Personal invitations should be sent to the Town Hall's of Snow Hill and Hebron on the lower shore. Apparently leaders of both feel proposed developments that will triple or quadruple(Hebron) the populations will "save" the towns. In reality, the "saving" theme is simply a ruse to help in any way they can prospective developers who pass around bundles of cash to get the approvals necessary to build.

In Snow Hill's case, the Town went as far as throwing a recent election to get two new members of the Town council who are in favor of the larger sewage treatment plant needed to facilitate the proposed 2100 new houses. The election result was skewed by a recent changes in election protocol's to make absentee ballots available to all voters. The final tally aided by over 100+ absentee ballots handed in by the winning candidates themselves produced the result the Town was hoping for. A local(Worcester County) administrative judge saw no wrong doing in what was clear case to most observers as voter fraud.

The non-stop development on the eastern shore and the corruption that accompanies it never ceases to amaze.

Good suggestion... as far as I saw at the conference the only lower shore folks were from Salisbury, Pocomoke City and Princess Anne. That said, I believe it's the first time mayors, council members and planners from all over Delmarva (not just MD's mid and upper shore) were invited to the conference. I hope they get the message in Hebron and Snow Hill: If we're going to grow, we should grow in/around our towns (infill first) and through compact, connected, careful development for livable, walkable communities.

So, tell me, who says what "good" is? Many of these things start with the supposition that what people have wanted and been doing is "bad". But, as this story alludes, things like "compact development" is good. If people wanted compact development, the marketplace would be full of such opportunities. These new concepts succeed only because the state dresses them up in emotional terminology like "good" and "smart" backed by the hammer of government regulation and control if the local jurisdictions misbehave.

The last commenter (skeptic) clearly has no expereince in development. What a ridiculous comment - "the marketplace would be full of them". As a developer (I know - I'm supposed to be sooo evil, right?) I know that market demand is only one critical part of the equation and one part of my thought process when developing my project pro forma. Developing the cheapest product is the second part (reduce cost), building off others' ideas is the thrid (reduce cost), and lasttly - local govt codes still reinforce large setbacks and distance between buildings - in other words NOT compact development (go figure). Fix the local codes and you've taken a step. But it's still tough to - as a developer - build something without great local examples to model from. Any time you do something new (even just new to a region), there are lots of unknowns. Investors don't like that, I don't like that. But don't for a second think that they wouldn't sell. Real estate development is a market with huge variation in the demand/supply matchup. So, even when demand appears latent - an influx of (reasonably affordable) supply can disappear surprisingly quickly. And on the Eastern Shore - you're talking about small gestures for small towns over a big area - so whether you build crap or "good" stuff - the overall ability of people to purchase homes at all (economy) is more likely to determine whether it sells than some speculation about whether "the market demands compact development". In other words - if you build it (at the right time) - they will come.