Not really. "When in Rome," ya know?
What you are describing to me is the foundation for an overall miserable experience while you are there. If you are planning to make it your home, you will need to learn something about local culture and customs and - to some degree anyway - cooperate with the unwritten "code."
I live in a very beautiful area of the country. If it weren't for -30 degrees in the winter, the place would be overrun. This is, traditionally, one of the more conservative areas of the US. Today, however, it is not uncommon for people to move into the area because of its beauty, wide-open spaces, and relatively safe environment. SOME of those people have taken it upon themselves, then, to change what they previously saw as valuable and pristine into something more convenient and "to their liking." Basically, they want to californicate the place. For instance, WE understand that if you pave the roads (presumably to make them safer), "they" will come. Yes...they come. And they come in droves, thereby creating an UNSAFE environment.
I don't know what it is about folks who move around a lot, find beautiful places to live - and then pay no attention to what gives the place its beauty in the first place. Another "for instance" is the town in which I live. It is built around the base of a beautiful mountain with the snow-covered Rocky Mountains in the backdrop. In the last ten years, wealthy immigrants have sold their homes in less-desirable places for exorbitant prices and have moved into this area and have built grandiose monuments to themselves up the side of the mountain that gives this town its character! The whole thing baffles me. It is the same folks who show up at school board meetings, city and county commission meetings and generally raise a stink about how inconvenienced they are living in this back-woods, one-horse town. Try being born and raised here and have to deal with artificially hyper-inflated real-estate on $45,000/year.
If I was you, Milligal, I'd try and be a little more understanding of the local customs and the way people think. There's a reason they're in their comfort zone...and they're not likely to appreciate a Johnny-come-lately coming in to fix what ain't broke.
Carlos
