Posted on 07/29/2015 8:55:34 PM PDT by artichokegrower
Neighborhoods built around single-family housing are ecologically unsustainable in a world increasingly challenged by climate change.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.sfgate.com ...
Some one published ALgore's natural gas bills for an entire year. The total was about $30,000 for one of his houses.
Al made changes to lower his natural gas foot print was the statement released to the media.
In a photo of that mansion a new 18,000 gallon propane tank could be seen from the air, but not from the street.
Talk about double speak!
You are no progressive Jake Ellison! You have the vision of a file clerk. The technology of the future will create vast floating metropolises in all the oceans, cities in Antarctica under huge glass domes, cities on the Moon and many planets of the Solar System.
That house looks like the Malibu residence of Barbra Streisand.
Yeah. Tell the millionaires on Lake Washington about this. Too funny!
No. Don’t. I just left there. You are kidding right?
Whoopi Goldberg has a mansion in Tuxedo Park, NY a 120 yr-old subdivision that makes Beverly Hills look like a third-world hellhole. Hilary’s mansion is in Chappaqua, both towns are 96%+ White without 1 sq in of section 8 housing. When they and their celebrity friends have there palatial estates converted to multi-family housing, then I’ll listen. Until then the tree huggers can tell their jokes to other folks.
Oh, for the sake of Pete
Leftists are just simply nuts.
Oh yeah.
That's the ticket!
When man first discovered fire, the first few next things they embraced was the communal cave, unisex restrooms and the colorful garbage dump near the front cave entrance.
If it was good enough for them....
And for the ecology, of course.
Oh how I miss the meaningless and mindless, dope-inspired bumper stickers of the 60s...
ECOLOGY NOW!!
I guess Ellison can’t afford a single family home in the Bay Area— so no one should. Global Warming and stuff.
Ends and means: suburban development and the automobile commute are fine ways to live ... up to a point. However, beyond a certain scale, which varies depending on local transportation bottlenecks (rivers, bridges, mountains, etc.), the suburban commuting system becomes dysfunctional.
One systemic problem is that jurisdictions keep investing in the old model long past the point of diminishing returns. New roads are built, existing roads are widened, often severely degrading the quality of the closer-in neighborhoods that they cross. Pleasant neighborhood streets become commuter raceways. Suburbs are built with no eye towards non-automobile transportation, and when gridlock hits, it proves devilishly difficult to retrofit alternatives. Young people, old people, and low income people without cars get isolated, and people with cars spend far too much time bonding with them.
The lobby for densification comes largely from people in cities that have overshot the mark, and that are now trying to maneuver towards better models in areas where gridlock is becoming suffocating, and in which punching a new highway through other people's neighborhoods no longer seems a viable option.
Push-pull: suburbs have natural competitive advantages: new and larger homes, often lower costs (depending on the price point of your particular development), bigger yards, etc. Those are well and good. The other side of the equation is the push factor. Cities have done much to make themselves ugly, expensive, and dangerous places to live. Many see the suburbs as a safe haven. This is true, but it is also a correctible problem for the cities. After all, clean, safe, convenient, walkable and bikeable city neighborhoods with good schools, minimal commutes, low crime, etc. are wonderful places to live, especially if the alternative is spending 3-4 hours a day in your car. Cities need to focus on reducing their self-inflicted negatives.
Means matter. I dislike the feds moving in with a sledgehammer to pound suburbs into submission. But in many cities, gentrification and densification will be driven by market demand, provided we get some of the externalities right. At this point, the single biggest reform that would rejuvenate major U.S. cities would be school choice. Young people are attracted to cities for jobs. They like the convenience and vitality of city life. There is a lot to be said for living in a walkable urban neighborhood, the kind of place that is truly car-optional. But if the schools are a disaster, they won't stay. That needs to change.
We also need to continuously remind suburbanites that every major road-widening project means sacrificing other people's tree plats and front lawns. Every high speed commuter corridor becomes a dirty, noisy intrusion and a barrier to local cross traffic, both motorized and especially non-motorized, in the neighborhoods it crosses. We need to value the property rights and quality of life of inner ring residents over shaving a few minutes off commute times for distant suburbanites.
There are many gentrification and densification success stories, and the number is growing. Obama, et. al, have the reflexive habit of approaching these issues from an adversarial perspective, because they live in an us-vs.-them politicized world. They are part of the problem. The legitimate goal is to build attractive city neighborhoods that pull people in voluntarily. That should be, and can be, a win-win proposition.
Which world would that be?
It is babs.Showing how green her lawn is this year.
But I've noticed something with all these inevitable calamities (none of which ever happened), everyone who sounded the alarm got fabulously wealthy.
Here we are denouncing the former VP for being a charlatan and huckster, while we're missing the fact that he's apparently a fantastic businessman. /s
I’m all for taking the mentally ill such as this Jake Ellison, and putting them someplace comfortable, out of sight, and out of mind. Someplace they can do no harm. I’ll be glad to pay a bit more in taxes for my Prozac to cover such a nice place.
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