Posted on 06/09/2010 12:18:50 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (Reuters) The Senate moved closer on Wednesday to making the concept of "livable communities" a part of national law that would provide federal grants to help local governments implement comprehensive city planning.
Almost a year after Sen. Chris Dodd, the Banking Committee chairman from Connecticut, introduced a bill, the committee held its first hearing. The bill proposes giving livability grants to metropolitan organizations and creating an interagency office on sustainable communities within the executive branch.
The grant amounts would depend on the size of the city and the use of the money. The bill would authorize $100 million in total each year through 2013 for planning grants and $3.75 billion through 2013 for implementation grants.
A similar bill was introduced in the House of Representatives in February.
Dodd described the bill as combining housing development, public transit, and infrastructure and land-use planning into one comprehensive approach to city development. Currently, many of those decisions are made separately from one another, and Dodd and others said the partitions have led to urban sprawl.
Livability advocates promote public transportation and bike paths and building energy efficient homes. The payoff of combining city planning will be great, according to Dodd.
"Our nation is facing a number of significant problems, including a struggling economy, an explosion in home foreclosures, the looming threat of climate change, an increasingly worrisome dependence on foreign oil, deteriorating infrastructure, and, yes, worsening traffic congestion," he said.
Other senators said the bill will reduce the rates of asthma in children, draw younger people back to abandoned downtown areas, reduce obesity by promoting walking and bicycling, and get workers to their jobs on time.
Critics say the bill is vague, extends the reach of the federal government too far into the dealings of local governments and costs too much.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
The ethnic mix is a little different.
Lord, those ARE small towns! DC would fit in Brooklyn with room to spare, and it has only a few more people than Staten Island. I was in Richmond once, and was shocked at how quiet a state capital could be. Always wanted to visit Charlottesville...
So, a town of 35 folks....could do comprehensive planning...and get a grant for $40 million possibly? In theory, anyway?
I am just thankful that there will be no chance of financial abuse with an idea like this...
/S
...and stop voting for Democrats.
Good lord! Now our federal government feels it needs to get involved in issues related to city planning!
Once again they show the frightening degree to which our federal government has gone beyond the bounds of the Constitution.
They need to simply NOT take this money from taxpayers in the first place, and allow states and cities to determine if they want to collect the taxes themselves to do comprehensive planning.
I find myself saying this over and over again: Why is the federal government taking our tax dollars to simply hand it back to states and local governments in the form of grants? (Yes, it’s a facetious question—we all know the answer.)
Hey Feds, how about you don’t take the money in the first place and let states and locals decide for themselves if they want to take it from their citizens and, if they do, what they want to do with it!
Just one more step closer to all out communism. And there are actually good people who can’t see it.
livable communities = Heinrich Himmler’s solution to the conquered Eastern Territories.
Any eastern elitist goosestepper that tries shoving me into a fascist ghetto will end up in a cemetery.
***The Senate moved closer on Wednesday to making the concept of “livable communities” a part of national law...***
Wasn’t this done back in the 1960s and called ..”URBAN RENEWAL”?
You should visit. Charlottesville and the surrounding area (I live about 45 miles north) are wonderful. The University of Virginia campus is beautiful (and remember, this is coming from a Virginia Tech alumni).
I LOVE living in this part of Virginia, and if we can manage to “unelect” one or both of our Obama-naut U.S. senators, and deport Tim Kaine to Massachusetts, I may even stay here after I retire.
Truth be told, though, although Charlottesville fits the Commonwealth of Virginia’s LEGAL definition of a city, it is definitely still very much a “small town”, in both feel and in population. The 2000 census reported a few more than 45,000 living in Charlottesville.
(NYC probably has high-rise apartment buildings that house almost that many people)
Indeed we do. The "Wise Latina" lived there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-op_City,_Bronx
Hmm..the good Senator is planning for his consulting gig in retirement now is he?
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