American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

Re:American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana by aftbit on Thursday September 18, 2025 @12:56PM (#45292034)

I'm gonna roll to doubt this. I live in a planned suburb with lots of cul-de-sacs which leads to long car-centric paths without sidewalks to walk through. Most of my neighbors (and myself) are very comfortable with people cutting through or around their yards to bypass this. I've gotten explicit permission to cut through when I'm walking my dog from the neighbors that own the most valuable shortcuts, but I wish there were a custom or law that covered this instead of needing to rely on the kindness of strangers.

Or maybe we could build suburbs with these sorts of walking-paths baked in from the beginning. Mine was laid down in the 70s, so too late for that now...

Don't get me wrong - I love my neighbors, and I find that most people are amenable to reasonable requests, without needing the law to lean on them, but it would be nice to codify this a bit.

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Re:American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana by rafram on Thursday September 18, 2025 @01:04PM (#45292139)

> I've gotten explicit permission to cut through when I'm walking my dog from the neighbors that own the most valuable shortcuts, but I wish there were a custom or law that covered this instead of needing to rely on the kindness of strangers.

If enough people cross their land over a long enough period of time (varies by jurisdiction) without permission, that creates a "prescriptive easement," which is essentially what you're asking for. Some decent info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easement#By_prescription

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Re:American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana by conductr on Thursday September 18, 2025 @02:22PM (#45293155)

The majority of new-ish master planned suburban communities I’ve seen do have walking paths, bikeways, and parks baked in. Usually with some large HOA maintained pool, theater, I’ve even seen man made beaches (100s of miles from a coast). Although, they still usually have fenced yards and cutting through someone’s fenced yard without explicit permission is highly frowned upon, I would actually say dangerous when combined with gun situation being what it is.

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Re:American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana by zip1234 on Thursday September 18, 2025 @04:35PM (#45294691)

These are often designed by people that don't ever walk anywhere.

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Re:American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana by stockresearcher on Thursday September 18, 2025 @06:18PM (#45295703)

There’s a development in the works near me that is I think more along the lines of what the OP is thinking. A developer assembled around 1000 acres of farmland and proposes to build housing with half the land being open space. There are no amenities planned, however the houses will be grouped into “dense” clusters with paths through and around them. The paths will count as open space and are going to be owned by our county forest preserve agency, who will be building and maintaining that part.

The interesting part is that the agreement is that the county will be buying about 400 contiguous acres and then the housing clusters will be placed in 500 of the remaining 600 acres, with the 100 acres weaving in and out donated once they do the platting. They’re pretty far along in the process, with zoning and approvals in place. There are still a few unresolved technical issues that could derail the whole thing, yet we are less than one month away from signing the agreement that will irrevocably force them to sell the 400 acres. I’m excited to reach that milestone and after that won’t care at all if the project falls through (the remaining land revert to agriculture zoning and a future developer has to start over from the very beginning).

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Re:American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana by rascul on Thursday September 18, 2025 @01:12PM (#45292265)

> Or maybe we could build suburbs with these sorts of walking-paths baked in from the beginning.

We can. They exist. I've been in some of them.

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Re:American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana by anthomtb on Thursday September 18, 2025 @06:29PM (#45295812)

I live in a suburban American neighborhood, built in the mid 2010's, which has ample walking paths and wide sidewalks. In fact, I cannot think of any newer neighborhood in this area which lacks walking infrastructure. Good sidewalks are a minimum. Usually there are dedicated walk and bike paths.

What is lacking is places you would actually walk to. There are numerous parks and a pool. But that's it. Don't get me wrong, it's great if you have a dog or enjoy running or walking. But I still have to drive everywhere.

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