This commentary is by Todd Heyman, a co-owner of Fat Sheep Farm Cabins, who lives in Hartland. There’s no doubt that rural Vermonters are growing tired of the politics of urbanist Vermonters who embrace rapid urbanization as an environmental win. Recent public letters penned by Hannah Bur rill and Loralee Tester explaining how Act 181’s zoning maps disproportionately burden rural residents have spread like wildfire. While certainly not a call to arms, these letters hark back to the warning often attributed to Ethan Allen: “The gods of the valleys are not the gods of the hills.” Distant edicts from Montpelier may finally have gone one step too far.   Some of the people writing these laws are sadly so disconnected from the land they intend to protect that they are unfamiliar with how a place forms a people. As a result, they cannot even understand Allen’s proclamation. They’re accustomed to subduing any landscape to the same grid-like development serviced by the same corporate chains all over the United States and, increasingly, the world. One person’s inevitable, orderly and efficient development is another’s frightening cultural — and perhaps even spiritual — void.   That’s certainly not the case for the Rural Caucus of Vermont, which is successfully mobilizing to demand delay and modification to Act 181. The usual legislative power brokers who never hesitate to bring another acre of Vermont land under greater government control are, perhaps for the first time, on the defensive — hoping they can live to fight another day by making promises of more study. That said, it is too early to tell whether a genuine rural agenda may take shape to counter, or at least temper, the unquestioning promotion of urban living and urban growth. To urbanist Vermonters, nature is a place to be visited and preserved, but rural living is both inefficient and detrimental to the environment. As writer and farmer Wendell Berry wrote, humans may ultimately divide into people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.  It’s an odd dynamic to observe. I moved to Vermont to enjoy its open space, raise a family with a connection to the land and enjoy the culture of small-town living I grew up with. And yet I’ve repeatedly observed a state government intent on starving rural areas of affordable housing and the few small-scale — often family-run — businesses that could offer some economic development to enrich the quality of life.  Try to build a restaurant, a store or any other sort of gathering space in these communities, and you’ll face the same unforgiving permitting regime as a Target or a Starbucks. But, notably, you’ll have a far harder time getting that permit than corporate chains, because you won’t be building it in the urban areas filled with strip development that purportedly justify restricting your property rights in a far more rural location.  READ MORE Suburban sprawl comes from building dense population centers, which then attract leapfrog development, offering the same residential and commercial services outside urban centers at lower cost. After all, there’s only so much space you can cram people into, and scarcity drives up prices.  Given there’s no town on the fast track to accelerated growth in the neighborhood, I’m skeptical of the notion that small towns like mine will turn into suburbia unless Act 181 bolsters an already flawed Act 250. These towns don’t need laws to keep out the national chains that undermine the small businesses that serve and reflect the local community and culture. There’s not enough money to be made with so few potential customers at hand. Similarly, developers are not trying to build and sell large apartment buildings in these towns. Act 250 already discourages housing development at scale. In other words, Act 181 appears to be a solution in search of a problem. But make no mistake, Act 181 is not harmlessly superfluous. There are very concerning democratic deficiencies in both the concept and the implementation of Act 181. It is an unprecedented jurisdictional expansion of Act 250 to control not just commercial but residential development at the smallest of scales in its Tier 3 zones. These zones are not just lines drawn on maps, but the equivalent of laws written by the unelected, unaccountable staff of regional planning commissions. Many property owners likely have no idea whether any of their land falls into a Tier 3 zone. And as rural landowners and advocates have pointed out, the state has made no plans to compensate landowners for the inevitable devaluation of these lands.  Act 181 is ultimately about more than zoning or property rights. It asks what kind of life Vermont wants to make possible — and for whom. That requires an honest reckoning with what rural communities actually need to survive and thrive. Modern urban centers have conveniences that suit some, but Vermont’s rural heritage no doubt includes some country wisdom that might lead us in a different direction, or at least preserve an alternative path for those with a different point of view — if anyone in Montpelier is willing to listen. Read the story on VTDigger here: Todd Heyman: Did Act 181 create a galvanizing moment for rural Vermont?. ...read more read less