Posted on 12/24/2019 10:08:34 PM PST by EinNYC
Racist? Plenty of non-white Americans live in or desire to live in single family homes. Are they racist too?
This is an EXCELLENT EXAMPLE for people who live by conservative values, but don’t want to ‘get involved’...or, even worse, vote Democrat thinking their lives won’t be changed for the worse - that all their rhetoric is simply words, not intentions.
They figure that the American Leftists will ‘leave them alone’...and perhaps they’re right, if they lived in Japan...but not here, no f-ing way.
Welcome to the favella. I seek to outlaw demonicrats.
Yes, but … the unfortunate fact is that we are on track to double the population every 50 years. I would prefer that we control our borders, shift to a skills based immigration system, and drastically reduce total numbers of immigrants. I'd like to see us set population stability as a goal. But that's not what we are doing.
Every metro area will have its local peculiarities, but in the prosperous and growing cities that are driving the U.S. economy, the reality is that: (1) inner cities need to reclaim the bad areas, gentrify and densify; (2) inner ring suburbs need to urbanize and densify; and (3) outer ring suburbs need to plan intelligently for the inevitable growth that will in time turn them into much denser places as well.
Or we could control the borders, but I repeat myself.
The suburban jurisdictions compete fiercely for economic development. They throw up office parks and shopping malls along all the major roads, mostly built around automobile commutes. And too often, they continue to take the view that the poor can be quarantined 20 miles away, out of sight and out of mind, and impossibly distant from the jobs that might lift them out of poverty.
Again, every city has its own issues. Here in the DC area, the District proper, which is now growing again, has about 700,000 people. That's about 12 percent of a Washington Metropolitan Area of more than six million people. If we look to the Combined Metropolitan Statistical Area (the transportation/commuting region), the CMSA extends from Fredericksburg to Baltimore and Hagerstown and Winchester to Southern Maryland. It has nearly 10 million people. DC is about seven percent of that total. DC is not big enough for the rest of you to freeload on us on low income housing, social services and education for the children of the poor. Suck it up, snowflakes; you're going to have to pitch in and help. Because the poor are coming your way whether you want them or not.
Yes, we have a low income population that has serious problems. But the suburbs have most of the jobs, and almost all of the new jobs. Montgomery, Fairfax and PG counties are all larger than DC. Loudon and Prince William have over 400,000 people. And majorities in all these jurisdictions act as if they can continue to live in a protected bubble of exclusionary zoning while DC can and should continue to be the regional dumping ground for problems.
What I object to, most of all, is the idea that this is the natural order of things. It's not. It is the shabby state of affairs produced first by the post-WWII decision to massively subsidize sprawl development, followed by the barrage of public policy disasters of the LBJ/Great Society era. Today's suburban cowboys who think cul de sac suburbs linked to the urban core by major arterial roads (that destroy or degrade the closer-in neighborhoods across which they slash) are "normal" are buying into the LBJ plan to destroy the cities. That model was never the right one. And today, we are living in the long run, and that model is collapsing under problems of scale. Or do you think your commute on I-66/270/495/395/95 is the best we can do, and that doubling down on sprawl is a good idea, and that all we need to do is add another lane here and there?
A reminder: LBJ didn't get it right. He got it wrong. Massively so. What we are doing now is slowly unwinding some of the damage.
DC is gentrifying. The poor are getting priced out. The region's low cost housing is in the suburbs, and this will be increasingly the case with every passing year. Land costs are also lower in the suburbs, so if new affordable housing is to be built, the suburbs are where it should go -- especially since the suburbs have most of the region's jobs, including the service and entry level jobs that the poor might fill. The free market, left to itself, would push the poor to the suburbs, where they would double and triple up in homes, flock to boarding houses or rent spare rooms, and rent the duplexes and apartments that developers would normally build, if exclusionary zoning -- the heavy hand of the state impeding a free market in housing -- were not in the way.
Want to protect your cul de sac? Fine. I agree that the current one-size-fits-all upzoning proposal is a blunderbuss. I live in the Capitol Hill Historic District (which is getting its share of densification nonetheless). I want to preserve the historic district, and there are many suburban areas that I would like to see protected as well.
But if they don't want a blunderbuss approach to upset their little cul-de-sac applecarts, suburbanites need to sober up about the need to build much more affordable housing in reasonable proximity to emerging suburban job centers. Planning is not a dirty word. Zoning is planning; don't say exclusionary zoning to protect my cul de sac is good, but county-wide planning to accommodate affordable rental housing in proximity to jobs is bad.
Pick your example. Tysons Corner has a daytime population of over 100,000 people; it's Virginia's biggest job hub and NoVa's spiritual capital. The last time I saw the numbers, 97 percent of those people drove. That's just stupid, given that Tysons is just a crossroads between Vienna and McLean, surrounded by very upscale housing in all directions. Whether the opening of the Silver Line through Tysons has begun to change its total reliance on the automobile, I don't know. At least Fairfax County has recognized that its bad transportation and zoning policies have created a traffic nightmare, and it finally has a long term plan to help Tysons mature, and become livable, as the dense urban place that it is.
Or drive up the Georgetown Pike, just for fun. Go all the way to Frederick. Mile after mile after godforsaken mile of strip development, most of it fairly upscale but ugly and hopelessly congested. That's bad planning. But the reality is that Georgetown Pike is a linear city, and it needs to function as an urban place even though it runs through counties that still want to act like low density suburbs. There are tens of thousands of service and entry level jobs for lower income people along the Pike. Those folks shouldn't have to endure brutal commutes to get to their minimum wage jobs. There needs to be much more affordable housing along the corridor. If you don't want blunderbuss legislation in the Virginia legislature upzoning your cul de sac, roll up your sleeves and help solve the problem in a more constructive way.
Bottom line, simply dumping the poor in DC ain't gonna work no more. Just because LBJ concentrated housing projects in Anacostia doesn't mean that's the natural order of things. It's not; that was just one of LBJ's myriad stupidities. That era is over. We've learned that concentrating poverty is not a good idea. DC is gentrifying. The city is trying to maintain a balanced housing stock, but we are twelve percent of the Washington metro area and seven percent of the CMSA. The suburbs have been free riders on housing for too long. End of rant.
Merry Christmas everyone.
Ah this will not go over well with the NOVA liberals.
It will be interesting to see if there is a backlash in the next Virginia election.
The current crop of Democrats obviously think they have died and been resurrected in the EU.
This is part of the green agenda, which fits nicely with globalist aims.
Parts of the green movement have been focused on taking control of local zoning laws for several years, but there has been little media attention to this.
Another goal is to force energy efficiency improvements on homes, the cost of which is to be paid by local governments and recovered through property taxes. The right to recover these costs by the government would then take precedence over the rights of anyone holding a mortgage on the property.
Last, but not least, all of this is to be monitored through extensive use of electronics throughout the home. (Think smart meters on steroids.)
The end goal of all of this is to exert almost total control over every aspect of human life. And no, I am not exaggerating.
They have sown the wind.
The Whirlwind is coming.
Yes Virginia, there is a (fill in the blank)
My whackjob SIL and my brother live in Loudoun Co. (Leesburg).
They can keep it.
LOL I had a tagline for the longest time: Global warming is caused by illegal aliens.
Get rid of all the red light cameras, the perenially congested Beltway (PITA), and clean up Georgia Ave and Anacostia, and then we’ll talk.
“Integrated”, subjugated, manipulated, inundated, adulterated, violated, indoctrinated, dissipated, incapacitated, depopulated...
National Republicans should use VA as their example in all things political. Use it as the before and after examples and let working class, patriotic Americans know exactly what awaits if the Marxists gain control.
So you’re cool with having a few duplexes zoned into your historic district neighborhood, right?
Democrat Marxist thugs despise the middle class and want it destroyed.
Jug Ears and ValJar flooded Virginia with refugees and other assorted immigrants for eight years and fueled the expansion of fedgov. The never ending tide of H1s that managed to stay here didn't help either. When we left Fairfax, we were the only family longer than second generation American on our street.
The gopE sucks and let seats run uncontested. In one race they blocked one (R) hopeful and still allowed the seat to run uncontested for the dems.
For many of the seats they do "compete" they run squishy candidates that are dem-lite. But, they're close to DC and get invited to all the great cocktail parties.
That is a perfect way to explain NOVA.
Suburban jurisdictions need to do something similar in suitable locations. I'm not saying that every cul de sac should have an apartment building, but if you don't want multifamily housing on your cul de sac, you need to accept it elsewhere. Near metro and near suburban job hubs would be my first priority. The burden needs to be shared, and this calls for a regional approach with coordinated planning. The theoretical alternative is to go full free market. Were that to happen, there would be NO low income housing left on Capitol Hill; we would lose the historic district and be overrun by office development. The residential housing stock would be sharply reduced, and whatever is left would be extremely expensive. Full free market would push most of the poor out of DC fairly quickly, and they would double and triple up in illegal rentals in the 'burbs, closer to jobs.
It's sad to look at a book like Capitol Losses, which shows what has been lost across so much of DC. Frankly, most of the 20th century architecture is inferior to what it replaced. But that's another story. On the west side, Georgetown was preserved as a residential gem. On the east side, ditto for Capitol Hill (at a much lower price point than Georgetown). In between, there is downtown, which is graceless.
The point is that in a pre-automobile city, mixed income and mixed use neighborhoods were the norm. People walked. The gentry and the wealthy might choose a rail or trolley line commute from the burbs, but most people lived close to their work. The Hill was built to this pattern. We have larger rowhouses (not mansions) on the named avenues. We have smaller rowhouses on the side streets. Small apartments and shops were commonly found on the corners. Servants lived in English basements and on the fourth floors of the larger Victorians. There was a lot of alley housing. So we've always had density and an income mix. The challenge for us is preserving affordable units in the face of gentrification on steroids, but they've always been here; we don't have to try to retrofit them, which is the issue in the suburbs.
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