People sometimes ask the Antiplanner if smart growth is just a plot by liberal Democrats to force more people to live in cities, where they will become liberal Democrats. Normally my answer is that people don’t become liberal because they live in cities; instead, they live in cities because they are liberal. After all, I didn’t see any reason why living in a dense urban environment would tend lead to people to vote Democrat.
A recent Boston Globe blog post causes me to rethink this, however. Patrick Smith normally writes about air travel, but on Monday he was upset enough by something happening in his neighborhood that he deviated from this mission. Apparently, a homeowner near the rental home Smith lives in wants to cut down “an old, beautiful, and perfectly healthy tree” on the homeowner’s property.
Smith thinks this will “adversely affect the quality of life for me and several of my neighbors.” He suggests that “at a certain point, a tree is no longer one person’s private property per se, and belongs to the community.” Smith thinks that property owners should be restricted as to what they do with their trees.
