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To: 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."

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.

26 posted on 03/19/2003 9:29:05 PM PST by editor-surveyor (Best policy RE: Environmentalists, - ZERO TOLERANCE !!)
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To: editor-surveyor
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.

27 posted on 03/20/2003 2:45:27 AM PST by NYpeanut
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To: editor-surveyor
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.
28 posted on 03/20/2003 11:43:36 AM PST by Lorianne
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