Why is suburban sprawl not a campaign issue?

[BrainGlutton]

Our national debate over automobile-dependent suburban sprawl vs. high-density, mixed-used “new urbanism”, which is not really much of a debate at all most of the time, is starting to heat up just a little bit. In the Sunday, September 26, 2004, New York Times Magazine, James Tierney published “The Autonomist Manifesto (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Road)” – http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/26/magazine/26HIGHWAY.html?ex=1097121600&en=e2927f6024dbf91a&ei=5070:

Americans still love their own cars, but they’re sick of everyone else’s. The car is blamed for everything from global warming to the war in Iraq to the transformation of America into a land of strip malls and soulless subdivisions filled with fat, lonely suburbanites. Al Gore called the automobile a ‘‘mortal threat’’ that is ‘‘more deadly than that of any military enemy.’’ Cities across America, with encouragement from Washington, are adopting ‘‘smart growth’’ policies to discourage driving and promote mass transit. Three years ago, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new freeway just outside Los Angeles, Gov. Gray Davis declared that it would be the last one built in the state. Standing at the cradle of car culture, he said it was time to find other ways to move people.

<snip>

But I no longer believe that my tastes should be public policy. I’ve been converted by a renegade school of thinkers you might call the autonomists, because they extol the autonomy made possible by automobiles. Their school includes engineers and philosophers, political scientists like James Q. Wilson and number-crunching economists like Randal O’Toole, the author of the 540-page manifesto ‘‘The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths.’’ These thinkers acknowledge the social and environmental problems caused by the car but argue that these would not be solved – in fact, would be mostly made worse – by the proposals coming from the car’s critics. They call smart growth a dumb idea, the result not of rational planning but of class snobbery and intellectual arrogance. They prefer to promote smart driving, which means more tolls, more roads and, yes, more cars.

Drawing on authorities ranging from Aristotle to Walt Whitman, the autonomists argue that the car is not merely a convenience but one of history’s greatest forces for good, an invention that liberated the poor from slums and workers from company towns, challenged communism, powered the civil rights movement and freed women to work outside the home. Their arguments have given me new respect for my minivan. I still don’t like driving it, but now when the sound system is blaring ‘‘Thunder Road’’ – These two lanes will take us aaanywhere – I think Bruce Springsteen got it right. There is redemption beneath that dirty hood.

This immediately drew fiery retorts from anisprawl advocates. Joel Hirschhorn of Common Dreams accused the NYT of a “lapse of journalistic integrity” for publishing Tierney’s arcticle – http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0928-13.htm:

He regurgitates some key arguments from right-wing sprawl shills, who are financed by business interests making money from land development, home building, and road building. These positions now “brand” sprawl shills. First, is the limitless land lie: “More than 90 percent of the continental United States is still open space and farmland,” says Tierney, as if this supports continued unchecked sprawl land development, because we have all this abundant land. When this position is repeated ad nauseam in far-right conservative and libertarian publications, there is no surprise. But to see it used unquestionably in The New York Times boggles the mind. Why? Because so much of all that undeveloped land is not usable because of physical features like steep slopes on mountains and hills, much of it should remain as greenspace and farmland, and much must be preserved for the public good, such as wetlands. Moreover, anyone can think for a moment and realize that there are vast stretches of land that very few people want to live on (think Nebraska, North Dakota, etc.). Places where Americans want to live are actually running out of land as suburban sprawl development increasingly puts homes on 5 and 10-acre lots. Land development is running at many times population growth in most metropolitan areas.

The second right-wing lie Tierney buys into is the “automobile as liberating technology” belief. He especially likes the concept of the automobile being autonomy-enhancing – hence the “Autonomist Manifesto” phrase. There is now remarkable evidence that American’s love affair with the car has ended in disillusionment, suffering in traffic congestion, time-poverty, and costs second only to personal housing. Countless polls nationwide have consistently found that Americans want public spending on public transit, not more roads. Homes near transit stations are in high demand.

Two topics are totally missing in Tierney’s article, and any well-read editor should have raised some questions about these omissions. First, with so much rhetoric in support of automobiles, how could any writer ignore the currently hot issue of the connection between sedentary lifestyles and health? Sprawl-based, automobile-dependent living is a root cause of widespread overweight and obesity, as well as a host of chronic diseases. Coincidentally, the day after the article appeared, newspapers throughout the nation carried a story on new research findings from the Rand Corp.; a solid relationship between sprawl and a number of chronic health problems was found, consistent with many other studies linking physical inactivity with poorer health. Community design really matters. Yet Tierney makes no mention whatsoever of the downside of automobile dependent living.

The other mind-boggling error in thinking by Tierney is to connect the national smart growth and New Urbanism movement only with city living. Literally anyone who is well read knows by now that innovative land developers are building totally new places in suburban areas which are mixed-use, higher residential density, and rich in neighborhood greenspace. In many of these, there are office buildings, but even if residents must commute to jobs, there is much less car use, because 85 percent of car trips is for non-commuting needs which can be satisfied by walking in these “new towns.” Considering that Tierney lives in the Washington, D.C. area where a number of these smart growth developments have been hugely successful, such as King Farm in Rockville, Maryland, it is hard to understand why he made no mention to hundreds of these places all over the nation. Only intellectual bias or sloppy research can explain this omission.

Now, I’ve heard both sides of this argument before. What strikes me as peculiar is that this year, when America’s dependence on imported petroleum looms larger than ever as a national security issue, I am not hearing anything about either side of it from Bush-Cheney nor from Kerry-Edwards. Bush dreams of a “hydrogen economy,” Kerry talks vaguely of “reducing our dependence on foreign oil,” but both appear to accept the suburban shape of our modern lives as an immutable part of nature.

Why is that?

Doomsayer James Howard Kunstler thinks it’s a case of denial – on the part of the American people, not just our candidates. From his “Clusterfuck Nation” web column, October 4, 2004, http://www.kunstler.com/mags_diary11.html:

Speaking as a registered Democrat, I propose that a big reason John Kerry’s campaign has been floundering for months has to do with the delusional thinking among rank-and-file grassroots Democrats. I’m thinking especially of my fellow fifty-something fellow hippies-turned-yuppies, who want to enjoy all the luxuries and conveniences of the cheap oil life, but believe like little children that it can continue without any sacrifices.

There’s just such a couple who live a few blocks away from me. In their front yard stands a blue sign that proclaims “War is not the Answer.” They have two SUV’s in their driveway. Somebody really needs to inform that war is the answer if they want to enjoy a life of low-gas-milage-easy-motoring.

This is perhaps a roundabout way of getting to the point that our military presence in Iraq is really not optional. We’re not there because George W. Bush is trying to prove his virility. We’re there for a couple of extremely serious and specific strategic reasons having to do with our sick dependency relationship with the nations of the Middle East: 1.) to modify the behavior of Iran and Saudi Arabia by maintaining a military presence next door to each of them; 2.) to operate a “police station” in the center of an inflamed Islamic world that stretches from Morocco to Indonesia so that it cannot present a geographically monolithic threat to the West. Obviously, the underlying reason for all this is a desperate attempt to secure the terrain where so much of our imported oil comes from.

When I hear John Kerry and my fellow Democrats start talking about modifying our own behavior in the US in order to reduce our sick dependency on these other nations, then I’ll take Mr. Kerry seriously. But, you know, in the past six months John Kerry hasn’t said a fucking word about rebuilding our national passenger railroad system (a system that the Bulgarians would be ashamed of, by the way), or stopping subsidies for suburban sprawl, or paying for our sick dependency by instituting a gasoline tax, or telling the American public that we have to make substantial modifications in our way of life. A couple of months ago in California, in fact, Kerry remarked that people should buy SUVs because it was good for the economy (!).

No matter which side you support in this debate, there’s no question that it is a crucially important issue of national policy – and to our top politicians, it’s a non-issue. It’s like having a diarrheaic elephant in the living room and refusing ever to discuss it except through oblique euphemisms. Why won’t they even debate about this? Why won’t we, the people, debate about this more often and more publicly? Why are we in denial?

[BrainGlutton]

Our national debate over automobile-dependent suburban sprawl vs. high-density, mixed-used “new urbanism”, which is not really much of a debate at all most of the time, is starting to heat up just a little bit. In the Sunday, September 26, 2004, New York Times Magazine, James Tierney published “The Autonomist Manifesto (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Road)” – http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/26/magazine/26HIGHWAY.html?ex=1097121600&en=e2927f6024dbf91a&ei=5070:

Americans still love their own cars, but they’re sick of everyone else’s. The car is blamed for everything from global warming to the war in Iraq to the transformation of America into a land of strip malls and soulless subdivisions filled with fat, lonely suburbanites. Al Gore called the automobile a ‘‘mortal threat’’ that is ‘‘more deadly than that of any military enemy.’’ Cities across America, with encouragement from Washington, are adopting ‘‘smart growth’’ policies to discourage driving and promote mass transit. Three years ago, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new freeway just outside Los Angeles, Gov. Gray Davis declared that it would be the last one built in the state. Standing at the cradle of car culture, he said it was time to find other ways to move people.

<snip>

But I no longer believe that my tastes should be public policy. I’ve been converted by a renegade school of thinkers you might call the autonomists, because they extol the autonomy made possible by automobiles. Their school includes engineers and philosophers, political scientists like James Q. Wilson and number-crunching economists like Randal O’Toole, the author of the 540-page manifesto ‘‘The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths.’’ These thinkers acknowledge the social and environmental problems caused by the car but argue that these would not be solved – in fact, would be mostly made worse – by the proposals coming from the car’s critics. They call smart growth a dumb idea, the result not of rational planning but of class snobbery and intellectual arrogance. They prefer to promote smart driving, which means more tolls, more roads and, yes, more cars.

Drawing on authorities ranging from Aristotle to Walt Whitman, the autonomists argue that the car is not merely a convenience but one of history’s greatest forces for good, an invention that liberated the poor from slums and workers from company towns, challenged communism, powered the civil rights movement and freed women to work outside the home. Their arguments have given me new respect for my minivan. I still don’t like driving it, but now when the sound system is blaring ‘‘Thunder Road’’ – These two lanes will take us aaanywhere – I think Bruce Springsteen got it right. There is redemption beneath that dirty hood.

This immediately drew fiery retorts from anisprawl advocates. Joel Hirschhorn of Common Dreams accused the NYT of a “lapse of journalistic integrity” for publishing Tierney’s arcticle – http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0928-13.htm:

He regurgitates some key arguments from right-wing sprawl shills, who are financed by business interests making money from land development, home building, and road building. These positions now “brand” sprawl shills. First, is the limitless land lie: “More than 90 percent of the continental United States is still open space and farmland,” says Tierney, as if this supports continued unchecked sprawl land development, because we have all this abundant land. When this position is repeated ad nauseam in far-right conservative and libertarian publications, there is no surprise. But to see it used unquestionably in The New York Times boggles the mind. Why? Because so much of all that undeveloped land is not usable because of physical features like steep slopes on mountains and hills, much of it should remain as greenspace and farmland, and much must be preserved for the public good, such as wetlands. Moreover, anyone can think for a moment and realize that there are vast stretches of land that very few people want to live on (think Nebraska, North Dakota, etc.). Places where Americans want to live are actually running out of land as suburban sprawl development increasingly puts homes on 5 and 10-acre lots. Land development is running at many times population growth in most metropolitan areas.

The second right-wing lie Tierney buys into is the “automobile as liberating technology” belief. He especially likes the concept of the automobile being autonomy-enhancing – hence the “Autonomist Manifesto” phrase. There is now remarkable evidence that American’s love affair with the car has ended in disillusionment, suffering in traffic congestion, time-poverty, and costs second only to personal housing. Countless polls nationwide have consistently found that Americans want public spending on public transit, not more roads. Homes near transit stations are in high demand.

Two topics are totally missing in Tierney’s article, and any well-read editor should have raised some questions about these omissions. First, with so much rhetoric in support of automobiles, how could any writer ignore the currently hot issue of the connection between sedentary lifestyles and health? Sprawl-based, automobile-dependent living is a root cause of widespread overweight and obesity, as well as a host of chronic diseases. Coincidentally, the day after the article appeared, newspapers throughout the nation carried a story on new research findings from the Rand Corp.; a solid relationship between sprawl and a number of chronic health problems was found, consistent with many other studies linking physical inactivity with poorer health. Community design really matters. Yet Tierney makes no mention whatsoever of the downside of automobile dependent living.

The other mind-boggling error in thinking by Tierney is to connect the national smart growth and New Urbanism movement only with city living. Literally anyone who is well read knows by now that innovative land developers are building totally new places in suburban areas which are mixed-use, higher residential density, and rich in neighborhood greenspace. In many of these, there are office buildings, but even if residents must commute to jobs, there is much less car use, because 85 percent of car trips is for non-commuting needs which can be satisfied by walking in these “new towns.” Considering that Tierney lives in the Washington, D.C. area where a number of these smart growth developments have been hugely successful, such as King Farm in Rockville, Maryland, it is hard to understand why he made no mention to hundreds of these places all over the nation. Only intellectual bias or sloppy research can explain this omission.

Note that Hirschhorn does not even mention the most urgent problem of all concerning automotive transportation, which is that automobiles run on fossil fuels, and most of the fossil fuels burned in the U.S. have to be imported from very dangerous parts of the world.

Now, I’ve heard both sides of this argument before. What strikes me as peculiar is that this year, when America’s dependence on imported petroleum looms larger than ever as a national security issue, I am not hearing anything about either side of it from Bush-Cheney nor from Kerry-Edwards. Bush dreams of a “hydrogen economy,” Kerry talks vaguely of “reducing our dependence on foreign oil,” but both appear to accept the suburban shape of our modern lives as an immutable part of nature. (Come to think of it, I have not even heard Kerry make an unambiguous promise to sign the Kyoto Protocol.)

Why is that?

Doomsayer James Howard Kunstler thinks it’s a case of denial – on the part of the American people, not just our candidates. From his “Clusterfuck Nation” web column, October 4, 2004, http://www.kunstler.com/mags_diary11.html:

Speaking as a registered Democrat, I propose that a big reason John Kerry’s campaign has been floundering for months has to do with the delusional thinking among rank-and-file grassroots Democrats. I’m thinking especially of my fellow fifty-something fellow hippies-turned-yuppies, who want to enjoy all the luxuries and conveniences of the cheap oil life, but believe like little children that it can continue without any sacrifices.

There’s just such a couple who live a few blocks away from me. In their front yard stands a blue sign that proclaims “War is not the Answer.” They have two SUV’s in their driveway. Somebody really needs to inform that war is the answer if they want to enjoy a life of low-gas-milage-easy-motoring.

This is perhaps a roundabout way of getting to the point that our military presence in Iraq is really not optional. We’re not there because George W. Bush is trying to prove his virility. We’re there for a couple of extremely serious and specific strategic reasons having to do with our sick dependency relationship with the nations of the Middle East: 1.) to modify the behavior of Iran and Saudi Arabia by maintaining a military presence next door to each of them; 2.) to operate a “police station” in the center of an inflamed Islamic world that stretches from Morocco to Indonesia so that it cannot present a geographically monolithic threat to the West. Obviously, the underlying reason for all this is a desperate attempt to secure the terrain where so much of our imported oil comes from.

When I hear John Kerry and my fellow Democrats start talking about modifying our own behavior in the US in order to reduce our sick dependency on these other nations, then I’ll take Mr. Kerry seriously. But, you know, in the past six months John Kerry hasn’t said a fucking word about rebuilding our national passenger railroad system (a system that the Bulgarians would be ashamed of, by the way), or stopping subsidies for suburban sprawl, or paying for our sick dependency by instituting a gasoline tax, or telling the American public that we have to make substantial modifications in our way of life. A couple of months ago in California, in fact, Kerry remarked that people should buy SUVs because it was good for the economy (!).

No matter which side you support in this debate, there’s no question that it is a crucially important issue of national policy – and to our top politicians, it’s a non-issue. This is like having a diarrheaic elephant in your living room and refusing ever to mention it. Why won’t they even debate about this? Why won’t we, the people, debate about this more often and more publicly? Why are we in denial?

[BrainGlutton]

:smack:

Mods, this is a double-post duplicate thread – please delete this one and leave the other one, thanx.

[asterion]

What could really be done at a federal level? Other than fairly heavy-handed attempts to possibly force changes (say, for example adding 3 bucks in federal taxes to a gallon of gas), isn’t this primarily a state and local issue?

[Kimstu]

BG: * Why won’t they even debate about this? Why won’t we, the people, debate about this more often and more publicly?*

I think it’s because the advantages and disadvantages seem to most people to be pretty clear, but there’s not much we can do about them.

No matter how much you hate “sprawl” and “car culture” and pollution and greenhouse emissions and fossil fuel use and all that, you can’t really deny that cars do have advantages, and our geography and culture to a large extent require them. Cars are part of technological progress, just as much as computers and washing machines and indoor plumbing. They definitely have their downsides, but they also made a lot of positive changes possible. The “auto-autonomists” are right.

Similarly, no matter how much you love autonomy and expanded mobility, you don’t like sitting in rush-hour traffic for an hour each way every day. You don’t like not even having a sidewalk in your neighborhood so kids can ride their tricycles or walk to visit their friends. You don’t like not being able to go anywhere without burning gasoline, and you don’t like the correlation between car use and obesity. You don’t like the fact that your elderly parents will be pretty much shut-ins in their own homes when they’re no longer able to drive safely. Overdependence on car use is a major threat to the health of our society in many ways. The “anti-sprawl” activists are right.

So what we need to do, it seems to me, is work out a lot of compromises at the margins, where we can mitigate some of the disadvantages of cars without sacrificing too many of the advantages. It seems as though you’re arguing instead for more extremist contention and hostility. In heaven’s name, why?

[BrainGlutton]

@asterion

What could really be done at a federal level? Other than fairly heavy-handed attempts to possibly force changes (say, for example adding 3 bucks in federal taxes to a gallon of gas), isn’t this primarily a state and local issue?

It’s a national problem, asterion, one that has our national armed forces tied up on the other side of the world. And it needs an aggressive, coordinated, national solution. If the federal government can’t provide that within the boundaries of its traditional role and functions (as lately redefined and contracted by Republican administrations), then maybe we need to fundamentally rethink the allocation of powers and functions between the federal and local governments.

[Ravenman]

Man. Did John Kerry write that OP? It was damn hard to read, and I think the kitchen sink was thrown in there, too.

Look, the Federal government has nothing to do with suburbs. Nothing. Zero. The Feds build highways and help states finance various other transportation projects, but zoning is – and must remain – an issue for the states and local government.

I tend to agree (I think?) with the OP in that our country makes very poor use of resources, because there is so much waste in having people drive everywhere. Hell, living in California, the exploding surburban life has got to be a serious drain on water, too.

But that problem does not mean that, in the case of Congress, the elected representatives from Ohio, Alaska, and Alabama (to take three random states) should make zoning laws for New York, Massachusetts, and California. It just doesn’t make sense.

But on a more literal level, neither Bush nor Kerry want to alienate suburban voters by insulting their lifestyle. Some people like living in the suburbs (shudder).

[BrainGlutton]

@Kimstu

. . . and our geography and culture to a large extent require them.

For heaven’s sake, why? We can adapt our living patterns to our geography, which for the most part is not significantly different from most other industrialized countries’. And culture, unlike geography, is mutable.

@Kimstu

. So what we need to do, it seems to me, is work out a lot of compromises at the margins, where we can mitigate some of the disadvantages of cars without sacrificing too many of the advantages. It seems as though you’re arguing instead for more extremist contention and hostility. In heaven’s name, why?

Because the problem is just going to get worse while we ignore it. And because “compromises at the margins” are not going to significantly reduce our demand for foreign oil, nor reduce the amount of CO2 our automobile tailpipes pump into the atmosphere each year, nor change anything else that’s really important. (What do you mean by “compromises at the margins,” anyway? The new gas-electric hybrid cars? Temporary stopgap measure at best, and it will be at least a decade before most cars on American roads are of that type.)

Furthermore, the world has probably already passed it’s all-time peak of oil production, or is just about to (see http://www.peakoil.net/) – which doesn’t mean we’re going to run out within the next ten years, but it does mean that from now in it’s going to get a bit more expensive, every year, to pump every barrel of oil out of the ground. And if we don’t make preparations for that, someday within our lifetimes our national economy is going to grind to a halt, for lack of affordable modes of transportation. Assuming a world war for control of oil doesn’t destroy us first.

*[Fixed bold. Please use the report post function rather than just posting in a thread; we might miss an individual post. Thanks. --Gaudere] *

[Kimstu]

BG: […] maybe we need to fundamentally rethink the allocation of powers and functions between the federal and local governments.

Mercy. Well, that’ll keep us busy.

Look Brain, I totally see where you’re coming from on the importance of this issue, and I have very decided preferences about it myself (US biking/hiking/public transit enthusiast who’s never owned a car and now temporarily resides in the Netherlands, where the average bicycle can carry more passengers than the average car!). I sympathize.

But we can’t just holler “No more sprawl! No more foreign oil! Cars bad!” and expect it to have much of a productive effect. We have to focus on appealing solutions (bike paths, better gas mileage, better health, safer and more liveable communities, lower energy costs) instead of arguing over whether we’re on The Road To Doom. Because like it or not, most people can’t give up their cars entirely in their current lifestyles, and don’t want to give up many features of those lifestyles that depend on cars.

Some regulatory changes are going to be necessary, yeah—myself, I like “regional planning” where new suburbs can’t just spin off to become totally separate municipal entities subsidized by existing cities—but the meat of the matter is going to come down to providing alternatives that people really want. That, and rising gas prices which will supply the free-market stick to the bureaucratic carrot.

[BrainGlutton]

@Ravenman

Look, the Federal government has nothing to do with suburbs. Nothing. Zero. The Feds build highways and help states finance various other transportation projects, but zoning is – and must remain – an issue for the states and local government.

Do you really believe American suburbs would exist in their present form without federal subsidies we’ve had in place since the '50s? E.g., the federal income tax deductions for homeowner mortgage payments.

And why is it that zoning “must remain” a local issue?

@Ravenman

But on a more literal level, neither Bush nor Kerry want to alienate suburban voters by insulting their lifestyle. Some people like living in the suburbs (shudder).

So what? It’s a resources issue, an environmental issue, a national-security issue, and an economic sustainability issue. It’s not a lifestyle issue.

[BrainGlutton]

** unbold

[BrainGlutton]

Mods, could you give us a hand? For some reason this thread is stuck on “bold” mode.

[Kimstu]

Hmmph, I see you got hit with the bad bolding bug too. Cleanup:

BG: […] maybe we need to fundamentally rethink the allocation of powers and functions between the federal and local governments.

Mercy. Well, that’ll keep us busy.

Look Brain, I totally see where you’re coming from on the importance of this issue, and I have very decided preferences about it myself (US biking/hiking/public transit enthusiast who’s never owned a car and now temporarily resides in the Netherlands, where the average bicycle can carry more passengers than the average car!). I sympathize.

But we can’t just holler “No more sprawl! No more foreign oil! Cars bad!” and expect it to have much of a productive effect. We have to focus on appealing solutions (bike paths, better gas mileage, better health, safer and more liveable communities, lower energy costs) instead of arguing over whether we’re on The Road To Doom. Because like it or not, most people can’t give up their cars entirely in their current lifestyles, and don’t want to give up many features of those lifestyles that depend on cars.

Some regulatory changes are going to be necessary, yeah—myself, I like “regional planning” where new suburbs can’t just spin off to become totally separate municipal entities subsidized by existing cities—but the meat of the matter is going to come down to providing alternatives that people really want. That, and rising gas prices which will supply the free-market stick to the bureaucratic carrot.

[Kimstu]

Weird. I’m sitting out till they fix this, it makes me feel like I’m yelling all the time.

[John_Mace]

Why is suburban sprawl not a campaign issue? Because the people who would actually try to do something about it, like Kucinich, get about 2% of the vote. Any other questions?

[BrainGlutton]

@John Mace

Why is suburban sprawl not a campaign issue? Because the people who would actually try to do something about it, like Kucinich, get about 2% of the vote. Any other questions?

Yeah. Why do they only get about 2% of the vote?

[John_Mace]

@BrainGlutton

Yeah. Why do they only get about 2% of the vote?

Because most people PREFER to live in the suburbs. The term “sprawl” is a well poisoner. One man’s sprawl is 10 other men’s paradise.

[dropzone]

@BrainGlutton

For heaven’s sake, why? We can adapt our living patterns to our geography, which for the most part is not significantly different from most other industrialized countries’. And culture, unlike geography, is mutable.

So, you are suggesting tearing down all of the suburbs and forcibly moving people back into the cities? Because that is how I am interpreting what you are saying. Sorry, pal, but the burbs are here to stay for the foreseeable future. What about public transportation? The Chicago area has a terrific interurban rail system but that just takes care of the arteries, which all head in and out of Chicago. I live 3/4 mile from one train station and work 1 mile from another and the walks or bike rides would certainly do me good in nice weather but not when it’s 20 below with two feet of snow on the ground. And this doesn’t take into account that I’d have to take one train INTO Chicago, walk another half mile to another terminal, then take the train back out to my job. Fifty mile of train travel, two miles of walking, and three or four hours of my time, or I could drive the ten miles in 25 minutes.

The ideas for “smart growth” I’ve seen DO smack of “class snobbery and intellectual arrogance.” I am sick and tired of the elitist “Suburbs are bad!” attitudes I get from its promoters and note that nearly everybody I know who lives in the city does so for the “vibrant social and intellectual life” they find there. First, most of my city friends spend more time on the social part and end up with no more intellectual life than I have.

Second, these people are almost all single and without children and the very few who are not send their children to private schools so they can get as good an education as my kids. Because property values and taxes in my town are similar to those in the city these people end up spending more than I do BEFORE adding in the cost of private schools. I simply can’t afford to live in the city.

[BrainGlutton]

@dropzone

So, you are suggesting tearing down all of the suburbs and forcibly moving people back into the cities? Because that is how I am interpreting what you are saying.

No . . . I am thinking of a process of transformation that would take decades. It would have several components:

1. Built a three- or four-tiered national rail transit system: High-speed rail for long-distance travel; a commuter rail system linking the far-flung towns and developments of every metropolitan area; and light-rail lines and streetcar lines connecting all the neighborhood. (To see what I’m talking about, click on this site: http://www.newtrains.org/pages/354055/index.htm)

2. Prevent any NEW suburbs from being built on the low-density, auto-dependent model.

3. Encourage the construction of new high-density “new urbanist” neighborhoods – many of which would still be “suburban” in the sense of being a fair distance from the city centers, but which would be built to a scale to make it practical to get around within the neighborhood by walking or biking, and to use mass transit (e.g., light rail) to travel to the city or to other suburbs.

4. Encourage “infilling” construction in the older, low-density suburbs to bring them closer to the new-urbanist model.

5. Re-colonize our high-density, pre-WWII small towns and small cities. Like George Bailey’s Bedford Falls. They’re all over the country, you know, with the life sucked out of them and the downtown businesses boarded up, but the buildings and streets and infrastructure are still there. With infusions of federal money, they could be fixed up – and linked to the cities and other towns by commuter rail.

@dropzone

The ideas for “smart growth” I’ve seen DO smack of “class snobbery and intellectual arrogance.” I am sick and tired of the elitist “Suburbs are bad!” attitudes I get from its promoters and note that nearly everybody I know who lives in the city does so for the “vibrant social and intellectual life” they find there. First, most of my city friends spend more time on the social part and end up with no more intellectual life than I have.

Certainly the Information Age brings new opportunities for education and intellectual stimulation to the countryside and suburbia that never existed before. This board, for instance, which an isolated farmer could access if he has electric power and an Internet-linked computer. And that’s a good thing. But it’s beside the point. If you’ll read the OP, you’ll find that, while the desire for a “vibrant social and intellectual life” in a city (or in a new-urbanist development) might be a concern, it is a concern of secondary importance. Most new urbanists are primarily concerned with the intractable environmental and resource-scarcity problems presented by an automobile-dependent built environment.

@dropzone

Second, these people are almost all single and without children and the very few who are not send their children to private schools so they can get as good an education as my kids. Because property values and taxes in my town are similar to those in the city these people end up spending more than I do BEFORE adding in the cost of private schools. I simply can’t afford to live in the city.

You really think suburban living is good for kids? In the traditional low-density suburb, a kid under the age of 15 can’t go anywhere unless Mom acts as a chauffeur. Don’t you think a child will get better and earlier socialization, and develop a better sense of personal autonomy, and have a generally more enjoyable childhood, if he or she grows up in a neighborhood where he or she can walk to school, walk to a friend’s house, walk to the soccer field, walk to the corner drugstore to browse comic books? I’m not saying inner-city life is necessarily the best thing for a child either – but a new urbanist development, or a redeveloped old town, might be ideal, and would be much cheaper than inner-city living.

[John_Mace]

@BrainGlutton

lYou really think suburban living is good for kids? In the traditional low-density suburb, a kid under the age of 15 can’t go anywhere unless Mom acts as a chauffeur.

Not true. I grew up in such a suburb* and we went everywhere on our bikes.

Don’t you think a child will get better and earlier socialization, and develop a better sense of personal autonomy, and have a generally more enjoyable childhood, if he or she grows up in a neighborhood where he or she can walk to school, walk to a friend’s house, walk to the soccer field, walk to the corner drugstore to browse comic books?

I now live in a (unplanned) suburb* in which all of those things are not only possible, but acutally encouraged.

*one the east coast as a youngster, on the west coast as an adult