[teakettle42]

Great idea. Expensive, though. What if, instead, a bunch of us buy land in the area, form a democratically-elected government, and mutually agree to limit development on that land such as to preserve the current level of density and our quality of life?

We can call this idea “zoning”.

[Pet_Ant]

Why not buy it jointly? Otherwise you are telling people who bought the land what to do with it. If you want to have a say in it, pony up for it. Buy the land in the name of the township and turn it into a park.

[teakettle42]

No, you’re limiting the externalities that an individual land owner can impose on everyone else.

[dionidium]

"Externality" is one of the most tortured terms in widespread use and it would have been better if non-economists had never heard of it. Just because you don't like something, that doesn't mean anything has been "imposed" on you. You're dangerously close to describing the existence of other human beings as an "externality" that needs to be solved for, a view with a less-than-stellar track record.

[dionidium]

The reason we put some things in a Constitution is that we think those things are so important that they aren't subject to the whims of the electorate -- they aren't up to a vote. You don't get to have a vote about which religion will be the state religion. You don't get to vote away my right to Free Speech. And you shouldn't get to vote to limit my Constitutionally-defined private property rights.

Of course human beings want to restrict what other people do on their own land. History is full of groups of people just, you know, taking land whenever they think it suits their purposes. That's why the right to private property is in the Constitution. It's why Euclid was wrongly decided. And it's why you don't get to appeal to "democracy" in an attempt to abridge a fundamental right.

[heyitsanewacco]

Oh cool, so as a suburbanite I get a vote too?

No?

Oh great, I guess I'll be commuting 2 hours to get to an office that is walking distance for my boss.