This is hitting me hard rn. I went to my hometown the other day and the woods I used to play in (previously a nature preserve) were sold off piecemeal. Torn up to build mcmansions and a luxury nursing home owned by the gated community down the road that's only for the geriatrics that used to live there. The wildlife displacement has caused boars to make their way into the neighborhood, tearing up people's gardens and even killed a couple of pets.
The scenic highway that followed the banks of untouched marshland is now apartments and a huge subdivision. They had the balls to call the apartments "the preserve". They dredged up what little swamp remained in that part of town for bullshit. No infrastructure, no shops, no schools, libraries, clinics. Nothing. Just rows and rows of poorly built, overpriced houses. In the middle of fucking nowherewqw.
There's huge chunks of undeveloped area in town, chock full of invasives and rows of non-native trees that the city planted to dredge up wetlands decades ago that they could've developed into something resembling a real city. But because the city council is literally run by wealthy real estate agents they don't give a shit. Just sell off the most valuable chunks of land, destroying the very things that made them valuable in the process. It was equal parts sad and infuriating
It's all good. It's been happening for years now but I havent been to that part of town since they started "developing" it. There's been a handful of local protests and more (relatively) progressive people running for local office but so far there hasn't been any success. I think direct action is called for at this point but there isn't much in the way of activist orgs down there unfortunately.
It's a very conservative town. The 30 person demonstration for the BLM protests back in 2020 made the front page and had the cops freaking out