Posted on 01/29/2006 7:17:24 AM PST by SmithL
A well-made, raised-relief map is a beautiful thing. You know what I'm talking about, don't you? It's a map mode of molded plastic, so that mountains protrude into your personal space. This is handy when you are riding your bicycle across America. You can see where the tough climbs will be. Avoid Gunnison, Colo.
My map of the 48 states is made by Kistler Graphics Inc. in Denver. Not only the texture but also the colors are delightful: a rich mix of tans, greens and blues.
The artist uses one other color, yellow, to mark urban areas. I think about those splotches when I hear gloom and doom about suburban sprawl, and you know why? Because compared to the entire land mass of the United States, they are tiny.
A lot of cities you would consider large do not even merit their own yellow splotch, but merely a black square. For example, Portland, Las Vegas, Indianapolis, Salt Lake City, Miami and Phoenix.
In fact, in the entire western two-thirds of the nation, between the California coast and the Mississippi River, there are just four yellow splotches, and you have to look really hard to find them. They sit unobtrusively next to mountains and rivers. Can you guess them? I'll tell you at the end of this column.
On my map, the distance from San Francisco to New York is 50 centimeters. The distance from International Falls, Minn., to Brownsville, Texas, is 30 centimeters. That means my America comprises roughly 1,500 square centimeters. It looks to me like all the yellow splotches combined could fit into Vermont.
My seat-of-the-pants analysis is confirmed by Steven Hayward, a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco. He writes: "Developed land accounts for less than 5 percent of the total land area in the continental United States. The amount of land developed each year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, is 0.0006 percent."
So I have to ask: Where in the heck is this suburban sprawl crisis?
The answer, to me, seems obvious. There is no crisis. Suburban sprawl is just another hoax that liberal governments use to try to stop us ordinary Americans from doing what is natural.
In this case, we want to find a roomy place to live and have a little money left over after paying the mortgage. But social engineers, trying to perfect humanity, don't want us to spread out. They want us crammed together in dense cities to keep us in line and take away our Swiss Army Knives.
In this sense, the suburban sprawl myth is similar to the global warming hoax. Al Gore types begrudge us the freedom that cars provide, so they scare us with threats like "You're destroying the coral reef of Mexico!"
Well, so what if we are? I didn't even know Mexico had coral reef. As I have asked before: Who ever promised us an Earth that would never, ever change? Who ever said coral reef should exist forever? Ask a dinosaur: Species come and go every day.
In other words, if coral reef does die out, soon enough it will be replaced by some other interesting organism. Did you know there were no bats on Earth until we emerged from the last Ice Age 12,000 years ago? That's right: If not for global warming, there would be no such thing as these fascinating, sonar-equipped flying mice.
This is how the world's climate works, you see. You lose a reef, you gain a bat. Deal with it, OK?
Now some more about suburban sprawl. It is not the evil that it's made out to be. In the New Democrat a few years ago, Fred Siegel wrote that sprawl is "an expression of the upward mobility and growth in homeownership generated by our past half-century of economic success. ...
"An unprecedented 67 percent of Americans now own their own homes. Black homeownership has been increasing at more than three times the rate for whites, and today a record 45 percent of African-Americans are now homeowners.
"Sprawl is part of the price we're paying for creating something new on the face of the earth: the first mass upper-middle class."
The writer Thomas Sowell adds: "In some places housing prices are astronomical -- three times the national average in much of California, for example. Despite the old rule of thumb that housing should cost no more than one-fourth of your income, there are parts of California where tenants and new homebuyers pay at least half their incomes for housing."
So what are middle-class people supposed to do in cities such as San Francisco? Pitch a tent in Golden Gate Park? No, of course not. They move eastward, building communities in the undeveloped land between Oakland and exurbs like Stockton.
And what if they do? As Sowell points out: "You could double the size of every city and town in America, and still nine-tenths of the land would be undeveloped."
Steven Hayward, the researcher quoted above, has found a rich analogy to the suburban sprawl panic in Chapter 7 of "Alice in Wonderland":
"There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep. ...
"The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it: 'No room! No room!' they cried out when they saw Alice coming. 'There's PLENTY of room!' said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large armchair at one end of the table."
Duh!
Readers may send email to mbowers@starnewspapers.com. The four yellow splotches between the California coast and the Mississippi River are Denver, San Antonio, Dallas and Houston.
Not me FRiend, out here there is no plan. The plan is for those in the cities. Good luck.
I have two hats. One for summer (Tilley) and one for winter (Australian wax cloth). I wear them as city dinks like you drive by and ask where the bar is.....
"Not me FRiend, out here there is no plan. The plan is for those in the cities. Good luck."
I try to make my own luck. Just bought 15 acres 25 miles from town. Be living there by summer.
Did I read up-thread that you're in Elk City? Been there. Born and raised in very small town in south central Oklahoma. Glad to hear the oil patch is coming back. Had a oil well in my back yard (not ours).
About 9 miles from Cheyenne. We're booming here, can't get enough tanker drivers nor "rig workers". Welders are considered "blessings from the lord", no pun intended. You can even buy starbucks, or just go to the Flamingo and have breakfast.......
"You can even buy starbucks, or just go to the Flamingo and have breakfast......."
Latte drinking roustabouts? Almost as bad as 'gay cowboys'.
I can remember times when welders were gifts from God, back in the late 70s. Dad used to say he could tell how good the oil business was by the cowboy boots being worn. Plain cow leather, things were bad. Rare leathers, oil was good. Enjoy while this lasts.
Then buy it, keep it as is and stop whining.
We all get it, your fantasy world is stuck in the 50's. What you don't GET is there is demand for these stores in the area or they would close.
bump
A friend of mine has something he calls "the one full tank of gas" theory. To wit, when the real crisis comes, one will need to be far enough away from any urban/suburban center so that it would take more than one tank of gas to drive there. (He alos speculates that in a real crisis, fuel distribution will would be cut off, leaving people trapped within cities and suburbs that shall descend into chaos.)
Having said that, I believe the only way to truly escape suburban sprawl for the long-term (notice that I did not say "forever", but merely for the long-term, that being at least the remainder of my own life) is to locate to some rural area or small town that is indeed too far to reach from any major city or suburban area on that one tank of gas.
- John
It happened in Frisco, Texas (the "highway" 121 corridor)... it is a nightmare trying to navigate east/west, much less north/south on Preston Rd. (state highway 289). What the heck are these local governments doing with all the tax revenue gathered? Why do not they use it to build "FREE" roads (that one doesn't have to pay a toll to drive on?).
Highway 121 is going to be a toll road (they're going to gleen the windfall money to support roads in other locales - total bs if you ask me, but what do I know, I'm just one of the minion voters?).
The folks in McKinney/Frisco/Allen/Plano/other locales east and north will have to pay a toll just to get to/from D/FW airport. If they're going to toll the roads, then the Wright Amendment (restricting flights to/from Dallas Love Field airport) should be 100% repealed.
That's my soap-box rant - please drive through.
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