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.
LOL, I have a Bergey wind generator. This area of the country is primo for them. Weatherford Ok has massive wind generator farms right off I-40, I think they're cool, and the land owners seem to like the huge check they receive each month from the power companies. I think the point is that dems like kennedy speak with forked tongue, they want the power and the alternatives, they just don't think they should have to look at it, them being better than myself and all....
So true. Arlington, North Richland Hills, Plano, Mesquite. They're almost identical.
I used to enjoy the occasional Saturday shopping excursion but no longer.
Now it's an all day ordeal of traffic jams, big box retailers full of overpriced junk and crowded chain restaurants serving lame food.
*shudder*
I can't wait to get out of here.
And go where? That's the question.
Oh boo hoo. Others have freedom of choice and you just don't like it. Too bad.
Rural East Texas, that's the plan anyway.
Can't we have a discussion this without that kind of post?
Hope that works for awhile... :~D
Not as long as there are those who don't believe people have free choice as to where they live, where they shop and wish to dictate their beliefs on others as to how they should live their lives. That's what democrats are for.
Good plan. The piney woods also have great hog and deer hunting.
What part of "I moved to the sticks of my own free choice" don't you understand? If you want to have your communities planned by tax revenue minded committees, that's your free choice. Just don't expect others to believe that a new home depot, 3 miles from the other one, is a panacea for good living.
My parents moved out there almost twenty years ago so I'm
somewhat familiar with what it takes to make the transition with regards to obtaining land, housing, employment and getting along with the locals.
East Texas has its problems but I can't think of any other place I'd rather go.
Whyisa, get a load of this article.
It's too hot for me down there I think... I love my shady trees up here in Washington.... There's too many people, but we can still get away from it :~D Luckily.
Good luck to you getting off the pavement.
We all have our roots. I moved back to Oklahoma 3 years ago. My land taxes last year were....$13, quite a change from the $2900 for a house and lot in west Fort Worth. I've never looked back.
I like it! What amazes me is the people who bitch about new homes going up as if their own home was a rock formation that had always existed. At one time, their home was phase one of "urban sprawl".
you can see something more disturbing. McMansion neighborhoods surrounded by WalMart-Kohls-Target-Home Depot shopping centers
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Yes, this drives me to near psychosis. I lost 35 hours of sleep thinking about it last night.
In my travels to Canada, I have observed that that is what they are doing - at least near Toronto. You see lots of 15-10 story high rises even though there may be open land near by.
I visited coworkers and I can't say these complexes impressed me as the happiest place to live.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4213495.stm
This says they appeared in the latest warming age, however much more ancient than 12000 years.
Let the market work. If you don't like sprawl, don't move there. I don't like it, so I live in an older neighborhood. Lots of new homeowners love the suburbs, though, so let them live there. I prefer the small restaurant to the homogenized stuff out there, but lots of people like the convenience of those other places.
I was in Houston once, where they had little or no zoning. I asked someone how they decided what could be built on a lot. The person said that whoever wants to invest their money gets to decide. They don't rely on some pinhead in the gubmint to tell you how you should invest your money, they figure if you are spending your own money, you get to decide. Pretty refreshing. I believe this has changed somewhat now. Not sure.
Lots of these people shouldn't be complaining so much. The flip side is if your town is shrinking or stagnant. Then, you'd love a little sprawl to increase your tax base. Those are the towns that are the ones trying to attract developers and new businesses.
Screw up one state and then move onto the next. That's the American Way. My ancestors started out in Virginia in the 17th century, moved to Tennessee at the end of the 18th century, moved to Missouri in the early 19th century, and then some of them moved to California in the 20th century. I'm not sure where they're headed to in the 21st century, but you gotta problem with that?
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