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 ...
• Satellite Pictures Of The Empty Chinese Cities Where Home Prices Are Crashing
business insider ^ | Dec. 7, 2011 | Gus Lubin
http://www.businessinsider.com/china-ghost-cities-2011-11#
The long-predicted crash has arrived with a vengeance in China’s original ghost city. Home prices have plunged by one third recently, down 60% from 2006, in Kangbashi, the ambitious second city built on the outskirts of Ordos. Developers, investors and migrant workers are all giving up on Kangbashi. “Ordos is the first of a number of these ghost cities that will see similar magnitude price declines
We might've known. Watch out, you never know when a mouth breathing suburbanite in a monster SUV is crawling up behind you to squash you like an exotic bug.
Omigod. We got us a genu-wine green weenie liberal here. Been lurking for years no less, like a seventeen year locust. Please boys, be nice, don't make him squeal like a pig before you're done with him.
We live at the end of a private dead end road and have a 350’ long driveway with a gate.
I don’t think that we could ever stand to live in a city or even the suburbs again. I’m not sure that it’s luck. I think that other people just go through life oblivious to what is going on around them.
That was a Van Jones quote
“Typo: “THC” should be “TTC”...”
Are you sure they’re not related?
“If driving 2 hours a day means RIGHT NOW getting a near-acre of forest, good local school options, pleasant amenities, low crime, modest taxes & costs, and all the other desirable factors, then so be it.
You can try to manipulate & fight for long term results in undesirable areas; be my guest. I have a life to live and family to raise RIGHT NOW. And if you use police power of the state to herd us into your cattle cars and pens, you won’t like the pushback. You may think those cattle pens are very nice, but we don’t and will not consent.
My family’s fair share of this planet’s land surface is ~20 acres. I intend to acquire it.”
That has to be one of the best posts that I’ve read, ever, on this site. Even better than mine.
“I can find no mention of Agenda 21 in the article. Interesting. Wonder why?”
They don’t need it - the Agenda is in their blood. They’ve had this crap in mind for decades before Agenda 21 ever existed.
AGENDA 21
They want to turn every big city
into modern gettos, take away our land
our resouces,our cars,trucks. There shuting
down rulal roads and not fixing them, there taking
over our lakes,blowing up our dams , threating family
farmers and small business owners,smart meters on our
homes to control power, I already have one. Its unconstitutional and its
fund by HUD/UN /NGOs /ICLEI, and many others.
There goal in Implementing this so called
“SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT”
EQUITY: using the law to restructure human nature
ECONOMY: The international redistribution of wealth
and the creation of public/private partnerships
ENVIROMENT: Nature above man
EDUCATION: To re-educate minds, and mold the youth for the minds of tomorrow.
WE HAVE TO FIGHT THIS AT EVERY LEVEL !!!!!!
THIS IS A FOREIGN INVASION, WAKE UP THE UN IS TAKING OUR COUNTRY!!!!!!!
FIGHT !!!!!! FIGHT !!!!!!!! FIGHT !!!!!!
My humble point is simply that exclusionary zoning is "planning," every bit as much as housing projects and section 8 are planning. And of course, every decision about roads and other transportation options involves planning as well. Where I get into regular spats with suburbanites is when they sit out in neighborhoods that are zoned tighter than a drum, and then agitate against the evil planners who are trying to sneak low and moderate income housing somewhere into the mix.
The underlying notion seems to be: "We zoned the riff-raff out, we want to keep it that way, and in a free market, they all belong in DC and PG anyhow."
Not so.
In a pure free market, we'd tear down the housing projects and get rid of section 8. This would be great for the city, which has provided far more than its share of such accmmodations over the years.
But we'd also get rid of zoning and occupancy rules. No planning-right? The poor would double and triple up in rental housing, and 14 Mexican laborers might end up bunking in the house next to you. Developers would build duplexes, small condos, and small apartment buildings in currently expensive single family home neighborhoods, to serve young professionals and moderate income working folks who would like the cache of a Great Falls or Potomac address. (Not to mention those who work in Great Falls or Potomac, and are tired of fighting drive time congestion five days a week.) We would see a return of the boarding houses, and not just in the city. (Judging from the trace marks of interior locks and the wiring patterns, my current home once was a five unit rental.) There are plenty of big homes out in the burbs on leafy streets that would serve admirably as group houses.
This is not an either-or issue. All of these housing options exist in places around the metro area. But they are the exceptions rather than the rule. And the higher the price point of the neighborhood, the more aggressively the residents are likely to enforce the exclusionary rules.
Now back to the real world. I do not in fact favor a no-holds barred free market in housing. I live in the Capitol Hill Historic District, and residential Capitol Hill would be destroyed very quickly by commerical development, absent zoning. The fact that this never happened historically is a happy curiosity, but it would happen today. By the same token, I won't press the quarrel with suburbanites who want to keep group homes and tripled-up rentals off their cul-de-sacs.
So if we accept zoning, and we agree that big housing projects have been a disaster, where do we think the poor should live? If we allow these decisions to be made through the zoning process, they are "planned" decisions. If we're honest, we can't zone people out of our own neighborhoods and than turn our backs and say they're someone else's problem. Zoning is planning. And clearly, we have not planned very well in the past.
Looking ahead, my preference is that we place a greater emphasis on mixed use communities; that we try to include a wide range of residential price points in neighborhoods, expecially near commercial corridors; and that we try to build walkable, bikeable communities (i.e., with sidewalks, bike paths, and regular street grids with frequent crossings, as opposed to high-speed commuter sluiceways that become barriers to neighborhood traffic). And no more big projects to concentrate the poor; that's been a disaster.
Gotta go. My daughter has a soccer game down in Prince William. Drive time should be 45 minutes. I'm allowing at least double, because everybody in NoVa has to hop in a car to do anything. The result is 24/7 congestion, even on Saturday mornings. We can do better than that.
Hardly. Perry loved the second — and wanted to kill off the first...
The ‘block’ parties must have been a riot.
Most of southern California is a desert. Los Angeles could not exist if water was not brought in to it.
California is no more uninhabitable because of it's terrain then any other parts of this nation. We have technology and know how to build anywhere.
As for "protected" environment, these area became protected by law and can be unprotected by law.
The only thing that restrains California from being a great state again is the strangle hold the socialist (with support of unions and government workers) have on it.
The Democrats have created the mess and it will not be fixed until they are out of power.
There is one thing that makes life possible in most modern, densely populated cities anywhere, not just LA. And it is this: the availability of affordable energy in quantity and on demand. Take that away and you have little or no water, no sanitation (disease would sweep through the population like wildfire), no ability to move goods (i.e., foodstuffs), no ability to allow people to move freely about and engage in commerce. There simply isn't enough in the natural environment of most cities to sustain even a sizable fraction of the population at even a minimum standard of living. Most people in cities today would simply die in their homes if energy in the quantities needed were not available.
Which is why I find it ironic that people in NY agitate for the shutdown of Indian Point, or people in LA go on the warpath against places like the San Onfre power plant. Those are the very things sustaining their lives, yet they want to get rid of them. They are cutting their own throats, as well as those of millions of their neighbors.
How sinister. Why is Agenda 21 not being discussed more???
If you want to be on or off the Agenda 21 ping list, please notify me by Freepmail. It is a relatively low volume list in which we have been exploring the UN Agenda21 and related topics. We have collected our studies with threads, links, and discussions on the Agenda 21 thread which can be found here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2738418/posts
NEW ACTION THREAD:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2861644/posts
Thanks for the ping!
This document is from the EPA, HUD, CalTrans, etc. It spells out the mobility plan for California’s future and Cars are not on in the plan! This plan calls for a Regional and Interregional planning of our future! Soviet style government at its best.
http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/tpp/offices/ocp/smf_files/SmMblty_v6-3.22.10_150DPI.pdf
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