Supervisors and Developers: Hearty Praise and Hefty Scorn

The article, “Orange County Supervisors Rely on Developers to Win” (Oct. 27), missed a couple of very important points.

How has Orange County fared with this relationship? The quality of life and quality of government we have in Orange County certainly have to be among the best in the world.

Any area that has grown at the phenomenal rate of this county obviously has something special to offer. Our housing prices are high because this is a desirable place to live.

The development industry in Orange County is compared to the automobile and Detroit, a misguided analogy to a declining industry whose strategies have been widely discredited and to a region plagued by the most serious economic and social ills.

Orange County, by contrast, has had a stellar economy for decades, with high wages and low unemployment, fueled to a substantial degree by the villain of your story, the development industry.

Having studied people and where they live and the growth of regional areas throughout the United States for 20-plus years, I would say Orange County developers are among the most responsible corporate citizens anywhere.

The next time Orange Countians vote on a development-related issue, I hope they look around at their communities and compare them, not to the “good old days,” but to similar communities elsewhere.

Disallowing growth won’t bring back our semirural past, but it will strangle our economy.

JULIE J. FARBER. Farber, principal in Mission Viejo-based Farber Consulting, has been involved in marketing research for the real estate industry since 1969.