Bordering on Madness: An American Land Use Tale

This book contains a story about a battle between a university and a community, providing a prime example of land use cases. The book includes a discussion guide for classroom use. To the residents of Chesapeake Commons, their backyards are perfect art, changing only in color with each passing season. When Saxton University proposes construction of a new building on the border between the university and the community, the passion for constancy and resistance to change takes violent form. As the community descends into aggressive and increasingly hostile tactics, the university responds, with equal intensity. Bordering on Madness explores the rage and fear land use disputes generate. The emotions underlying property fights are primitive, rooted in the belief that protection of property means survival. Even a reasonable proposal is experienced as a deadly threat if it seems likely to alter that most personal landscape, the home. As the land use fight in Bordering on Madness ripens, the homeowners and university become combatants. The opposition becomes the enemy, depersonalized and reprehensible. Nevertheless, as is so often the case, the struggle is a sinewy exercise in democracy, with unexpected and regular displays of intelligence and conscience.