Just what is this “Freedom” you lay claim to and who is free to do what to whom?
Is it the “freedom” to own slaves by a few or to make certain people second class citizens?
Or is it the freedom to be have a well-payiing job with respect from your employer?
Is it the “freedom” to gerrymander voting districts to give yourselves an unfair electoral advantage?
Or is it the freedom to know that your vote will count in a fair election?
Is it the “freedom” to be free from paying taxes for all the benefits that have helped you get rich? Like public schools for educated workers, like roads to move your goods around, like courts to settle any disputes you may have, like police to investigate crimes committed against you, like fire departments to respond quickly to fires or medical emergencies?
Or is it the freedom to have all kinds of resources available that we can only afford collectively by contributing to the best of our ability?
Is it the “freedom” to have wider and wider highways to drive faster and quicker, regardless of the cost to tax bases, to individual families, or to the environment?
Or is it the freedom to be secure in your own house, knowing that the chances are almost non-existent that your house will be condemned to make room for an ever wider freeway? Is it the freedom to not have to have a car because other forms of transportation are convenient and frequent?
Is it the “freedom" to reduce your own costs by polluting the air and water?
Or is it the freedom to have clean breathable air or to have safe, drinkable water?
Is it the “freedom” to donate large sums to “elected” officials to do your bidding?
Or is it the freedom to know the candidates you can vote for have received “small” amounts of money only from the people who have a right to vote for them.
See also "The false masters of words".
Showing posts with label freeways. Show all posts
Showing posts with label freeways. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
Thursday, August 06, 2015
You thought your grandparents saw a lot of change!
We ain't seen nothing yet!
My maternal grandfather was born in 1890 and died in 1974.
By the time he was an adult, cars were starting to be everywhere, but most people still got around by walking or taking a streetcar.
He managed to stay out of “the war to end all wars”, but one of his brothers died in France during the flu epidemic, less than a month after arriving.
When he was in his forties, airplane travel was available, but most long distance travel was by train.
When he was in his sixties, 25 miles away was a long distance call. I remember him calling us in Cleveland from Chagrin Falls when area codes were introduced for direct dialing.
When he died in his eighties, his grandsons had been flying here and there frequently, including in Europe or to Hawaii.
My own life has seen dramatic changes.
One of the admonitions to get me to clean my plate was that I was taking food from a kid starving in China.
The “starving kid in China”? Well, unfortunately, there are still hungry kids in China and too many other places. On the other hand, the middle class is getting larger in almost every country, with India and China each having as many middle-class citizens as the United States has citizens of all classes. The New York Times just featured a Chinese female billionaire who had to feed pigs as a child; her company makes most of the glass for smart phones.
My first car was a 1940 Chevy coupe, bought from a friend for $20 about 1958. It had manual transmission, no windshield washers, no air-conditioning, crank windows, and no turn signals. I had to stick my arm out the window, no matter the weather.
Now lot of people won’t even consider a car without GPS and a Bluetooth connection.
When I learned to drive, the only freeway I knew of was the Lakeshore Drive in Cleveland. Then came the Ohio Turnpike, a wonder of safe driving built so you would not be blinded by headlights in the other lane. Now entire neighborhoods have been wiped out by freeways. I’m not sure, but I think when I drive one of these freeways in Cleveland that I had a paper route 50 feet above where I am driving.
My first commercial flight was in a DC-3. When I moved to and traveled in Europe I flew in either Boeing 707s or Douglas DC-7s. I remember standing outside an office building in Rome watching a 747 fly over. Do I really want to fly in an aircraft carrying that many people? Now they are even bigger (with far less space per passenger).
I grew up on AM radio and no TV. Now there are so many AM and FM stations, it’s hard to find an empty frequency to use for an iPhone podcast on the car radio. I remember when a TV station filmed me going down a sledding hill; we had to watch the news in the window of a store. Now TVs are ubiquitous conversation killers with large flat-screens in restaurants and fitness centers.
My first computer job was on an IBM 650, about the size of two refrigerators plus a card reader and a card punch, each about the size of an office desk. It had 10,000 characters of memory.
When I left Univac over twenty years later, we were starting to use internal email from cathode-ray-tube monitors: green letters on a black screen. Many programmers were being dragged kicking and screaming into using compilers instead of assemblers. A compiler takes a set of statements and converts them into code the computer understands. An assembler takes a symbolic representation of each individual instruction.
Some will disagree with me, but I find that the languages now used to program computers are more obtuse and overly complicated from the elegant languages I used when I first programmed a Macintosh.
Now we can put the equivalent of a very large mainframe in a pocket, plus we can make wireless telephone calls, take and view photographs, and send those photos and more to people anywhere in the world.
When we first hooked Teletype machines to mainframes, the sending/receiving speed was 110 bits per second. Now we get irritated when our 7 megabits per second service only sends at 4 Mbps.
Some of those early mainframes had a memory capacity of about 3/4 million characters. Now we can buy smart phones with 64 billion characters.
One summer while in high school, I had a job with a surveying crew. I got to hold the rod while the surveyor looked through his transit or I held one end of a steel tape. Now surveyors bounce light beams to get the distance. On one of the construction sites I was told that, by union agreement, the carpenters had to use hand tools. Now almost all commercial carpenters have a huge array of power tools including power saws and nail guns.
As for the “war to end all wars”; it didn’t work. There are still wars to keep people in power who don’t want to give it up, wars to make sure others have the “right” religion, and wars to protect a country’s influence on others. On the bright side, I have read that the number of conflicts are less than ever. Think of Western Europe, no wars since 1945.
Here’s hoping our grandkids can write similar articles about more techno-wonders and about far fewer wars.
Also published in the Reader Weekly 2015-08-06 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/08/05/5741_you_thought_your_grandparents_saw_a_lot_of_change.
My maternal grandfather was born in 1890 and died in 1974.
By the time he was an adult, cars were starting to be everywhere, but most people still got around by walking or taking a streetcar.
He managed to stay out of “the war to end all wars”, but one of his brothers died in France during the flu epidemic, less than a month after arriving.
When he was in his forties, airplane travel was available, but most long distance travel was by train.
When he was in his sixties, 25 miles away was a long distance call. I remember him calling us in Cleveland from Chagrin Falls when area codes were introduced for direct dialing.
When he died in his eighties, his grandsons had been flying here and there frequently, including in Europe or to Hawaii.
My own life has seen dramatic changes.
One of the admonitions to get me to clean my plate was that I was taking food from a kid starving in China.
The “starving kid in China”? Well, unfortunately, there are still hungry kids in China and too many other places. On the other hand, the middle class is getting larger in almost every country, with India and China each having as many middle-class citizens as the United States has citizens of all classes. The New York Times just featured a Chinese female billionaire who had to feed pigs as a child; her company makes most of the glass for smart phones.
My first car was a 1940 Chevy coupe, bought from a friend for $20 about 1958. It had manual transmission, no windshield washers, no air-conditioning, crank windows, and no turn signals. I had to stick my arm out the window, no matter the weather.
Now lot of people won’t even consider a car without GPS and a Bluetooth connection.
When I learned to drive, the only freeway I knew of was the Lakeshore Drive in Cleveland. Then came the Ohio Turnpike, a wonder of safe driving built so you would not be blinded by headlights in the other lane. Now entire neighborhoods have been wiped out by freeways. I’m not sure, but I think when I drive one of these freeways in Cleveland that I had a paper route 50 feet above where I am driving.
My first commercial flight was in a DC-3. When I moved to and traveled in Europe I flew in either Boeing 707s or Douglas DC-7s. I remember standing outside an office building in Rome watching a 747 fly over. Do I really want to fly in an aircraft carrying that many people? Now they are even bigger (with far less space per passenger).
I grew up on AM radio and no TV. Now there are so many AM and FM stations, it’s hard to find an empty frequency to use for an iPhone podcast on the car radio. I remember when a TV station filmed me going down a sledding hill; we had to watch the news in the window of a store. Now TVs are ubiquitous conversation killers with large flat-screens in restaurants and fitness centers.
My first computer job was on an IBM 650, about the size of two refrigerators plus a card reader and a card punch, each about the size of an office desk. It had 10,000 characters of memory.
When I left Univac over twenty years later, we were starting to use internal email from cathode-ray-tube monitors: green letters on a black screen. Many programmers were being dragged kicking and screaming into using compilers instead of assemblers. A compiler takes a set of statements and converts them into code the computer understands. An assembler takes a symbolic representation of each individual instruction.
Some will disagree with me, but I find that the languages now used to program computers are more obtuse and overly complicated from the elegant languages I used when I first programmed a Macintosh.
Now we can put the equivalent of a very large mainframe in a pocket, plus we can make wireless telephone calls, take and view photographs, and send those photos and more to people anywhere in the world.
When we first hooked Teletype machines to mainframes, the sending/receiving speed was 110 bits per second. Now we get irritated when our 7 megabits per second service only sends at 4 Mbps.
Some of those early mainframes had a memory capacity of about 3/4 million characters. Now we can buy smart phones with 64 billion characters.
One summer while in high school, I had a job with a surveying crew. I got to hold the rod while the surveyor looked through his transit or I held one end of a steel tape. Now surveyors bounce light beams to get the distance. On one of the construction sites I was told that, by union agreement, the carpenters had to use hand tools. Now almost all commercial carpenters have a huge array of power tools including power saws and nail guns.
As for the “war to end all wars”; it didn’t work. There are still wars to keep people in power who don’t want to give it up, wars to make sure others have the “right” religion, and wars to protect a country’s influence on others. On the bright side, I have read that the number of conflicts are less than ever. Think of Western Europe, no wars since 1945.
Here’s hoping our grandkids can write similar articles about more techno-wonders and about far fewer wars.
Also published in the Reader Weekly 2015-08-06 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/08/05/5741_you_thought_your_grandparents_saw_a_lot_of_change.
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Who is doing what social engineering?
Every too often somebody writes a letter to the editor complaining that public transit is “social engineering” and “taking our cars away”. Have they considered that building all the freeways is social engineering?
How many people lost their houses to make way for the freeways? How many neighborhoods were separated by freeways? How many farmers had their land taken by imminent domain? I know, I know! It’s eminent domain but when your land is taken it is also imminent. Aren’t these changes to city and country social engineering?
When the freeways are first built, it becomes much quicker for many people to drive than to take public transit. More people drive instead of taking the bus, the bus service becomes less frequent for those who don’t drive. So to save time, more people have to buy cars. Isn’t this social engineering?
Remember “Field of Dreams” where Robert Redford was told, “Build it and they will come.” Well, we build freeways and they come. Soon a four-lane freeway has to become a six-lane freeway. Soon the six-lane is clogged and has to become an eight-lane freeway. Where are all the people going to live as the freeways get wider and wider? Isn’t this social engineering?
For some reason those who complain about their cars “being taken away” don’t seem to realize that the more other people take public transit the more room there is for them on the freeways.
And actually, public transit should have dedicated lines or lanes right down the middle of every freeway. I remember driving out of Chicago on I-90 on a Sunday afternoon. It was stop and go in three lanes in my direction. We would move a bit and a train would catch up to us. Then we would move forward ahead of the train. This went on for fifteen minutes or so and the pattern was reversed. The train would pull ahead and we would catch up. Eventually the train was long gone and we started and stopped, started and stopped.
When I grew up in Cleveland, we walked to neighborhood stores or took the streetcar downtown. Now most neighborhood stores and downtown stores have been closed in favor of sprawling malls in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes the lots are so big that it takes twice as long to walk from one’s car as it did to walk to the corner store. Isn’t this social engineering? And it was done without a public vote!
The irony is that most social engineering is done by corporations, not governments. When a government does “social engineering” we might have an open debate about it. When a corporation does “social engineering”, it is done behind closed doors and often by deceit.
In the Twentieth Century we as a nation were socially engineered by a man many of us never heard of – Edward Bernays. A nephew of Sigmund Freud, he applied many of his uncle’s ideas to manipulation of public opinion. Supposedly he believed that “public’s democratic judgment was ‘not to be relied upon’…’so they had to be guided from above.”
He worked in the Committee on Public Information during World War I. One task was publicizing the idea that the U.S. involvement was “bringing democracy to all of Europe.” We had a repeat of this use of “democracy” in our own times. “The ill that men do lives after them…” The success of “bringing democracy” surprised Bernays, and he wondered if similar propaganda could be used in peacetime. Rather than call it propaganda, he labelled it “public relations”.
One of his first achievements was helping the tobacco industry break the taboo of women smoking in public. He staged a big event in New York City in which models lit up Lucky Strike cigarettes or “Torches of Freedom”. This promotion was not done as advertising but as news! Smoking was giving women “freedom” and “liberty”. Two more echoes in our time: “freedom” and “liberty” are smoke screens for doing what one damn well pleases without concern for the consequences for others.
Many Americans ate a light breakfast of coffee and maybe a roll or orange juice. He arranged for letters being sent to 5,000 doctors asking if they thought Americans should have a bigger breakfast. About ninety percent answered saying Americans should have bigger breakfasts. This he had published as news in papers across the country. In parallel, he had other articles published that bacon and eggs should be part of a larger breakfast.
He believed that we would have a utopia if the inner energies of individuals “could be harnessed and channeled by a corporate elite for economic benefit.” This idea seems to be alive and well with all the corporate claims that they will create jobs and that environmental protection and safety rules will only take away jobs.
He wrote a paper called “Engineering of Consent”: "Any person or organization depends ultimately on public approval, and is therefore faced with the problem of engineering the public's consent to a program or goal.” Isn’t this a description of “social engineering”?
In many ways, Bernays was value-neutral. He protected a play in 1913 that supported sex education. He promoted fluoridation of water to help the aluminum industry sell a by-product of aluminum production. He hosted the first NAACP convention in Atlanta, and there was no violence. On the other hand, he inflated the threat of communism and was instrumental in the overthrow of the elected president of Guatemala.
For lots more on Bernays see Wikipedia and “Century of Self”, a four-part BBC series. I hope these will help you be more skeptical of what anybody says for or against any idea. Or as in “All the President’s Men”, “Follow the Money”. Oh, and be skeptical of the attribution of this quote. If you do so, you might inoculate yourself against “social engineering”.
Mel considers himself a gullible skeptic.
This was also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2015-05-21 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/05/21/5311_who_is_doing_what_social_engineering
How many people lost their houses to make way for the freeways? How many neighborhoods were separated by freeways? How many farmers had their land taken by imminent domain? I know, I know! It’s eminent domain but when your land is taken it is also imminent. Aren’t these changes to city and country social engineering?
When the freeways are first built, it becomes much quicker for many people to drive than to take public transit. More people drive instead of taking the bus, the bus service becomes less frequent for those who don’t drive. So to save time, more people have to buy cars. Isn’t this social engineering?
Remember “Field of Dreams” where Robert Redford was told, “Build it and they will come.” Well, we build freeways and they come. Soon a four-lane freeway has to become a six-lane freeway. Soon the six-lane is clogged and has to become an eight-lane freeway. Where are all the people going to live as the freeways get wider and wider? Isn’t this social engineering?
For some reason those who complain about their cars “being taken away” don’t seem to realize that the more other people take public transit the more room there is for them on the freeways.
And actually, public transit should have dedicated lines or lanes right down the middle of every freeway. I remember driving out of Chicago on I-90 on a Sunday afternoon. It was stop and go in three lanes in my direction. We would move a bit and a train would catch up to us. Then we would move forward ahead of the train. This went on for fifteen minutes or so and the pattern was reversed. The train would pull ahead and we would catch up. Eventually the train was long gone and we started and stopped, started and stopped.
When I grew up in Cleveland, we walked to neighborhood stores or took the streetcar downtown. Now most neighborhood stores and downtown stores have been closed in favor of sprawling malls in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes the lots are so big that it takes twice as long to walk from one’s car as it did to walk to the corner store. Isn’t this social engineering? And it was done without a public vote!
The irony is that most social engineering is done by corporations, not governments. When a government does “social engineering” we might have an open debate about it. When a corporation does “social engineering”, it is done behind closed doors and often by deceit.
In the Twentieth Century we as a nation were socially engineered by a man many of us never heard of – Edward Bernays. A nephew of Sigmund Freud, he applied many of his uncle’s ideas to manipulation of public opinion. Supposedly he believed that “public’s democratic judgment was ‘not to be relied upon’…’so they had to be guided from above.”
He worked in the Committee on Public Information during World War I. One task was publicizing the idea that the U.S. involvement was “bringing democracy to all of Europe.” We had a repeat of this use of “democracy” in our own times. “The ill that men do lives after them…” The success of “bringing democracy” surprised Bernays, and he wondered if similar propaganda could be used in peacetime. Rather than call it propaganda, he labelled it “public relations”.
One of his first achievements was helping the tobacco industry break the taboo of women smoking in public. He staged a big event in New York City in which models lit up Lucky Strike cigarettes or “Torches of Freedom”. This promotion was not done as advertising but as news! Smoking was giving women “freedom” and “liberty”. Two more echoes in our time: “freedom” and “liberty” are smoke screens for doing what one damn well pleases without concern for the consequences for others.
Many Americans ate a light breakfast of coffee and maybe a roll or orange juice. He arranged for letters being sent to 5,000 doctors asking if they thought Americans should have a bigger breakfast. About ninety percent answered saying Americans should have bigger breakfasts. This he had published as news in papers across the country. In parallel, he had other articles published that bacon and eggs should be part of a larger breakfast.
He believed that we would have a utopia if the inner energies of individuals “could be harnessed and channeled by a corporate elite for economic benefit.” This idea seems to be alive and well with all the corporate claims that they will create jobs and that environmental protection and safety rules will only take away jobs.
He wrote a paper called “Engineering of Consent”: "Any person or organization depends ultimately on public approval, and is therefore faced with the problem of engineering the public's consent to a program or goal.” Isn’t this a description of “social engineering”?
In many ways, Bernays was value-neutral. He protected a play in 1913 that supported sex education. He promoted fluoridation of water to help the aluminum industry sell a by-product of aluminum production. He hosted the first NAACP convention in Atlanta, and there was no violence. On the other hand, he inflated the threat of communism and was instrumental in the overthrow of the elected president of Guatemala.
For lots more on Bernays see Wikipedia and “Century of Self”, a four-part BBC series. I hope these will help you be more skeptical of what anybody says for or against any idea. Or as in “All the President’s Men”, “Follow the Money”. Oh, and be skeptical of the attribution of this quote. If you do so, you might inoculate yourself against “social engineering”.
Mel considers himself a gullible skeptic.
This was also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2015-05-21 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/05/21/5311_who_is_doing_what_social_engineering
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Opposing “smart growth” limits choices
I sent the following to the Star Tribune on 1999-07-31. I think it was not published. I can’t find the original article with a search of the Star Tribune, but you can find selections from Krinkie’s article at http://www.reocities.com/Yosemite/2288/mnlrt1999.htm.
Phil Krinkie begins his opinion piece on "Smart Growth" criticizing the ten principles "as developed by the Smart Growth Network and embraced by the Metropolitan Council", but nowhere does he quote them to prove his point. I went to the Web page of the Smart Growth Network (www.smartgrowth.org) and found:
MISSION
The mission of the Smart Growth Network is to encourage development that better serves the economic, environmental and social needs of communities. The Network provides a forum for information-sharing, education, tool development and application, and collaboration on smart growth issues.
PRINCIPLES
* Mix land uses.
* Take advantage of compact building design.
* Create housing opportunities and choices.
* Create walkable communities.
* Foster distinctive, attractive communities with a strong sense of place.
* Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas.
* Strengthen and direct development toward existing communities.
* Provide a variety of transportation choices
* Make development decisions predictable, fair, and cost-effective
* Encourage community and stakeholder collaboration in development decisions.
I don't see these principles "as a textbook example of how to win the debate by defining the terms." To me they are a clear statement that it is important to involve all interested parties in urban planning. I don't see them as either "New Age panache" or as "esoteric jargon." In fact, they are quite similar in style to the mission statements and principles found in the annual reports of many large corporations.
I don't see Phil Krinkie's problem that to "encourage stakeholder collaboration and community participation rather than conflict" is "vague, could-mean-just-about-anything gobbledygook." Rather than only a developer appearing before a planning commission isn't it better to have the active participation of the neighbors, those who would lose land when a road is widened miles away from the development, those who would see old, familiar landmarks taken away, and anyone who would see an adverse impact on their lives? There are few economic transactions in which the only interested parties are the buyer and the seller; land development is not one of those few transactions.
What is wrong with "high-density development" as part of "smart growth"? Providing high-density development is giving more "housing opportunities and choices" and is no more "mandatory" than the current predominance of "low-density development."
What is wrong with "pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods"? Should the only places available to walk be private areas (read "malls")? "Pedestrian-friendly" doesn't always mean "no-cars"; it does mean separating as much as possible pedestrians from cars. Mall parking lots could be made "pedestrian-friendly" by providing a raised aisle for drivers and passengers to walk from their cars to the building without concern of being backed over.
Why should the "smart growth crowd" provide "specifics on how they intend to implement their bold vision"? The specifics are to be provided in the communities. The mission of the "smart growth crowd", which includes Democrats, Republicans, and others, is to "encourage communities" and provide means for communities to meet a variety of development needs. Of course "smart growth will be just another cobbled-together conglomeration of..." but what human activities which involve many interests don't become that way. Most of the "Founding Fathers" died bitter because they saw their beautiful, republican structure governed by a disinterested elite turn into an ugly, democratic mess of squabbling interests ("The Radicalism of the American Revolution", Gordon S. Wood).
"Based on what" "we do know" low-density residential development has produced "more congestion" and "more pollution". Just visit I-394 or Highway 169 in the morning or afternoon. Which is a higher price: paying say, five dollars more a week on your groceries at the "quaint little pedestrian-friendly" corner store or paying thousands of dollars a year in capital and operating expenses for a car to get to the super-supermarket? Many of us do know that many urban neighborhoods are "fun to visit" and we do "want to live there."
I have lived in little apartments, big apartments, small houses on little lots, and medium houses on medium lots. I have lived in big cities, inner suburbs, outer suburbs, and the country. I have lived in three states and two foreign countries. In every case I have found shortcomings and much to enjoy.
I can say from my own experience that "new urbanism" is not based on a nostalgic view of the teeming cities of the '20s and '30s" but of the 40s and 50s. I grew up in apartments and duplexes and single family homes on lots no bigger than the backyards of a typical suburban home. I enjoyed walking to school, playgrounds, movies, the Y, church, and other activities. At 10 years old I took streetcars and buses by myself downtown and other places more than a mile away. I grew up with a sense of freedom because I didn't have to depend on adults to take me places that I wanted to go. I didn't see "the crime, the noise and the filth" as any greater than in my suburban home of the 80s and the 90s. That is, in both places there were homes burglarized, some people played radios too loud, and slobs left food wrappers, cans, and bottles wherever it was convenient for them. In both cases such disturbing events were not the norm; one generally felt safe, the neighborhoods were generally quiet, and one felt a sense of cleanliness and order.
I don't see where the Mission or Principles kick suburban life "around like a mangy mutt." Isn't suburban life one of the mixed land uses? Isn't suburban life one of the "housing opportunities and choices”? Doesn't suburban life include open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas. Shall all lakes be ringed with private houses with no access for fishing or swimming? Shall all corn be trucked three days from Florida rather than be picked fresh in the morning? Shall counties sell all the public parks for private development? Think of the increase in the tax base!! Shall developers increase runoff to neighboring developments with careless grading?
"Sprawl" isn't so much "a pejorative catch phrase" as it is a description of any development that considers only the residences being built as important. When no consideration is given to the many activities of the people who live in those residences then we definitely have "sprawl". People require water and sewer; where is the water going to come from and where is the waste going to go? Most people still work away from home; who is going to pay for the roads. Children need to go to school; who is going to pay for the buses? People need food; how far will they have to drive to just buy a quart of milk? Wouldn't it be better if we were smart about growth and had public planning by hundreds or thousands of citizens rather than planning by a few dozen private interests?
"The truth, however, is that low-density development is" a "threat to Minnesota's rural areas." If one considers all the land that is in the state of Minnesota, the conversion of land from rural to suburban for the whole state is not a problem. However, if one considers the Twin Cities metro area then it is. I've known people whose residences have been threatened to make room for wider highways. I've seen cornfields converted to upscale houses (on indecently small lots) because the owner couldn't afford to pay the skyrocketing taxes. That was great corn, too! I myself gave up on a garden because deer had to range farther when their habitat was taken over by houses. I guess low-density development isn't a threat to these rural areas because they don't exist anymore!
However, I don't see how smart growth is making the people living in these houses feel guilty. What smart growth is asking is this the only way to go. Is "living on large residential lots and driving their SUVs to work each day" the choice that everyone wants? If everybody makes that choice, then many will be driving very slowly to work each day through concrete canyons like I-94 between Minneapolis and St. Paul. They won't enjoy the view and will wish they hadn't told "planners to take a hike."
Phil Krinkie begins his opinion piece on "Smart Growth" criticizing the ten principles "as developed by the Smart Growth Network and embraced by the Metropolitan Council", but nowhere does he quote them to prove his point. I went to the Web page of the Smart Growth Network (www.smartgrowth.org) and found:
MISSION
The mission of the Smart Growth Network is to encourage development that better serves the economic, environmental and social needs of communities. The Network provides a forum for information-sharing, education, tool development and application, and collaboration on smart growth issues.
PRINCIPLES
* Mix land uses.
* Take advantage of compact building design.
* Create housing opportunities and choices.
* Create walkable communities.
* Foster distinctive, attractive communities with a strong sense of place.
* Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas.
* Strengthen and direct development toward existing communities.
* Provide a variety of transportation choices
* Make development decisions predictable, fair, and cost-effective
* Encourage community and stakeholder collaboration in development decisions.
I don't see these principles "as a textbook example of how to win the debate by defining the terms." To me they are a clear statement that it is important to involve all interested parties in urban planning. I don't see them as either "New Age panache" or as "esoteric jargon." In fact, they are quite similar in style to the mission statements and principles found in the annual reports of many large corporations.
I don't see Phil Krinkie's problem that to "encourage stakeholder collaboration and community participation rather than conflict" is "vague, could-mean-just-about-anything gobbledygook." Rather than only a developer appearing before a planning commission isn't it better to have the active participation of the neighbors, those who would lose land when a road is widened miles away from the development, those who would see old, familiar landmarks taken away, and anyone who would see an adverse impact on their lives? There are few economic transactions in which the only interested parties are the buyer and the seller; land development is not one of those few transactions.
What is wrong with "high-density development" as part of "smart growth"? Providing high-density development is giving more "housing opportunities and choices" and is no more "mandatory" than the current predominance of "low-density development."
What is wrong with "pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods"? Should the only places available to walk be private areas (read "malls")? "Pedestrian-friendly" doesn't always mean "no-cars"; it does mean separating as much as possible pedestrians from cars. Mall parking lots could be made "pedestrian-friendly" by providing a raised aisle for drivers and passengers to walk from their cars to the building without concern of being backed over.
Why should the "smart growth crowd" provide "specifics on how they intend to implement their bold vision"? The specifics are to be provided in the communities. The mission of the "smart growth crowd", which includes Democrats, Republicans, and others, is to "encourage communities" and provide means for communities to meet a variety of development needs. Of course "smart growth will be just another cobbled-together conglomeration of..." but what human activities which involve many interests don't become that way. Most of the "Founding Fathers" died bitter because they saw their beautiful, republican structure governed by a disinterested elite turn into an ugly, democratic mess of squabbling interests ("The Radicalism of the American Revolution", Gordon S. Wood).
"Based on what" "we do know" low-density residential development has produced "more congestion" and "more pollution". Just visit I-394 or Highway 169 in the morning or afternoon. Which is a higher price: paying say, five dollars more a week on your groceries at the "quaint little pedestrian-friendly" corner store or paying thousands of dollars a year in capital and operating expenses for a car to get to the super-supermarket? Many of us do know that many urban neighborhoods are "fun to visit" and we do "want to live there."
I have lived in little apartments, big apartments, small houses on little lots, and medium houses on medium lots. I have lived in big cities, inner suburbs, outer suburbs, and the country. I have lived in three states and two foreign countries. In every case I have found shortcomings and much to enjoy.
I can say from my own experience that "new urbanism" is not based on a nostalgic view of the teeming cities of the '20s and '30s" but of the 40s and 50s. I grew up in apartments and duplexes and single family homes on lots no bigger than the backyards of a typical suburban home. I enjoyed walking to school, playgrounds, movies, the Y, church, and other activities. At 10 years old I took streetcars and buses by myself downtown and other places more than a mile away. I grew up with a sense of freedom because I didn't have to depend on adults to take me places that I wanted to go. I didn't see "the crime, the noise and the filth" as any greater than in my suburban home of the 80s and the 90s. That is, in both places there were homes burglarized, some people played radios too loud, and slobs left food wrappers, cans, and bottles wherever it was convenient for them. In both cases such disturbing events were not the norm; one generally felt safe, the neighborhoods were generally quiet, and one felt a sense of cleanliness and order.
I don't see where the Mission or Principles kick suburban life "around like a mangy mutt." Isn't suburban life one of the mixed land uses? Isn't suburban life one of the "housing opportunities and choices”? Doesn't suburban life include open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas. Shall all lakes be ringed with private houses with no access for fishing or swimming? Shall all corn be trucked three days from Florida rather than be picked fresh in the morning? Shall counties sell all the public parks for private development? Think of the increase in the tax base!! Shall developers increase runoff to neighboring developments with careless grading?
"Sprawl" isn't so much "a pejorative catch phrase" as it is a description of any development that considers only the residences being built as important. When no consideration is given to the many activities of the people who live in those residences then we definitely have "sprawl". People require water and sewer; where is the water going to come from and where is the waste going to go? Most people still work away from home; who is going to pay for the roads. Children need to go to school; who is going to pay for the buses? People need food; how far will they have to drive to just buy a quart of milk? Wouldn't it be better if we were smart about growth and had public planning by hundreds or thousands of citizens rather than planning by a few dozen private interests?
"The truth, however, is that low-density development is" a "threat to Minnesota's rural areas." If one considers all the land that is in the state of Minnesota, the conversion of land from rural to suburban for the whole state is not a problem. However, if one considers the Twin Cities metro area then it is. I've known people whose residences have been threatened to make room for wider highways. I've seen cornfields converted to upscale houses (on indecently small lots) because the owner couldn't afford to pay the skyrocketing taxes. That was great corn, too! I myself gave up on a garden because deer had to range farther when their habitat was taken over by houses. I guess low-density development isn't a threat to these rural areas because they don't exist anymore!
However, I don't see how smart growth is making the people living in these houses feel guilty. What smart growth is asking is this the only way to go. Is "living on large residential lots and driving their SUVs to work each day" the choice that everyone wants? If everybody makes that choice, then many will be driving very slowly to work each day through concrete canyons like I-94 between Minneapolis and St. Paul. They won't enjoy the view and will wish they hadn't told "planners to take a hike."
Friday, March 16, 2012
Lack of transit options is a business tax
This entry was inspired by "Southwest light-rail is good for business", Star Tribune, 2012-03-16.
Opponents of light-rail, expanded bus service, and other non-auto transit options claim that we can't afford the taxes to build these. Some of these same people claim that businesses shouldn't be taxed.
Somehow we do have taxes to build more and more roads. Somehow we do have taxes to police and repair these roads. But what do more roads get us? More congestion. How many times do you come to a standstill at rush hour (or in large cities, on rush day)? Do you remember 10 or 20 years ago when the freeways had fewer lanes? Do you remember coming to a standstill maybe less than you do now? So more roads were built and more people used them. A sort of build it and they will come situation.
So people lose time because of traffic congestion and businesses have less ready-to-work employees. And many employees leaving early "to beat the rush".
But for those who don't want to tax businesses, do you realize the automobile culture levies a heavy tax on them? If a company has 1,000 employees at a location working a day shift, how many parking spaces will the company have to provide? What is the cost of those spaces? Who pays for those spaces? Could the land be better used for other purposes?
Look at the suburbanization of our shopping areas. Any business has to provide a certain minimum of parking. And smaller businesses have to allocate so many handicapped spaces, even when the farthest general parking space is closer to the building than the nearest handicapped space in Sprawl Mall is to the main entrance!
How come the anti-government, pro-business party isn't listening to the pro-transit businesses? Especially when that same party claims businesses can do things better than government?
Opponents of light-rail, expanded bus service, and other non-auto transit options claim that we can't afford the taxes to build these. Some of these same people claim that businesses shouldn't be taxed.
Somehow we do have taxes to build more and more roads. Somehow we do have taxes to police and repair these roads. But what do more roads get us? More congestion. How many times do you come to a standstill at rush hour (or in large cities, on rush day)? Do you remember 10 or 20 years ago when the freeways had fewer lanes? Do you remember coming to a standstill maybe less than you do now? So more roads were built and more people used them. A sort of build it and they will come situation.
So people lose time because of traffic congestion and businesses have less ready-to-work employees. And many employees leaving early "to beat the rush".
But for those who don't want to tax businesses, do you realize the automobile culture levies a heavy tax on them? If a company has 1,000 employees at a location working a day shift, how many parking spaces will the company have to provide? What is the cost of those spaces? Who pays for those spaces? Could the land be better used for other purposes?
Look at the suburbanization of our shopping areas. Any business has to provide a certain minimum of parking. And smaller businesses have to allocate so many handicapped spaces, even when the farthest general parking space is closer to the building than the nearest handicapped space in Sprawl Mall is to the main entrance!
How come the anti-government, pro-business party isn't listening to the pro-transit businesses? Especially when that same party claims businesses can do things better than government?
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