An excerpt:

>Stamford is unique because the politically engaged populace in town only expresses one consistent desire: opposition to everything. Real cities have community members who create organizations advocating in favor of things, rather than endlessly arguing against anything. Real cities have business owners that become excited at the prospect of more people coming into town to stimulate their business, populate our community, and enrich our culture. Real cities have local representatives that care to imbue the place where we live with art, culture, history, architectural beauty, walkable spaces, and connected communities.
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>Stamford has none of these things. Despite being the most diverse city in Connecticut, the crown jewel of the state, and the fastest growing community in the county, Stamford can be best described as washed-up. Largely because our defining cultural influence is a coalition I’ll call the CAVE People. Citizens Against Virtually Everything.
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>If Stamford has a culture, it is the emptiness of this group’s borderline nihilistic passions. The Glenbrook Community Center is in disrepair and has been closed for a number of years, which means it is the exact kind of dilapidated and blighted building CAVE People will do everything to protect. In the past, Stamford has sought “historical preservation” for buildings like a carriage house of a rich guy who lived 200 years ago and factories irradiated with toxic dirt. The CAVE People’s idea of The Paul Revere House appears to be Paul Revere’s garage or maybe his septic tank. Except it’s not even Paul Revere — it’s just some guy.
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>CAVE People love deteriorating buildings so much the only new construction our boards will approve is from developers who build new ones that collapse in on themselves. Or maybe it’s because the developer had to spend so much of their budget fighting a legal battle with our board to get the building approved at all. You get what you pay for.
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>That last example is from Stamford’s Harbor Point, which may serve as a salient metaphor. The management company for Harbor Point sometimes pitches it in marketing materials as the “sixth borough of New York.” A more accurate pitch for Harbor Point — and all of Stamford — would be to call it a New York borough from 20 years ago. Stamford is the cultural mecca where our marquee community events get headliners such as The All-American Rejects, Third Eye Blind, Nelly, T-Pain, and every other artist saved to your iPod in 2006.
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>This love for outdated things actually rolls all the way down to Bedford Street, where we basically have the same exact bar copy/pasted five times. Each of them subscribed to the same playlist including "Don’t Stop Believing," "Sweet Caroline," and "Free Bird." This may have been a neat gimmick if it was passed off as an intentional decision — like a 1980s "Stranger Things"-themed bar — but no such creativity exists in this city.
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>There’s nothing wrong with a little nostalgia but Stamford has made it a pathology. In Stamford, the only action you’ll ever be applauded for is if you can cling to the past so tightly you freeze time itself. Call it the Stamford Time Warp.
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>We’ve successfully locked our city in an alternate dimension where the past lives perennially in the present. Where there is no housing crisis to address, where people still drive everywhere, where people are still enamored with pop stars from the Bush era, where the bars play the same music as the supermarket, and where there’s no greater offense than doing something new. Our community will abandon every virtue they claim to possess — empathy for others, belief in truth, and general civility — and don the CAVE People persona to keep things from ever changing.
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>This is the only explanation I have for this bizarro coalition that pops up whenever an elected official who claimed they would make things better actually tries to do that. It is the CAVE People who see no issue simultaneously arguing conflicting points so long as nothing changes. CAVE People don’t support building single-person units, multifamily units, accessory dwelling units, luxury apartments, affordable housing, or commercial zoning. They don’t support bike lanes, sidewalks, traffic calming measures, or traffic widening measures. They complain about the lack of communication from city hall but also shout down the mayor and city staff whenever they attempt to explain their policy. You can summarize their views on zoning and new buildings as BANANAs: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.