I realize that Joseph Smith is a venerated figure among Mormons, having found those

[LWolf]

10. I'm all for green communities.

I'm not for a whole intact town with laws requiring adherence to a particular religious doctrine.

And I can see why residents are fighting it. I would, too, for the same reasons.

These stringent policies are not the only aspects of Hall’s ideas infuriating would-be neighbors, who have a website dedicated to stopping his project. He’s behaved rashly. He’s buying up acres upon acres of open land in order to build prefabbed developments that won’t look anything like farmhouses or barns. He’s trying to bring 20,000 people to a town with a population of 1,500. To put that in perspective, Vermont’s state capital, Montpelier, has only about 8,000 people. “Coming in with a development at that scale is pretty antithetical to the whole spirit of Vermont,” Jacobs says.

Hall doesn’t seem to know the first thing about Vermont and its ways, and continues to act as though that’s not problematic. To Hall’s credit, he’s attended at least one town meeting and personally defended his plan, but he doesn’t seem to take criticism too well. “I apologize that I have such great confidence in it,” he told Bloomberg. “I personally think that the people of Vermont will eventually ask for it.”