Green living hung up in Carrboro: Town seeks authority to override homeowners' associations: News: Orange County: Independent Weekly: Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill: "Kolling-Perin lives in Roberson Place, a neighborhood governed in part by homeowners' association covenants. The covenants, like most other documents of their kind, restrict what residents may do with their property, including installing so-called 'sustainability features' like clotheslines. Rules like these are meant to protect property owners from less tidy neighbors, whose unsightly yard ornaments or garish color choices could conceivably lower property values for those around them. But Kolling-Perin was surprised to learn that her environmentally friendly community wouldn't allow a clothesline, even temporarily.
'Many of us moved here because of how liberal it is,' she said. 'Carrboro is a place where you can live your politics.'
Kolling-Perin contacted Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton to see if the town had a process for circumventing homeowners' association rules when it came to environmentally friendly home improvements. Carrboro had no such law, but Chilton and the Board of Aldermen thought well enough of the notion to take it up as an issue.
'People in Carrboro take sustainability very seriously and want to be able to be a community on the leading edge,' Alderman Dan Coleman said."
-------------
What a hoot. This place would make a great sitcom.
Fred Pilot sent the link to this saga of conscience-ridden folks of Carrboro.
3 comments:
This is called the "volvo syndrome". It's a mutation of NIMBYism in which the illusion of a certain form of consumption equating to political correctness becomes reality defined as "real evidence of being an environmentalist." Other examples include banning sailboats in wilderness areas on the grounds that a sail is a "mechanical" device. I suppose by that logic windmill electricity is bad as well.
[second graf]
So the negative visual of the sailboat in the wilderness area becomes the negative visual of the clothesline, even though both are the best possible thing of the environment. But they're "detracting" from the NIMBY "wilderness experience" so they therefore must be banned. Hence the illusion.
New urbanism neighborhoods are found in newly built developments and renovated communities both in the suburbs and older city centers. This new mindset has taken almost 20 years to take root in our national psyche. It is at its essence a straightforward, fundamental focus on changing where we live to improve our quality of life.
Post a Comment