA and related laws have evolved not to hold governments accountable for protecting the environment but to provide organized interests with yet another tool to stymie government action. And by action, I mean anything. (including new community development projects – ws)

There’s lots more to read in Demsas’ column, so take a look at it.  Let me just wrap up with what I think is the key issue here – change.  People don’t like change.  Yet if things don’t change, they don’t necessarily stay good or get better either.  Here’s what Demsas has to say about this:

…after sitting through countless community meetings and reading thousands of public comments, I’ve noticed that opposition to local projects doesn’t always come from an easily caricatured millionaire homeowner; typically, it’s from people of all sorts who are afraid of change. These status-quo defenders are often asking for the impossible: for someone to tell them exactly how their lives will look in the future. How will this affect my commute? What kinds of neighbors will live near me? And in their fear, they ask for caution, for further study, for more deliberation. They ask for time.

Caution and deliberation are good in moderation, but waiting cannot relieve this uncertainty; it merely changes its form. Doing can cause harm, but not doing won’t preserve the world in amber. Neighborhoods in desirable communities that don’t build more housing see skyrocketing prices and demographic shifts toward high-income, white, and older residents. And nations that don’t build the necessary renewable-energy infrastructure will be subject to the very environmental degradation that 20th-century activists tried so hard to prevent.

The unforeseen consequences of blocking change should weigh as heavily as the ones that come from allowing it. Those lost students, missing refugees, absent neighbors, and failed government projects may never intrude on our sight line or cause us frustration during our commutes, but they cost us all the same.

Amen.