Posted on 04/13/2012 4:03:19 AM PDT by opentalk
It's no secret that California's regulatory and tax climate is driving business investment to other states. California's high cost of living also is driving people away. Since 2000 more than 1.6 million people have fled, and my own research as well as that of others points to high housing prices as the principal factor.
The exodus is likely to accelerate. California has declared war on the most popular housing choice, the single family, detached home—all in the name of saving the planet.
Metropolitan area governments are adopting plans that would require most new housing to be built at 20 or more to the acre, which is at least five times the traditional quarter acre per house. State and regional planners also seek to radically restructure urban areas, forcing much of the new hyperdensity development into narrowly confined corridors.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Roads, cars, and trucks aren’t going away, nor should they. That’s not my point.
Most of us live in cities. That includes those out on the exurban fringe who wear cowboy boots and drive a big SUV on their two hour commutes. American society can’t be healthy if the cities are chronically sick. We’ve done a lot of harm through bad policy, and we need to rebalance in a number of areas.
Rational transportation planning is not the most important thing, although it’s probably in the top five. FWIW, I would put school choice at the top of the list. Not everyone will pick the city as their first residential choice, but many do, and for young adults who make that initial choice, it is apt to be lousy schools that eventually push them out to the ‘burbs. Voucher the schools, and watch the next generation of young middle class parents stay in place. The cities would be transformed.
Low income housing is a second big issue. We need to break up the big toxic concentrations of government subsidized poverty. That is now generally understood by people in the field, but the remedy requires that suburbs accept a share. That doesn’t necessarily mean scattered site, low density projects or Section 8 (although it might); it may mean zoning to accommodate affordable housing, or relaxing occupancy rules so that renters can double up. We have to stop using cities as dumping grounds, which creates the toxic no-go areas that become the great generators of the underclass. And we should create mixed use neighborhoods so that low and moderate income folks can live in reasonable proximity to jobs.
What we do now is warehouse the very poor in areas where an employer would be insane to tread, and then we wonder why intergenerational poverty becomes the norm.
Housing policy quickly morphs into transportation policy. Again, mixed neighborhoods are a key. We want to maximize the percentage of people who live in close proximity to work. I live in such a neighborhood; this can and should be much more common than it is.
Fix the schools, rationalize housing and transportation, and the cities can be turned around. Not overnight, to be sure, but it’s a worthy goal. And so we need to proceed by small steps. For transportation, this means making sure that we provide sidewalks and bike lanes in urban and high density suburban locales, making sure that arterial roads don’t become barriers to neighborhood cross traffic, and respecting existing neighborhoods, as opposed to seeing them as impediments to the rapid transit of the imperial commuter class.
We’ve all laughed at the classic New Yorker cover of America as seen from Manhattan. A lot of suburbanites have a similar view of their cities, with their exurban leafy acres in the foreground, their job looming in the distance, and not much identifiable in between: drive through country rather than flyover country, but the principle is the same. That’s what needs to change.
Your commuter road would destroy my neighborhood if you ever managed to push it through. The road lobby has tried many times in the past and will surely try again. That’s the issue.
Thank you for responding, I appreciate your point of view. Mind you I don’t agree with all of it. I HAVE lived in New York City, I detested it. Way too crowded and the people there HAD to develop the mental protection of looking straight ahead while walking or riding the subway’s etc.
I’ve lived so far away from civilization that a trip to the city was like moving 50 years into the future. Very unnerving I must admit.
I’ve lived in exurbia where my job was an hours drive away. It was not the best situation but the job was worth it.
Now I live back out in the country on my farm and I visit the nearest small town once a week or so and the nearest city every few months. This is by far the best for me, but I do know my faults. Too many people creep me out, going to Wal-mart is okay if it’s a short trip but any longer than a half an hour and I break out in cold sweats and have to leave.
So in conclusion what’s a good lifestyle for you is NOT one for me. That means that there needs to be the freedom of movement for each of us to find our own place where we are comfortable and can thrive.
Road closure plan for Oregon's largest national forest targets a nearly 4,000-mile network roads
LA GRANDE --Starting in June, passenger cars, ATVs, dirt bikes and four-wheel-drive rigs can no longer travel on almost 4,000 miles of roads in Oregon's largest national forest...
Why do you think that suburbs are an expression of the free market? They depend utterly on eminent domain for acquiring the rights of way for new arterial roads, and on systematic subsidization of infrastructure costs. Those are governmental policy choices, not the free market. Take them away and cities would again tend to grow as they have grown historically: much more densely, with much more aggressive rehabilitation, redevelopment, and infilling, in order to take maximum advantage of existing infrastructure.
The modern American suburb has about as much to do with the free market as the modern American farm, which is the product of three generations of federal commodity and farm lending programs. At least in agriculture, we get planned abundance and the world’s lowest food costs (as a percentage of consumers’ incomes). In housing policy, we have bought comfortable suburbs at the price of brutal commutes, hollowed cities, and a huge, socially and economically isolated underclass. I’m not sure we’ve made good choices.
We can debate the policy, but let’s not begin with the strawman argument that suburbs are a natural development. They are an artifact of transportation and housing policy, every bit as much as was Cabrini-Green.
...and wetbacks... BTW, that urban / rural conflict was obvious even on the (thankfully, now over) TTC discussions here on FR. Rural and small town Texans hated the TTC abortion. (I know first-hand: I attended the THC "public meeting" smoke and mirror shows in several counties. The rural hatred for the TTC was ready to explode...)
Typo: “THC” should be “TTC”...
U.N. Agenda 21, coming to a (progressive) state near you.
A caller ( I don’t think he said where he was) into Mark Levin midweek said he was having a lot of trouble getting a small barn built on what I recall was a TWENTY acre parcel.
It may have been a larger tract.
He said he’s seen efforts to get multiple score acres minimums for a single family home EVEN UP TO 160 ACRES.
Car? CAR??? Only the elite rate a CAR! YOU will take PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION!
I agree with you entirely about different strokes for different folks and freedom of movement. What I wish the car lobby would understand is that all movement is not motorized. Some of us actually live in the neighborhoods that suburbanites only drive through, and their roads can easily become hazards and barriers.
My daughters walk home from school, I ride a bike to work, and my wife could and should, but that’s another story. Here this is not an unusual pattern. It could be much more common than it is if we zoned for mixed use neighborhoods and planned transportation better.
By the way, I didn’t like New York either. Lived there for two years and am glad to have had the experience, but that was enough.
A lot of it is not readily buildable due to terrain, proximity to water supply and "protected" environments.
Yep!! “UN” AGENDA 21...” Sustainable” “Planned” “Control” BAD STUFF. Get U S out of UN and UN out of U S.
Remember, they were ready to go “Smart Meters” a few years ago - but the people said NO.
All they had to do was wait - and now it's being perpetrated on us across the country.
I told the guy to take his Smart Meter - ah, back in his truck. Of course they fined me $40 up front and $12 a month...but if that's the price fora bit of freedom, so be it.
This 20-30- houses per acre - per Agenda 21- implemented through zoning fiat is how they intend to accelerate their agenda. (Also keep your nose to the ground for the other arm of The Agenda: protection of, acquiring of, wilderness areas and corridors, These high density ghettos will be isolated - see the agenda 21 map - and they plan on banning private vehicles as much as possible. I wouldn't be surprised if you wouldn't require ‘papers’ and travel permits to traverse wilderness areas.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8YCLzlpDlw
Newt is the only candidate to talk about Agenda 21 - and vow to get America out of it.
Better wake up, America. This is not just happening in Calif. It's already well under way even in tiny hamlets of Maine - and statewide for the ‘wilderness’ acquisition and corridors. And the Sheeple sleep.As I look out into the forest bordering my 1 1/2+ piece of heaven, I cannot even envision having another 35-60 units on it. I wouldn't even see any sunlight, let alone forest. Time may come when this ole gal will head off into the deep woods and set up a tipi or dig into a hillside and build a Hobbit House, far from the Madding Crowd.
Better cache this - and as you listen to this - remember,obamamam has since passed a fiat that small farmers can't have their ‘children’ operate farm equip - not even anyone under 18 using a battery operated screw driver! (more farmers out of business) AND is putting 30,000 drones into the air to watch over rural America, particularly farms, to monitor what they are growing and how much. And no one questions the Constitutionality of drones watching Americans!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G89FzWTE9cE
THE map -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y38IdRu_khM
I live in a really rural state - our largest city, Portland, is 60,000. Further up the state, where I live, the country seat is only 6,000. And yet, I attended a meeting last month where the whole state was plotted for additional ‘wilderness areas and corridors’ - and shoving humans off.
Two months ago, I went to an open house pushing sales of the ‘ghetto’ units in a new ‘sustainable community’ - the developers/planners are from California...and have access to millions, first coming to town and hoodwinking the town officials for permits etc... This Agenda is well under way, under the radar - in YOUR communities.
Some communities/counties in the country are ‘awake’ and have passed an anti-Agenda 21 ordinance.
Wake up Sheeple - it's already almost too late.
And remember, Newt is the ONLY one who will stop it - will take us OUT of the UN Agenda 21 program. The rest are all in bed with it.
Newt on Agenda 21
People WANT a nice home with a little yard, space. No new supply, existing home values will skyrocket. Simple supply and demand.
“We have bought...”
Would you stop saying ‘we’?
I never said suburbs are an expression of the free market although I think I could make that arghument. I am talking about bureaucratically-planned communities and housing which are always a disaster.
No inner city is going to become dense once again until the mess of gangs, drugs, crappy not to say disastrous schools and utter lawlessness not to speak of total corruption in city councils is cleaned up. This means agressive law enforcement and no leftist/liberal government is going to institute true law enforcement.
You are completely overlooking the lawless mess the inner cities are in, which I find true for anyone who argues for more density, people moving back to the cities. Nobody with kids is going to go back to the inner cities as long as they look like Detroit, Chicago, Cincinnati etc.
All your neat and hygenic plans will come to nothing given the conditions. Wake up.
They knew how to pack them in! Like sardines!
If you like living in a city, have at it. Just make sure you & your wife limit your employment to jobs within mutual biking distance, and make sure that as you grow older, you don’t get arthritis or any injuries.
Me? I think I’ll keep my 2 acres, 3 dogs and 3 horses. It took my wife & I 25 years of working and saving to get it...
Every community is different. In smaller cities where commutes have not yet become oppressive, there may not be much interest in gentrification. In bigger cities, there is.
Lousy schools are a huge problem. As I posted earlier, I think that vouchering the schools would be the single most important thing we could do to revitalize the cities. And I think school choice will eventually happen, despite the union opposition; inner city parents want it desperately, so it’s not just a conservative/libertarian cause.
Getting rid of big housing projects and switching to decentralized, scattered site approaches is essential. The crime/drugs/gang war has to be won block by block. Strong support from the police and City Hall helps. Not all cities will respond effectively, but many will, and there are enough mature examples to have confidence that the fight can be won. Families with young kids are usually not the first wave; it’s young singles, especially young men, often with a bit of a bohemian streak. They establish the beachheads, and then it grows. From a DC perspective, I sometimes think this is the purpose for which God invented gay men. In a tough neighborhood, they’re one of the leading indicators that things are turning around, and they do beautiful rehab jobs.
In many cities, the sketchy neighborhoods tend to be the older neighborhoods, often with solid (sometimes grand) old houses with good bones. If someone gets there in time, these can be great reclamation projects and real moneymakers for the early gentrifiers. It’s enough of an incentive that people are willing to try. Your mileage may differ.
By all means, if you work in the burbs, live in the burbs. But if you are spending two to four hours a day in your car, there may be a better way.
I wouldn’t condition a job search on bikeability, but it’s a nice option. As one who has been in, out, and around the political wars, I have done a fair amount of job switching, but I’ve stayed in the same house for nearly 30 years. Advantages of a central location.
I’m still looking for a telecommuting arrangement.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.