The DFW area. The Big D, with all of its suburban areas, is HUGE. And what makes it a crisis is that the public transit system sucks, as does the highway system.
Drive from one suburb to another, and you can see something more disturbing. McMansion neighborhoods surrounded by WalMart-Kohls-Target-Home Depot shopping centers, with the same chains of restaurants: Olive Garden, TGI Fridays, Starbucks, Red Lobster, blah, blah, blah. Our suburbs are turning into miniature corporate America leaving NOTHING unique or original.
One of the more idiotic statements I've read in the last while.
I hate surburban sprawl because I moved to the edge of the 'burbs to be away from the city, and it moved out here to meet me, and then pass me. I want to be able to get the hell away from the city on a moment's notice, in case there's ever an urgent need to do so, and you sure as hell can't do that if the city has grown up 10 miles past where you live.
I've always thought the suburban sprawl "problem" was a non-issue. Its almost entirely a problem with socialist urbanites.
Personally I don't see a solution, except for individuals to refuse to work for such high pay corporations, take something far less in income, and move to the country and live a simpler life without all the advantages a big city offers.
If you live in one of the smaller states, government is already more powerful than in the larger, more sparsely settled ones. That's not at issue: no growth, slow growth, or fast growth that will be the case.
But perhaps a few wise resolutions taken in time can prevent things from getting completely messed up. When everything up to the state line is developed and paved, there isn't going to be much hope in those parts of the country for the kind of freedom and self-reliance that libertarians prize.
The real problem is that a lot of suburbs are just depressing: tributes to the willingness of Americans to accept mediocrity (mediocre schools, mediocre restaurants, mediocre houses, mediocre cultural amenities) and to pay an increasingly high price for it (traffic, home prices, property taxes, no better connection to one's neighborhors than in an anonymous urban high rise, higher and higher energy bills).
Conservatives can be just as depressed by this as anyone else, perhaps even more so than liberals. However, an important difference between liberals and conservatives is that we're willing to let people make their own choices and have confidence that the market will ultimately sort it all out.
Click this link to see the whole Earth at night from space:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/earthlights2_dmsp_big.jpg
"Suburban sprawl is just another hoax that liberal governments use..."Yes. And whatever they say doesn't have to make sense. They just hammer away incessantly, and millions of morons believe them.
It's all about power and control. Politicians frighten, cajole, promise, lure, tax--whatever it takes to confiscate money from the masses to keep themselves in power--and the morons just hand over the cash--like the dumb, driven cattle we're supposed to be unlike.
"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.'"No wonder the Left is outraged. Leftists don't think people should own anything--certainly not a home.
Every penny confiscated from a citizen is a penny spent on keeping politicians in power! And don't forget it.
"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."The Left reads this as the potential destruction of its political power base.
"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."This horrifies the Left more than anything.
Karl Marx himself--the father of the Left--considered the bourgeoisie to be the greatest threat to his designs.
The Left has not abandoned its Dream of a worldwide Marxist totalitarian government any more than Muslims have abandoned their Dream of a worldwide Islamic theocracy.
This is one--of many--things that the Left and the Islamofascists have in common--a shared Dream of world domination. The rhetoric differs. That's all.
On the other hand, it probably wouldn't appeal to bicyclists much, since it does tend to be rather ... mountainous, a common problem for a Colorado city at 7,000+ feet.
mark
Whyisa, get a load of this article.
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.
Our best defense against nuclear attack -- suburban sprawl. Damn good of Ike to initiate and carry through with ir.
Bump for later.
The crisis? It's a two part deal. First, people cramped in together, crowded and angry vote dem. Think "inner city".
Then dem elitist want the country-side to be their own private Sierra Club type estate. (On our dime) They can bike and sail without the great unwashed messing up their fun. We get shoved into dirty cities so the John Kerry's of the world, the Teddy Kennedy's of the world, can have MORE. More space, more view, more fun, and more power.