Thanks for posting the WPR program link Robbie - it was excellent. In case anyone on this list didn't have the time to listen, but are still curious about the content, I have included some notes I took from the program:
--- Joel Hirschhorn, Pro-Smart Growth: * 30-50% of Americans want to live in a walkable mixed use neighborhood. * In the real estate business, supply determines demand more than demand determines supply. (If sprawl is all that exists in a community, people who may prefer a different arrangement have no choice but to live in sprawl) * As sprawl levels increase, home prices decrease, but transportation costs (in time and money) substantially increase too. * Suburban sprawl has encourages larger schools, which has reduced the quality of education. * People have better neighbors, like the place better, more politically socially engaged in smart growth suburbs. * Developer market research shows a huge demand for alternatives to sprawl. * There is a sprawl politics - sprawl industry - shills - right-ring conservatives pro-car. Have corrupted government. Developers, speculators, home builders real estate industry. Bog box, food chains. To the point that the current game is stacked against a smart-growth developer. * Design trumps density. People will reject high density if poorly designed. * Book: Sprawl kills, how blandburbs steal your time, health and money. * Link: http://www.sprawlkills.com/ Lots more depth than the WPR story had time to cover. Robert Bruegmann, we don't understand Sprawl enough yet to know it is bad, or how to fix it: * Sprawl has given us everything we cherish as Americans: Privacy, Mobility, and choice. * People define sprawl loosely because if they did define it better, most people would realize they live in it. "Sprawl" is a bad diagnostic tool. Assumes a single solution to a host of environmental and social issues. * What is Sprawl: Less dense settlement than what went before, often scattered, no overarching master plan. This kind of sprawl is what has happened every time people want to leave the congestion of central cities who have that opportunity. * People angry about Sprawl since Roman times. Vast majority of complaints are aesthetic or symbolic. * Before we try to change it we should study why it happened and all the benefits it is providing people who live there. * Eating up land issue: There is plenty of land. Agriculture: use less land, produce more. Transportation: people assume that because things are further away that therefore there have to be longer commutes, more congestion, more pollution. Commute times have remained stable (20-30 min). Physical distances may be greater, but speed of travel is greater too. The automobile has facilitated this. * The problem with McMansions? Aesthetic issue. In one generation, people seem more accepting of new architecture. * All arguments against sprawl are based on class-based assumptions. * Is density an effective tool to reduce sprawl: If you have complete power (Soviet Union) this policy can succeed. * Majority of people want to live in separate unit, not apartment. * If planner's goal was to analyze what is out there, cook up conclusions, and present ideas to policy makers, that would be ok. But when planners, architects, etc, believes because of their superior training, they should decide what needs to be built, that is a problem. * Solutions to sprawl-related issues should be created independently. * book: "Sprawl, a compact history" * Link: http://tigger.uic.edu/~bbrueg/ (Not nearly the depth I was hoping for). --- Questions I have after listening: 1) What is driving "Sprawl Politics"? I dug a little bit into the links above, and they do demonstrate a clear pattern of developers manipulating the system, but then, pro-smart growth developers have just as much opportunity to do so. What I don't understand is why developers are so one-sided in supporting sprawl if, as the author suggests, there really is this 30-50% demand for Smart Growth. Perhaps Robert Bruegmann's conjecture about planners and architects forcing their desires on the public could also be allied to developers? In any case, I can't find the proof of this. It is out there? 2)These guys aren't all that different in their views of the suburban landscape. They seem to be working with different definitions of sprawl and answering different questions, and this creates a sense of conflict where I am not sure there is one. Is there a credible Anti-Smart Growth figure out there that more directly refutes the conclusions of Joel Hirschhorn? --- _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies
