That said, I also recognize that suburban communities have also practiced restrictive zoning, in part (sometimes primarily) to keep lower income residents out. The suburban idea is that the city should be the dumping ground for all of the metro area's problem cases, and don't bother me in my cul-de-sac. I've railed about this for years. As a matter of sound welfare policy, we need to break up large concentrations of the underclass, so the burden needs to be spread. It also makes for more liveable cities if people can afford to live in reasonable proximity to their jobs. On the Hill, driving to work is the exception rather than the rule; a substantial majority take public transportation, walk, or bike. (And this is a very affluent area, so this includes six-figure folks on metro or in the bike lanes.)
I am aware of the tension between these two views. In my time, the mitigating factor has been that the Hill has been a transitional neighborhood, with plenty of poor folks, public housing, and social service institutions around. That is dwindling as gentrification continues, but to this point at least, I cannot be accused of living in a rarified elite oasis.
So: I am not unsympathetic to places like Boulder that want to prevent ticky-tacky sprawl and the invasion of the illegal aliens in low income districts. But at some point, the "pull up the drawbridge" syndrome becomes objectionable. These are tough questions, best settled by the communities themselves.
Except that federal and state authorities are involved with low income housing, and must set policy to site facilities.
And except that federal and state authorities do transportation planning, and must decide whether to subsidize the commuting lifestyle. (I'm generally opposed to degrading functioning neighborhoods to slice a few minutes off commutes, my neighborhood being the kind of place that would be destroyed if the automobile-uber-alles crowd had its way.)
These again are tough questions. To any here who want to dump on Boulder, I'll just say that I'll be more sympathetic to your argument if you are willing to let me put Section 8 housing next door to you.
Well-considered statement. I would say that landlocked Eastern cities are a) older and b) landlocked (again) so preservation districts control the worst excesses of the slicked-hair-n-cell-phone developers who trot out ‘mixed use’ and other euphemisms in an attempt to dress up their activities and who would knock down Independence Hall if they thought they could get an Outback Steakhouse built.
Having visited the UK many times I am also aware of the uber-restrictive zoning/planning there, with Grade I/II/III etc. historical listings that preserve historical structures but also produce the kind of crazy-quilt environment found throughout London but especially within the Square Mile where medieval sits next to 21st century. Nice for one of the world’s most important cities, probably not a good idea in general.
In the spirit of cordial debate, I would submit that housing, and by extension entire neighborhoods, have been destroyed and/or divided by governments claiming eminent domain and rights-of-way in order to establish rail corridors. Governments and regional transportation boards (who are chock-full of militant greenies) keep pushing pie-in-the-sky projects like light rail (which picks up nowhere useful and drops off nowhere useful) as well as the mother of all urban boondoggles the streetcar (see: Cincinnati, Charlotte et al). These same groups are also cowed by community organizer types (there are a million Obamas out there) who cry racism whenever a slum that deserves to be razed and built into something useful is threatened. And so routes through middle-class neighborhoods are chosen with the usual harangues and payoffs.
Back to Colorado. the Eastern half of the nation is frequently oblivious to the Western half, and the Western half is frequently hamstrung by Eastern thinking in terms of zoning and land use borne of small, old cities and states when the West has a surfeit of wide open spaces.
Obviously Boulder is the home of CU even though it’s not mentioned in the article and, as we are too aware, CU’s liberalism rivals that of any Bay Area or Ivy League institution. As such the surrounding area is viewed as a Petri dish for unyielding allegiance to crackpot ideas and collective denial of economic reality. I will gladly dump on Boulder or any other liberal hothouse for this and other reasons. I don’t accept that Section 8 housing automatically follows freedom in land use but suffice it to say that it happens frequently in many places. Allowing government to become large and restrictive in order to preserve also means allowing government to destroy in drip-drip-drip fashion when they start up with their blather about ‘affordable housing’ and move in the prototypical never-married mattress-back with her four feral kids by four different fathers.
With the greatest respect, if you are in DC then you are by definition in an elitist oasis. I know that DC has its distinct neighborhoods, often defined block-by-block, street-by-street, but on the whole it is not reflective of or similar to any other region or city, whether in a nearby state like PA or an expansive western one like CO.
Not applicable. Boulder forces its workers into cars to commute into the city.
I hear ya in not wanting all the poor in your neighborhood, but the ‘burbs are really very poor places for the poor and the handicapped. Far better to have public transportation and walkable access to jobs, stores, schools, doctors appointments, parole officers, and so forth.
“...I’ll just say that I’ll be more sympathetic to your argument if you are willing to let me put Section 8 housing next door to you.”
I lived next to section 8 housing in Stockton CA for 8 years and I guarantee you there were no rich liberals living anywhere near - just working people. They did come by for the drugs, however. I also don’t think I ever saw you come by, but I may be mistaken.
I think the point is that Boulder is a city of hypoctites hiding behind the veneer of “preservation”. Of course, every county or city has the right to preserve its heritage as it sees fit. It is rich liberals using their money and influence to engineer us to shield themselves from the effects of their assinine policies that is the outrage.