Our unique land use system has won national awards for people who view high density favorably, and urban sprawl with disdain.  The problem is that the people winning the awards have forgotten that one of the reasons to protect rural areas and farmland was so that our residents could live a less urban livestyle, having the ability to travel short distances to purchase home-grown vegetables, for example.  In their zeal to protect the environment and rural areas, the urban interests have forgotten that real people live outside the dense centers, and that many of those residents choose a more rural lifestyle as a valid choice.  Our citizens living outside the urban centers must have their rights respected and valued.  Many regulations that make perfect sense in an urban setting, are completely inadequate for the suburbs and rural areas in East County.  For decades, the politically powerful centers in downtown Portland have failed to respect these legitimate policy differences, and have imposed their will (sometimes using Metro) on our residents in East County.  That manner of harnessing raw political power to impose rules and regulations on East County has created, and severely strained, the urban-rural divide.
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