Two of my biggest pet peeves are doing things at the very last minute and sharing unnecessary personal anecdotes. Since I am already in the process of breaking one of my own pet peeves, I figure I might as well go for broke.

I am from a small suburban town just outside of Hartford. Most of the town is white, rich, and conservative. The town itself is pretty green, in the fact that there are still a good number of trees and grassy fields and what not. However, as my parents can attest to better then I, though at this point I can attest to it as well, the last 10 years has seen unprecedented development in the town. Every time I come home I find that construction on a new Best Buy has begun, or a new housing development somewhere, or something along those lines.

In high school I did a research project on development in the town, which involved talking to the Town Planner and learning about the different zoning regulations which were briefly discussed in Press and Nakagawa. It was fascinating to learn about how much land had been taken up by housing or commerce in my town, and when this shift had occurred.

As the last bit of the personal anecdote, my father works as an attorney for the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection and also serves on the Natural Resources Committee in our town. I talked to him over the summer about the NRC and he was immensely frustrated at the politics that were involved and the inability to protect the land that still needed protection.

Coming from this background, I could not help but think of my hometown as I read all about the increased development happening through out the country and often times the inability of local boards to be able to make change. I apologize for this being such a late and relatively weak response, but as any of my friends will attest to I am very passionate about my boring little town of Avon, and this article seemed so relevant to much of what is happening there.