But there are more peaceful ways to resolve land-use disputes.

For example, the mediator will need to have skill in managing the many parties involved in a land-use dispute.

IN some ways it is an ordinary suburban land-use dispute.

But in dozens of lawsuits and hundreds of land-use disputes, communities are claiming the "other purposes" have obliterated the bill's stated intent.

Home builders are turning to virgin forests and farmland far from this city's job markets because closer sites are locked up in land-use disputes.

Like nearly all such cases, this 30-year-old land-use dispute reached the court in a tangled procedural state presenting numerous obstacles to a broad, clarifying ruling.

IN a town where many people resolve their land-use disputes in court, one Westport businessman has vented his frustration in song.

The land-use dispute has resisted settlement by all means because the issue has never been about land use at all.

Coincidentally, another land-use dispute involving auto racing has also generated high emotions.

The paradox is perhaps best summed up in what may be the most common land-use dispute throughout the region: the opposition to cellular telephone signal towers.