Recent buzz on Nevada City, and County

Nice, balanced (in a good way) article by Tim Holt in the Bee last Sunday, Cappuccino vs. the cowboys (or perhaps here) -

Welcome to the Cappuccino West, where cowboys and loggers are giving way to artists, writers, high-tech entrepreneurs and retirees - where a town like Nevada City, once known for its booming gold mines and rowdy redneck bars, now boasts art galleries, theaters and circuit design labs...The transformation of both towns began in the early '70s, when a wave of back-to-the-land hippies arrived with a jolt. This quickly led to frequent confrontations between the long-haired invaders and the locals, especially the crewcut loggers who worked long hours at grueling jobs and who had little sympathy with those who had no jobs at all.
...
Differing values: On the one hand, an emphasis on recreation and aesthetics; on the other, a working relationship with the natural environment. Communal stewardship on the one hand; profits and private property values on the other. When people with these different perspectives start dwelling side by side, it is an almost certain recipe for conflict...

And conflict we have.
It's fascinating - but not always pleasant - to watch ecological succession occurring in your community, knowing that while with effort you can shift it, there's no way to stop it. And, just as with economic dislocation due to job shifts, it's much easier to be stoic about the inevitability of change when your peers aren't the ones being squashed by it - we have "the human capacity for courage in the face of pain felt by strangers."(*) The swells are invading Nevada City, the riche (nouveau or not) are popping up all over the countryside, and ostentation runs amok.

Jim Hurley took an interesting physical view of Nevada County last month, in Thermodynamics and quality of life:

We are once again hearing a cry for affordable housing for the less affluent and jobs for our children, lest they are forced to leave the county....

[But] There are no barriers that allow us to insulate ourselves from the rest of the state. A drawbridge is not an option...We live in a free-flowing environment, both economically and demographically, in which an equilibrium is established through a flux of people who are seeking to maximize their quality of life.

If we achieve a greatly superior position, we will have to raise the drawbridge; how else can we see that it is _our_ workers who win these jobs and our _own_ children who enjoy newly affordable housing? But there is no drawbridge; in this liquid society, the net effect will be population growth and eventually return to our present equilibrium state in housing and jobs with respect to the rest of the state. Soon we are back where we started but with a density increase to cope with...

We need solutions that are real, not just spinning our wheels and making matters worse. One solution is that chosen by ski resorts at Tahoe, where housing is provided by employers for their workers. Another solution has been suggested: It is time to initiate the New Town...

I say thumbs up on both of these plans.