Encourage Community and Stakeholder Collaboration
The website www.smartgrowth.org includes this statement: “Smart Growth plans and policies developed without strong citizen involvement…will be used to create unhealthy, undesirable communities.” 
This is nonsense. Citizen involvement is a good objective, but to say that without it “unhealthy, undesirable communities” would result is the kind of rhetoric we hear from radical environmentalists. A relatively new term being used by the environmentalist and Smart Growth community is “stakeholder.” It has implications that are potentially damaging to the concept of private property. Who really should have the “stake” in a privately held lot or parcel, the “community” represented by “stakeholders,” or the actual owner of the property? Pay attention to the increased use of this word. Furthermore, “stakeholder” collaboration allows a very small minority of fringe activists to control local government by requiring that there be “consensus.” Consensus is simply an admission that these radicals are in the minority but want control over the majority’s as well as your private property and personal rights anyway! The bottom line: The free market, meaning the desires of the home buying public, should be given great consideration in the planning of new communities.
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