Posted on 08/31/2009 4:54:58 AM PDT by kingattax
If you like living in the suburbs, having your own little piece of God's green Earth, and being part of the community schools, churches and civic groups, well, too bad because the "Smart Growth" progressives in Congress and the National Reseach Council have a new report that shows how much better things would be if instead you and your family lived in an urban high rise.
According to a news alert from the NRC, the report examines "how suburbanization -- made possible largely due to the prevalence of automobiles and the extensive U.S. highway system -- impacts the number of miles we drive, our reliance on petroleum fuel, and the percent of greenhouse gas emissions from transportation.
"The report looks at studies on compact, mixed-use development where people live in denser environments with jobs and shopping close by, to determine whether a shift to this type of land use could lessen vehicle use, energy consumption, and CO2 emissions."
Why would living in "denser environments" be better? Well, for you and your family, it wouldn't be, but it would be for Smart Growth progressives in and out of govenment because it would be so much easier for them to control how you and your family live.
Why? Well, just to take the first example that comes to mind, instead of relying upon a private car that can take you wherever you decide to go, you will have to use government-owned mass transit that only takes you where the government thinks you should be able to go.
And without independent mobility, you won't have nearly as much freedom to do things like send your kids to a school you prefer instead of the government school closest to your high rise.
Also, you probably will have to get a job working at one of those massive bureaucratic institutions that thrive in the close-in urban sky scraper environment. So your future economic opportunities will be much more limited than they are now.
You can also forget about making trips to the grocery store and Wal-Mart to take advantage of the lower prices that come with economies of scale, just-in-time delivery, and consumer-driven product offerings. The big chain grocery stories and retailers won't be able to offer either the lower prices or product variety they do now because there won't be nearly as many of their stores around.
Thanks to mass transit, it will be hard to get to those that do survive, and even when you manage to get there, you won't be able to carry home nearly as many items riding on mass transit than you could in your own private car. So it will be more trips for fewer items, on a daily or every other day basis, just like your great grandmother and great grand father lived back in the 19th century.
And that is what this is all about. You may have read about the 19th century in school. That was when people living in crowded, smelly, crime-ridden big cities like Philly, New York and Cleveland began fleeing to the suburbs. They did so to get some room for their families to grow, to get away from the daily dangers of the big city, and to live the American Dream of better jobs, better schools, more freedom.
Kind of makes you wonder what the Smart Growth progressives have against people living the American Dream in the suburbs, doesn't it?
And by the way, why do we need a federally funded National Research Council study to tell us people who live in cities drive less than people who live in the suburbs?
This makes me spitting mad. I’ve seen the ugly, impoverished, hopeless high rises in Beijing, China, leftovers of the wonders of communism. I’ve also seen the faces of the people of China who live in these monstrosities. These people have no lives. Hope and change, my a$$.
Vote these bastards out of office.
“Kind of makes you wonder what the Smart Growth progressives have against people living the American Dream in the suburbs, doesn’t it?”
Uhhhhh ....... They hate us?
Options are good. I wish more suburbs had a dense “downtown” with a train station like many suburbs in New Jersey. Those who want convenience and walkability but who didn’t necessarily want to live in the city could still enjoy a certain lifestyle: I’m thinking of places like Montclair, Madison, Bloomfield, Morristown, etc. The place I live now—Farmington, ME—is sort of like that (but the train station is long gone). Places like that right now are very expensive because of high demand and low inventory.
Nobody should be forced to live any way they don’t want to, but I doubt we’ll see the end of the suburb in our lifetime. Small changes in development patterns could really help though. Right now, it is government control that is keeping such density from taking hold, as most suburban zoning and planning laws have tight restrictions on density, commercial development, and transit.
Options are good. I wish more suburbs had a dense “downtown” with a train station like many suburbs in New Jersey. Those who want convenience and walkability but who didn’t necessarily want to live in the city could still enjoy a certain lifestyle: I’m thinking of places like Montclair, Madison, Bloomfield, Morristown, etc. The place I live now—Farmington, ME—is sort of like that (but the train station is long gone). Places like that right now are very expensive because of high demand and low inventory.
Nobody should be forced to live any way they don’t want to, but I doubt we’ll see the end of the suburb in our lifetime. Small changes in development patterns could really help though. Right now, it is government control that is keeping such density from taking hold, as most suburban zoning and planning laws have tight restrictions on density, commercial development, and transit.
Warsaw ghetto comes to my mind.
And they can have what is left my suburban home and pool, soon as the smoke clears.
The proponents are not always, or even usually, talking about high-rises.
They usually mean two and three story single-family homes on small lots, similar to parts of cities build around 1900.
Portland, OR is their ideal.
We need to put politicians back in their place.
Just like in the USSR the apparatichiks all had there country dachas. Nothing wrong with the elites having a place out in the country, as long as the peasants are confined to their high rises.
A lot of “environmentalism” has to do with “I got mine” so stay the hell away.
Nuclear plants, transition to electric vehicles for commuting and the problem is solved.
Doesn’t matter that there is a better solution as what they really intend is further control over the citizens.
I have a well and septic, a lake and a good amount of land. What I fear most is being dependent on my basic needs like all the urban dwellers end up.
Water, food, and shelter all being centralized and controlled by one entity for as far as the eye can see scares the hell out of me, I never want to be just a number to someone who controls who gets what.
LLS
Cities are human ant farms.
More government control. They already have citizens confined to inner city high rises, it’s called public housing. And they always call their ideas “smart”. Yea right.
But they're still human ant farms :)
My observation of the residents in old office buildings and lofts that have been converted to condominiums and apartments in downtown Dallas is that they seldom are on the streets except to walk their dogs. They rarely shop downtown (nowhere to shop other than Neiman Marcus) but drive 15-20 minutes to spend their money in shopping centers and malls in North and East Dallas. When the children approach school age, they abandon downtown for suburbs like McKinney or Frisco.
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