WHAT’S BEHIND “THE VISION” in YOUR TOWN?

Advance Bulletin ^ | Feb 15, 2005 | Susanna Lynton Jennings

[hedgetrimmer]

The visioning process includes: “values” research, how to run "facilitated" workshops and to how to use “consensus building” to create scenarios for area “change”. When public officials and NGO's (non-government organizations) use the term "visioning" it really means Agenda 21 principles are being implemented.

Television makeover programs that transform men and women from sloppy to slick are popular. Makeup artists, hair dressers and clothing specialists remake their passive subjects and the new look is shown off to gasping friends and family. Transformational changes are not limited to people these days. American neighborhoods, swarming with central planners and government funds are getting made over too.

America’s new look starts with federal and state funded “visioning councils” who impose their plan utilizing compliant politicians, compliant business people and paid representatives from foundation and tax-funded non-profit organizations. The unsuspecting public becomes the recipient of a vision that implements “Smart Growth.”

Smart Growth restricts housing construction to high-density subsidized (cost-shifted) apartments or condominiums. Cities are “filled in” by building vertically and cramming people together. Occupants living in these new developments are often subject to increasing rules and regulations administered by Associations or Housing Trusts. Cluster developments with purposely limited parking (near train or bus stops) are designed to take people out of their cars, thereby frustrating people’s ability to get around as they might choose.

Some planners in the Western United States learned their terminology and techniques from a group called “Envision Utah”. Through “Envision Utah” planners learned about the “visioning process.” Planners return from the “regional” visioning workshop with a mission in place. “Our visioning sets up a framework project for zoning,” says Gordon Garry, Director of Research and Analysis for the Sacramento Area Council of Governments.

Once the framework for zoning is in place, local governments, non-elected regional councils and public/private partnerships, begin to change residential neighborhoods to “mixed uses,” often utilizing processes that work outside constitutional governmental procedures. By transforming the “look’ of the town, planners and politicians are also engineering social changes that will negatively affect the lives and the lifestyles of existing residents.

If your town is working toward a “vision,” it’s best to understand the Smart Growth plan behind the façade.

[hedgetrimmer]

Here's how we get from free market housing to cost shifted centrally planned stack 'em and pack 'em soviet style housing blocs.

[hedgetrimmer]

You might be interested in this

[lodwick]

Another great wake-up call here. Thanks.

[hedgetrimmer]

Here's a couple of related articles

Community Plans Aim to Change Values
Community plans are specifically designed to reflect aesthetically the collective values they seek to impose -- at the expense of individual expression and privacy. Full text: Community planning (including growth management, comprehensive planning and smart growth) is suddenly all the rage. Just a few years ago, the words "charrette", "visioning council", and "consensus planning", were virtually unknown to most Americans. These words have been introduced to our neighborhoods by a coterie of community planners, who've fanned out across the country to confuse Americans into accepting a different political philosophy and a different way of living.

Freepers Beware of the Non-Meeting Meeting (Vanity)
Perhaps some of you who are veterans at planning issues have seen this, but the other night I witnessed my first community plan meeting that was moderated in the "Assets, Issues, and Solutions" format.

CA: Community Planning Case Study: Corralitos, California
An existing town that has excited the interest of community planners is the small town of Corralitos, located in an unincorporated area of Santa Cruz County, California. The Corralitos Valley Community Plan follows the same guidelines and values as groups like the Congress for New Urbanism and the Smart Growth Network whose stated goals are to reshape our values from an individual rights-oriented society to a "community" or collective rights society. "Visioning" plans use psychological and physical cueing designed to make residents change their views on the social value of private property and submit to rules and regulations of conformity required for a "community rights" oriented society to evolve.

[jusduat]

We have a plan called 'The Overlay' to reform our little burb into cluster.

[GOP_1900AD]

Another aspect of this we are seeing on the SF Peninsula is that they are subtly trying to move the existing detached housing stock in the direction of gay / single / DINK friendly (coincidentally, two of these subcultures tend to vote to the Left, en masse). Here's how they are doing it. Firstly, they are really emphasizing "picture postcard perfect" which means making the existing (typically too small) houses look more New Englandeasque (they don't like Spanish Style, in spite of our location and real history). They also make it tough to accomodate more than one or two vehicles by refusing to allow driveway - parking pad expansions. They stiffle additions by not allowing cuts and slope modifications in backyards and by having a 28 foot peak roofline to ground level height limit. And recently, they made it clear they don't like what they consider to be "rednecks" by banning parking of boats, RVs and the like in front of homes. Etc. Is it a conspiracy? As I mentioned on a related thread, I overheard, in a coffeehouse frequented by the "smart set" a couple of, shall we say, alternative lifestyle living, politically connected people, specifically scheming on how to use zoning to put pressure on "breeders" to move out. Any questions?

[hedgetrimmer]

Fight it with every breath you take.

This is not about providing housing for everyone, although its clear that it is an economic disaster when the government gets involved in housing.

Its about re-engineering Americans to give up their individuality and become good collectivists. Have you noticed that the clusters and "town center' developments pushed by smart growth resemble medieval European villages? That is on purpose, because if you've noticed Europe lately, it has become almost completely sovietized, or collectivized. When you force people to live in collective situations, its easier to engineer them into thinking like a collectivist and thinking that individualism and self government is bad.

This is the one-two whammy-- they are teaching our kids in school to be collectivists, then they rework our neighborhoods, towns and cities so that nothing is private, everything is public or the collective and poof! Suddenly America is just another regional consumer group buying products and living at the leisure of the globalist economy.

[hedgetrimmer]

Take this file and study it carefully. Here are the techiques used by the smart growthers, agenda 21 UN sustainable developers to steal property rights from the American people.

You might recognize some of the techniques the "smart set" couple were discussing. Not may of these 100 policies are constitutional or take into account the wishes of the American people to preserve their heritage and property rights.

Getting to Smart Growth, 100 policies for implementation

[Kay Ludlow]

Thanks! We've done visioning here - Vision2020. All the meetings I attended (and there were a number of them) were mostly government and NGO. At one, where they split us up into groups for discussion, I stated my opposition to the concept of government planning out the community for 20 years (after all, who do you know in government that's smart enough to predict accurately what the next 20 years will bring?). Someone in my group had the gall to ask me why I even came if I didn't believe in the process! I told them I believed that it was my responsibility as a citizen to go to these kind of events, and speak up on behalf of the majority that don't want government planning their lives for them. For some reason, those comments didn't get up on the flip-chart...

If any of you see notices for visioning meetings in your community, GO TO THEM! Speak up and say you don't agree with the process. Make the paid consultants lives miserable by having to face the opposition in person!

[Kay Ludlow]

We have a plan called 'The Overlay'

We had overlay district planning too. In our case, it was an attempt to transcend the boundaries of local government (who wouldn't support anything THAT radical) but "taking it to the people", getting a model ordinance written (which they did), then taking it to all municipalities to pass. They wrote the ordinance, but even here in planning crazy Centre Region I don't think any municipality adopted it. It was being sold as the way to prevent our community from ending up like Breezewood (at the interface between I-80 and I-79 in southern PA). As we stated repeatedly, there were already plenty of regulations in place that would eliminate that possibility - why add more? The model ordinance included things like what exterior coverings were acceptable on buildings in the overlay district (natural materials only); limitations on the quantity and reflectivity of glass; requirements on landscaping that would pretty much ensure that if you didn't know a business was there you wouldn't know it; sign restrictions so businesses couldn't put at readable signs to identify their hidden businesses, etc. I told people it was almost like they wanted to put out a "keep out, no strangers welcome" sign at every entrance to the region - LOL! It was ridiculed enough that it didn't pass though.

[hedgetrimmer]

For some reason, those comments didn't get up on the flip-chart...

Of course you know its because you were delphi'ed.

For the benefit of other freepers out there, thanks to freeper EdReform:

Using the Delphi Technique to Achieve Consensus - ( http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/1998/nov98/focus.html ).

The Delphi Technique — How to Disrupt It. - ( http://www.learn-usa.com/transformation_process/acf002.htm ).

About Consensus and Facilitation - ( http://www.learn-usa.com/transformation_process/~consensus.htm ).

What American Citizens Need to Know About Consensus and Facilitation - ( http://www.learn-usa.com/transformation_process/acf004.htm ).

“Consensus” and “Facilitation”: When You Hear These Words, Beware of Being Suckered - ( http://baltimorechronicle.com/consensus_oct02.html ).

[Fiddlstix]

Click the Pic J

[hedgetrimmer]

Here is what the department of energy is planning for youd. Do you feel claustrophic yet? You should because all those open spaces are OFF LIMITS to human beings (except NOAA employees, high members of the federal goverment and employees and families of the NGOs engaged in the public/private partnerships that exist off your tax payer dollars):

Conventional Design

Conservation Approach

New Urbanist Design

http://www.csc.noaa.gov/alternatives/views_3d.html

[hedgetrimmer]

Donuts----unghhhhhh....

[sageb1]

"When you force people to live in collective situations, its easier to engineer them into thinking like a collectivist and thinking that individualism and self government is bad."

hmmmmm...you mean like in college dorms?

[hedgetrimmer]

I would say in the case of the University of California, Santa Cruz-- yes.

If you look at the Congress for New Urbanism they say:

Planners acknowledge that America "remains a land of and dedicated to the individual" and that "rights talk" must be quashed and "community rights" and values promoted.

http://www.civic-strategies.com/library/planned_communities.pdf

[longtermmemmory]

Part of the problem mention above is that the local city commisions are packed with real estate brokers and agents who make profit by the devolopment of land they own.

They buy up houses and then use the fact they granted ONE variance to get their little clusters approved for micro condominiums/townhouses.

Real estate agents will become the new used care salesmen or lawyers as far as public scorn.

[sageb1]

I don't want to go off subject, but I'd like to thank you for bringing up the Hegelian dialectic and Delphi. People need to be very worried and very alert. The same tactics are being used in new psychotherapy techniques and in religion. My Roman Catholic Church uses the Hegelian technique in the new Purpose-Drive Life circle groups. I've stayed away.

[sageb1]

I don't want to go off subject, but I'd like to thank you for bringing up the Hegelian dialectic and Delphi. People need to be very worried and very alert. The same tactics are being used in new psychotherapy techniques and in religion. My Roman Catholic Church uses the Hegelian technique in the new Purpose-Drive Life circle groups. I've stayed away.

[PGalt]

Thanks for the information/links.