< sarcasm off >
When the kids move out of the house, they gotta move somewhere...
Farm towns get invaded by leftist yuppies all the time.
Small towns turn into big towns, and suddenly have crime and lousy schools to deal with.
Big towns turn into cities, creating ghettos and urban decadence existing side-by-side.
Where ever there is growth - taxes go up, culture is ruined, and values don't exist. And there is traffic. Lots and lots of traffic.
The same 69 percent would also vote to limit someone else's ability once they achieve "I've got mine" status.
Fear not. The states in the Rust Belt are becoming depopulated and the land will be reverted back to nature.
"Sprawl" is simply a pejorative, Luddite term for growth. It's been going on since the seventeenth century, and since the seventeenth century the same people have been bemoaning the same phenomenon. The Iroquois, the Cheyenne, the Greens, the Enviros... stand in the way of the American Juggernaut and see what happens. That screaming you hear is simply the sound of the greatest democracy the world has ever seen being born and hitting its stride. In a mere moment of history, the Old World aristocracy is gone and self-determination arrives.
Where the heck do they get that statistic? Talk about hysterics!
Spwawl is the term used for "I got mine", now screw you, and everyone who might come after you.
There it is! That's what it's all about! Control, control control! We should all have to ask the nice guvment where we can live! They're experts! We're stupid!
The only thing that I don't understand are the number of affluent young families that decide to move that far out, but then into one of those cookie-cutter "McMansion" deals. *Ugh*!
The same people who are pushing this "smart growth" or anti-"sprawl" nonsense at the same time oppose cracking down on illegal immigration.
"Smart growth" or "slow growth" advocates usually argue that development should be concentrated in existing urban or suburban areas instead of in new suburbs. Many states and counties have tried to protect open space by buying land and through zoning and other regulations.
Care to do the honors of providing the links and background, so all can see that the OBL-ers are getting ready to hide in THEIR gated communties while we are forced to live according to THEIR rules?
The point will be moot once the war in the Persian Gulf gets going.
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.
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.
(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.")
Oh, BS. What's prompting concern is the overwhelming "redness" of the electoral map. The more suburbanites, the more Republican the map tends to get.