Density Limits Only Add To Sprawl

Washington Post ^ | Sunday, March 9, 2003; | By Peter Whoriskey

[NYpeanut]

The war on sprawl around Washington has made a profound impact on the metropolitan landscape. More than half of the land surrounding the nation's capital is now protected from typical suburban housing development, according to a Washington Post review of land plans in 14 counties in Virginia and Maryland. Restrictions in these "rural" areas limit home builders to no more than one house for every three acres, with several counties curtailing development even more.

[Critter]

Whataya mean they wouldn't "allow" it? Just do it. Screw them.

Let someone tell me I can't do something on my property. hehehe

[Lorianne]

The development indicated in the article are NOT anti-sprawl measures. These measures are opposed by anti-sprawlers!!! The article gets is exactly backward.

Large lot subdivisions are anathema to anti-sprawl smart-growth types. This is NOT what they promote.

The writer is simply misinformed. It is status quo developers, real estate firms, financial institution, and land planners who promote this kind of development, and have for 40 years. There is nothing new in this. This is standard operating procedure. It has nothing whatsoever to do with anti-sprawl measures.

If you want to educate yourself as to what Smart Growth is about (and it's NOT about single houses on large lots) go to these sources.

http://www.cnu.org/aboutcnu/index.cfm?formaction=charter

http://www.sierraclub.org/sprawl/

http://www.sprawl-busters.com/

book review of Asphalt Nation
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/8301.html

http://www.lgc.org/clc/library/articles/archives/ahwahnee_article.html

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/earthpulse/sprawl/index_flash.html

http://www.vtsprawl.org/Strategies.htm

[Lorianne]

No these are NOT the same people. The are completely different groups of people. The people who promote single houses on large lots are not part of the Smart Growth and anti-sprawl movements. They are part of the status quo who have been designing our housing and land use for over 40 years.

[Lorianne]

The article claims that large lots are anti-sprawl methods. You seem in favor of large lots, so that makes you a proponet of anti-sprawl, by the article's definition.

Which is it?

[Lorianne]

I used to live in Portland. The inner city if full of beautiful tree-lined neighborhoods with lovely single family houses on mostly 5,000 square foot lots. I lived in one of these.

It is NOT as you portray a choice between being crammed in or living on a 50 acre lot. There are many many choices in between for single family living in wonderful well planned neighborhoods. Portland is trying to draw on it's history of well planned traditional neighborhoods, with parks and schools and shops nearby. You misrepresent what is going on there.

In many places you would not be allowed by 1960's type zoning to build the traditional single family neighborhoods on grid streets with schools, shops, parks and churches embedded in the neighborhood. What Smart Growth is about is a return to older zoning (1920's and 30's) which allowed these grand old neighborhoods (now highly prized to live in) to develop in the first place.

Under recent(since 1960's) zoning and land use patterns which encouraged spawal and isolation, if I had 400 acres to develop, I would not be able to develop a traditional neighborhood. I would have to build a typical spaghetti street sprawl type subdivision, houses on larger lots, with curvy unconnected streets, with no other shops and services in the neighborhood. The OLD zoning is what is restrictive to land owners/developers, and what anti-sprawlers want removed from zoning codes.

The zoning enacted in the 1960's is what caused bad planning and sprawl and leapfrog development.

[editor-surveyor]

"The article claims that large lots are anti-sprawl methods. You seem in favor of large lots, so that makes you a proponet of anti-sprawl, by the article's definition."

Lot size is not really related to the term 'sprawl.'

Sprawl is a socialist's term for normal, necessary growth.

"Smart growth" is a socialist's term for destructive redevelopment and over-densification of suburbs. It destroys quality of life and property values. It's purpose is to keep people helplessly locked in dense urban ghettos, where they are easily controlled.

[NYpeanut]

people helplessly locked in dense urban ghettos

Exactly, while others, with the financial resources to do so, live in nicely insulated locations. I am very familiar with the smart growth agenda from 10 years of local experience. They are socialists, and the only ones who agree with their proposals are racists and/or snobs who like the buffer zone around people they don't want to see. Hence the anti-Walmart movement--they don't want low-income types shopping in town.

[Lorianne]

Regardless of whether the cities are dense or not (or whether that is good are bad), large lots with a single house on them do encourage sprawl and land consumption.

People gotta go somewhere. If they're not packed into the cities, then they are going to go somewhere else. Where else is that?

My point was this. It is NOT Smart Growth, anti-sprawl proponenets who encourage large lot planning. That would be the opposite side, the people who don't really care where everyone else lives, as long as they can live on their 20 acre plot. However, it is THESE large lot property ownder who are opposed to single family subdivisions being build next door to them. It is THESE large lot owners who put in place and enforce zoning restrictions on their neighbors' propertey, so that their neighbor can't subdivide and can't develop his property. It is not anti-sprawlers who are putting in these controls on private property, it is the private property owners themselves. These (relatively wealthy) people control the zoning process and are the ones curtailing housing development. This are the NIMBY's. They really don't care where housing development happens (urban or suburban), or what it looks like, as long as it is not in their neck of the woods. That's as far as their concern goes. Period.

What most Smart Growth people want to see is a relaxation of zoning codes of the last 40 years so that property owners can build traditional single family neighborhoods (typically 5,000 sq. ft. lots, grid of connecting streets, shops, schools and services embedded). Right now, that type of traditional single famly developement is ILLEGAL in most places in the country, and has been for 40 years. Smart-growth proponents want those restrictions lifted so that we can build more single family suburban traditional neighborhoods. They also support upgrading urban neighborhoods). In other words, Smart Growth is about changing our zoning codes.

Large lot owners don't want the zoning codes changed, they want to preserve their large lot and control what their neighbor does on his lot too. In fact, large lot owners are the ones who show up in opposition to new housing development at public zoning meetings, not anti-sprawlers. Anti-sprawlers don't want no growth, they want smart-growth. They realize people have to go somewhere but they are looking at the bigger picture, and are not affected by narrow locale NIMBY-ism.

In any case, I thought Conservatives were for less fettered property rights. So why is it they want to control what someone else does on his property. If I own a 400 acre parcel and want to build a 1,200 singel family home traditional neighborhood subdivision on it, it won't be the Smart Growth people who will be opposing me. It will be the large lot owners next to me.

[editor-surveyor]

What you're calling "traditional neighborhoods" are what sensible, informed people call ghettos.

People do not belong in cities. - If people were spread out on large enough parcels to grow food and raise cattle and chickens, etc. there would be no government tyranny, no social problems such as homosexuality in schools, rape in back alleys, or robbery at ATMs.

All of the grievous things that defile our society arose out of urbanization.

[Lorianne]

Okay now I see that you are the one who want to force people to live the way you think is right.

I lived in a beautiful "traditional neighborhood" in Portland OR. It was what they call close-in, meaning it was near the city center about 5 miles away. It was lovely and I wanted to live there. So did everyone else who lived there, which is why the cost of the homes started at $300,000. Many were close to a $1 million. If you wanted to buy there you had to find a realtor who knew what was coming up. There were no For Sale signs, properties were gone a day after they were listed.

The homes were large (usually around 3,000 s.f. on 3 levels, basement, 1st and 2nd floors). Most lots were only 5,000 square feet. Corner lots were 10,000 s.f. Since it was an older neighborhood, once a street car subdivision, most homes had only a 1-car garages if that. People still clamored to live there and paid top dollar to live there. They parked their nice cars on the street if they had to. It was worth it to them to live there. They could have afforded a large lot with a large new home, 2 or 3 car garage, etc. farther out, but they didn't want that. Others do want that, but not everyone does.

It was not ghetto, far from it. It was a lovely tree-lined streets with sidewalks and friendly people who had block parties 4 times a year. Kids played basketball and rode their bikes in the streets. The streets were narrow and safe, not wide streets with fast driving cars. I walked my daugher to a lovely brick school 4 blocks away.

Across the nation many people want to live in these types of neighborhoods and pay top dollar to do so. Only it is illegal to build this type of neighborhood today in most places. It is not Smart Growth people who are telling people how to live, it is the status quo planners and zoning people who have controlled our zoning laws for over 40 years. People who want to live in a traditional neighborhood have to live in an old one because it is illegal to build new ones like it.

Not everyone can afford to live on big parcels of land and drive many miles to work. Not everyone who could afford to wants to. Not everyone wants to grow their own food.

The totalitarian people are NOT the people opposed to poor planning and allowing people a choice where to live. It is NIMBY's who are opposed to "sprawl" except their opposition is for THEIR area. They really don't care about anywhere else. They don't care if a new development is planned well or not. They don't care if people can afford housing or not. They don't care about lot size or type of housing. They just don't want development near them. Period. So they call any development 'sprawl'. These existing property owners are the no-growth anti-sprawlers, not Smart Growth people.

Smart Growth proponents are not opposed to growth, they realize that is impossible. Our population is growing, people have to live somewhere. What Smart Growth proponents are are for is better planning and not allowing outmoded zoning laws and ad hoc NIMBYism to plan our built-environement by default.

[Lorianne]

Exactly, while others, with the financial resources to do so, live in nicely insulated locations. I am very familiar with the smart growth agenda from 10 years of local experience. They are socialists, and the only ones who agree with their proposals are racists and/or snobs who like the buffer zone around people they don't want to see. Hence the anti-Walmart movement--they don't want low-income types shopping in town.

Exactly wrong again. Smart Growth proponents advocate a MIX of income groups, ages, etc living together in neighborhoods. It is 1960-1970 zoning that segregaged neighborhoods by income and kept all commercial activity out of neighborhoods and made schools huge and far away from neighborhoods, rather than small neighborhood based schools. It prohibited small stores and service businesses such as hair cutters, dry cleaners, drugstores etc. from being inside the neighborhood. It outlawed connected streets between residential neighborhoods in an effort to keep the undesirables out. You've got the wrong people identified as snobs.

Smart Growth advocates a mix of housing types and price, schools, small service businesses, churches, etc. embedded in neighborhoods by design.

You really need to educate yourself about what Smart Growth is about. You don't have a clue.

[Mannaggia l'America]

Many local government authorities are opting for "clustering" in stead of the standard minimum acerage rule.

That's what is happening around here. I don't like it.

There was a 2 acre minimum, and there still is, but they make the developer cluster the houses. So if you have a 50 acre lot, you can build 25 houses all on one acre lots and set aside 25 acres for open space.

Fortunately, I bought my house (on 2+ acres) before they started this.

I'm sorry, but I want my 2 acres. Clustering (to me) means that I have less choices to move up. Everything new is being built on 1 acre lots or less. I want some space between me and my neighbors.

I don't see the point in the open space being preserved with clustering. I can't use it. It's usually owned by the developer or the homeowner's association if there is one. Even if I lived in the development where the open space was, chances are you would have some busybody complaining about something when you tried to use it for anything.

The other thing they are doing here now is they added a .25% tax onto our local income tax to buy development rights from farmers to keep the space open. Great - I get to pay for land that I never get to use.

That's the local government. The county government is going around buying up land to keep it from being developed. Pretty soon, it's going to be known as the "county of a thousand parks". Every time there is a proposed development somewhere, you have this group of women complaining about it and saying the county should buy the land and turn it into a park (that nobody will use). That's not the job of the government.

[editor-surveyor]

If you want to live in the slums of Portland, then do it. Who's stopping you?

It's tyrants like you that want to force people to live like dairy cattle. "Smart Growth" is the code name for UN agenda 21. Control the people.

The Lord told us to subdue the earth, and that is what we are going to do until he returns. It's called obedience.

[Lorianne]

LOL. Obedience indeed. I rest my case. It is people like YOU who are the true totalitarians who want to tell everyone else how to live.

[NYpeanut]

Well, since I am so "clueless" I must say my education has been entirely on experience, so maybe you should visit my town and tell the Smart Growth chapter here that they've got it all wrong. For the past ten years, these wealthy, newly immigrated refuges from other places have been squashing virtually every business proposal in town. They are milky white, politically left, holier than damn-near-everyone, upper income pains in the butt--nothing like open minded or tolerant at all. Every time a business permit is applied for, they show up at the town meeting with their skanky little lawyer to oppose it. If you make under 40K in this town you can't afford to shop here for anything except groceries, because Smart Growth won't allow retail chains.

Furthermore, the only lower income people who agree with Smart Growth are those who are afraid of inner city (read black/hispanic) immigrants trying to find affordable local housing so they can send their kids to our superior schools. So scorn my empirical opinion all you like--they walk like ducks, etc. If we have the wrong impression of Smart Growth, maybe they gave it to us.

[Lorianne]

It is not Smart Growth people who show up at zoning commission hearings trying to keep the status quo housing and zoning rules which protect THEIR TURF with NO DEVELOPMENT in THEIR AREA. The really do not care about all the issues, growth, no growth, smart growth, stupid growth ... whatever. All they care about is NO DEVELOPMENT IN THEIR NECK OF THE WOODS. Period.

It is these people in aggregate who stymie growth, not Smart Growth people. Your scenario are NIMBY/s (not in my backyard) people played out in hundreds of thousands of communities across the nation. It is NOT people who realize growth must happen because our population is growing, and who wish that growth to happen in a more planned anc careful manner, not haphazardly by scurrying around NIMBY-sim here there and yon.

[NYpeanut]

Well, I guess you'd better come on over here and tell our Smart Growth folks that they are not Smart Growth folks, cause they think they are and say so. They hold meetings as Smart Growth, so I don't know what else to tell ya.

[Lorianne]

Well your descriptions of them sound like No Growth not Smart Growth. There is an easy way to tell the difference. Show up at the planning and zoning public forums and ask them directly ___ "Ok, so you don't like new development at place x, no tell us where you would like to see some development and what kind of development you'd like to see."