October 20, 2006

A Meditation on Building

By DAVID W. ORR

In the United States and many other parts of the world, people with enough money can build whatever they choose. Zoning laws and various land-use restrictions are more often than not simply paper barriers, permeable by those with enough cash to buy connections. So deals are cut, and casinos spring up in places like mangrove wetlands along the Mississippi coast — gambling with nature, which owns the house, so to speak.

Highways crash through prime woodlands. Suburban housing

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