Suburban sprawl an irresistible force in US

Yayoo (Reuters) ^ | 26 January 2006 | Alan Elsner

[BigBobber]

Well, you've got me confused. Rich people are moving into your town and creating ghettos?

[jslade]

bttt

[SC33]

"So what part of "mine" is so confusing? It is my town, and I expect new residents to assimilate- not take over the schools and push their new agenda all over. These are typically not people seeking refuge, they are wealthy folks invading places that were poor, and happy to be poor.

It's classism. The only way they can feel superior is by building mansions next to shacks and letting their kids out to prey on the neighborhood."


Avoid injecting any common sense into this debate. You will be called a communist.

[SC33]

"Yes, there will always be NIMBY's"

There will always be snobs, too.

[SC33]

I'm not disagreeing with you. I just take offense with this notion that it is ok for developers to come into a small community and do whatever the hell they want, because it is the "American way."

[elkfersupper]

Sprawl, defined as the unplanned, uncontrolled expansion of urban areas beyond their fringes

I'm sorry, but there is something very "Soviet" about that statement.

Shouldn't even be a topic of discussion in the United States of America.

[BluH2o]

Back some 35 years ago, early '70's in Colorado, popular bumper stickers seen frequently in the greater Denver area were 'Don't Californicate Colorado', 'Native', 'Nearly Native' (to CO), 'Eat Your Honey' (usually seen on bumpers of pickups with a gun rack in the back window). Can't speak for the other bumper stickers; however, the 'Don't Californicate Colorado' was spot on ... unfortunately, that's exactly what has happened to this beautiful state.

[dufekin]

Regulations designed to stop sprawl and implement smart growth instead generally encourage and even cause sprawl. A city, for example, may decree a minimum lot size of 10 acres with the ostensible purpose of preserving farmland on its fringes. Developers then either use 10-acre lots when they otherwise might put a house on half an acre, or they place neighborhoods beyond the city limits in jurisdictions with more favorable regulations. Both these strategies create sprawl and all its attendant problems.

Families generally want a house to call their own in an area with low crime and good schools, preferably (especially in this era of high gasoline prices) as close to work as possible. If the cities decay into gang-infested ghettos with dysfunctional schools, then non-criminal families of sufficient economic means will move to areas with performing schools outside the gangs' usual range of operations. Most families generally prefer to relocate close, say, three miles away; however, if "green space" and restrictive zoning regulations effectively disallow affordable (reasonably priced) housing within a 30-mile radius of gang central, then families will relocate to the fringes and bear the congestion and commute.

[squarebarb]

That's exactly it.

Nobody wants to live in the inner cities and expose their children to crime, the homeless, high taxes, and wierdo homosexual educational agendas.

Instead of fighting it politically, they just move away.

[Publius6961]

So many words, so little time!
As usual, this article is an egregious distortion of reality, and is filled with so many emotion-laden words calculated, consciously or otherwise, to induce negative feelings in the reader
It simply repeats the tired mindless slogans from 40 years ago, when I first personally experienced this phenomenon.

Across the United States, an unprecedented acceleration in suburban sprawl is prompting concerns...
What makes it "unprecedented"? that it hasn't happened in the lifetime of the teenager who wrote this article? That it didn't happen before the automobile and freeways were invented?
D'OH!

opponents appear powerless to stop the process because of the economic development and profits it generates.
Ummmm. Not exactly; perfect class warfare argument but false, provocative, misleading and fraudulent.
I can't tell you what motivates these "opponents" (I don't think anybody can). But the reason suburban sprawl exists is because of well-intentioned things such as rent-control and Section 8 and a whole raft of other obnoxious things imposed by a true fascist-like government (look up the defintion), egged on by minute groups with great sounding names representing 0.00001% of the population.
New home buyers are forced, due to artificially induced shortages of affordable homes to seek them farther afield.

In other words, around one-third of that total was paved over in the final two decades of the 20th century.
An incendiary statement, calculated to provide hand grenades, not light, to the discussion, and again, fraudulent to boot.
One of the characteristics of the "sprawl" is the ability to provide housing without resorting to vertical ghettos, like the Soviet Union or the towers dynamited in San Francisco and other large cities in the last 25 years.
The typical "sprawl" housing development creating housing at 40%-65% of the cost of the urban area it serves is never 100% "paved over" as the article suggests. In fact the figure is closer to 40%. But there is no penalty for dishonest reporting. By way of contrast, the urban areas, which these parasites promote, the large decaying cities, are in fact 90% to 100% paved over.
Is it a surprise that sane people, at the cost of grim lifestyle penalties, prefer the "sprawl"?

Developers and realtors have developed a powerful political lobby," said Joel Hirschhorn, a former director of environment, energy and...
A straight lie; no other way to say it. The controllers, the manipulators, the social wreckers, all promote overcrowded drive-rats-mad environments, and normal people have been rejecting it for 50 years. The attempt to divide and conquer by damning the providers of new housing has simply failed to work. The new home buyers have just rejected the asinine argument. And will continue to do so.

natural resources at the National Governors Association and author of "Sprawl Kills -- Better Living in Healthy Places."
Ever seen one of these Alice-in-Wonderland reports written by people who have never held an honest job and exist on government grants?

Others try to provide incentives for farmers and foresters to remain on their land. None of these has had any measurable effect in slowing sprawl.
D'OH!
Incentives?
Like rezoning the land to make it impossible to sell --- ever?
By arbitrarily downzoning it, fraudulently "taking" it, without actually buying it? I have personally seen cities and counties lose fraud cases big time, often after they have pushed the land owners past bankruptcy. Public bureaucracies and publicly funded advocacy groups are not the most ethical and moral human beings. I would rather trust loan sharks and lawyers. And I hate those!

For Maryland Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (news, bio, voting record), a moment of truth came when he was flying over the Atlantic coastline close to his own congressional district and he saw in the distance what looked like a massive cemetery.
Ahhhh!
The dreaded (but no longer effective) policy-by-anecdote attack. Puerile.
I have traveled the country from coast to coast to see it for myself. I am immune to bullshit*.
I can respond by counter-anecdote, but it shouldn't be necessary. Anyone who has flown from coast to coast who has eyes to see can verify reality for himself. A minute or two beyond our decaying urban areas, the whole continent looks pretty much the way it looked 200 years ago. Often better.
"...like a massive cemetary"?
cute choice of imagery but, again, puerile; intended to induce negative imagery. I would tend to make that same comparison about our urban zoos, full of the insane, the neurotic, complete with unproductive human pets, crime and attitude.

I could go on and on. Just about every sentence in this article is a distortion, a half-truth or an outright lie.
Like shooting fish in a barrel.

You get the idea.

[Publius6961]

Where the heck do they get that statistic? Talk about hysterics!

From the same place they get the "Second hand Smoke is a toxic substance": from the orifice usually accessed for prostate exams...

[goldstategop]

We're not losing land in this country. By putting land off limits to building new homes and business, liberals merely increase the expense on society. If you think buying an affordable home or investing your nest egg in a new business is increasingly difficult to realize, wait til you see what happens when the so-called "smart growth" advocates are through. One person's idea of a tidy urban environment is the loss of another person's ticket to a better life.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

[Publius6961]

but then into one of those cookie-cutter "McMansion" deals. *Ugh*!

You do realize that this is just a variant of the view of the controlling twits?
You may not be able to force others to accept the vertical ghetto, but you can attack their taste!

No, I do not live in a McMansion...

[speekinout]

We do need zoning laws - only not the stupid ones that exist in some communities. Zoning laws are supposed to ensure that roads, schools, public services, etc. keep pace with population growth. All too often, that doesn't happen.
There are too many examples of stupid zoning laws for me to even try to list them, but my favorites are minimum lot sizes, blocking commercial use anywhere near residences, and encouraging the development of cul-de-sacs instead of street grids.

[goldstategop]

Yep. Its phony. Liberals want to do away with suburbia because it allows people to move about and have a comfortable and safe existence once reserved for the wealthy and privileged. And its simply easier to control people if they're cooped up in miles and miles of Soviet-style apartment blocks. To say its a concern for "green space" that motivates their effort to block the construction of new housing and business centers is simply a smokescreen for their desire to exercise power over the rest of us.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

[Publius6961]

Sprawl is really tough to deal with. On the one hand, it stretches resources, creates pollution, and is a big factor in the traffic headaches of major cities.

Actually, reality sucks.
The only factor in the major cities' traffic problems is that they are 100% paved over, and can't reasonably provide healthy, decent and affordable housing for the workers it needs to keep it alive.

Rather than blame the commuter, they can prove it by the simple expedient of not allowing anyone who doesn't live there to work there.

Do you think that would fly? Do you think that it's possible?

Who are the fools? the large cities or the "sprawl" denizens?

[Lorianne]

It's not just liberals who are for curbing growth. Plenty of conservative NIMBY's out there.

[Zeroisanumber]

You do realize that this is just a variant of the view of the controlling twits?

Yeah, but my variant lets people live in whatever they want to and do what they want with their property. If they want to live in what looks like a collection of cereal boxes and milk cartons painted in a color that's reminiscent of sicked-up pepto and oatmeal, then that's they're business.

You may not be able to force others to accept the vertical ghetto, but you can attack their taste!

I know all about vertical ghettos. I live across the street from what folks around here call "The Crackstacks", which, so far as I can tell, were transported brick by brick from some 70's-era Eastern European urban hellhole.

I don't want everyone to live in a place like this, but I would also like to see new developments where every house didn't look like a variation on this:

[Publius6961]

Zoning laws are supposed to ensure that roads, schools, public services, etc. keep pace with population growth.

What planet did you just arrive from? That hasn't been true since the late 50s!

Since then, with the exception of a few areas that had no "planning" until recently, planning was perverted to finding the most effective way to prevent the construction of affordable housing, and specifically to prohibit, by law, building or expanding facilities to keep pace with population growth!
Ever heard of the most moronic of all phrases, "growth-inducing"?

How many examples do you need?
Like the "firemen" of Fahrenheit 451, the planners of today spend their every creative moment finding ways to enforce by law the opposite of what planners did in the first half of the 20th century.

And nobody seems to notice!