[hedgetrimmer]

I support the traditional American way of life -- which means living in cities, getting along with the weirdos next door, and traveling by foot and by train instead of by car.

You're talking about the Soviet Union, not America.

If you look at the history of free people, they live where they like. They buy as little or as much land as they want and they build a house on it that suits them. I've had ancestors in this country for over 300 years. They fought to found this country and not one of them lived in a city with a weirdo next door.

Personally I don't know anyone who wants to live the way you live. With no land you can't build personal wealth. With no personal wealth you have no equity for investment. Living in the situation you describe, people have no resources that can be developed for their economic well being. In the type of housing you describe today, the planners building these "transit hubs" or "clusters" will decide what kind of job you will have and where you will work-- exactly in the style of the soviet union. The type of miserable living conditions you describe are that of a peasant who lives at the whim of his landlord, not of a free man exercising liberty to live as he pleases.

If roads and convenient transportation were just a fleeting whim of an era then this country is in bigger trouble than I thought. In the history of this country private transporation = freedom. Forcing everyone into public transportation directly affects their liberty and it antithetical to protecting individual rights.

[B-Chan]

With no land you can't build personal wealth.

Parson my asking this, but are you high? Ever been to the boyhood home of President Theodore Roosevelt? It's a brownstone in New York City not far from Union Square. He did all right in the personal wealth department. Besides, there's no reason a person who wants to own land shouldn't be able to. I'm not against rural living for those who want that sort of thing. What I'm against are is building more half-assed suburbs for people who want country atmosphere with city conveniences. I'm for people having to pick one or the other: country or city. Suburbs are neither, and as such, are nowhere -- places without identity. Is it any wonder they breed serial killers like rabbits?

What I'm against is the Cycle of Sprawl. It works like this:

1. Funny-looking brown people arrive in neighborhood. As funny brown folk population increases, renters outnumber owners. Property tax receipts in neighborhood drop, forcing city to allow roads, infrastructure to decay. White folks begin to move to suburb A, a former wildgrass prairie ten miles from downtown.

2. White folks needs houses. Prairie is bulldozed, destroying natural beauty. Zero-lot-line slab-foundation tract houses are built by the zillions. Illegal immigrants do the construction work, move into old neighborhood, creating further white flight.

3. White folks in suburb A grow tired of driving in traffic back and forth to city for retail goods and food. In response, more nearby prairie in suburb A is bulldozed to build strip malls, big box retailers, and fast-food joints. Country roads in suburb A are widened to five lines each way to accomodate growing population. Suburb A residents lobby state legislature for new highway to make commuting easier.

4. Companies employing Suburb A residents begin moving their headquarters from old neighborhoods to Suburb A. Old neighborhoods become wastelands as local ecomomies wither. Crime, drug gangs move in.

5. Suburb A is now a buatling city in its own right. Burgeoning population requires new roads, new schools. Property tax rates go up. Traffic gridlock becgins to be a problem. White folks begin selling their expensive homes in Suburb A to escape growing property tax bill.

6. Newly-vacated homes in Suburb A begin to fall apart due to their cheap tract-house construction. Unsaleable properties are converted to rental properties or bulldozed to build apartments. Funny-looking brown people arrive in Suburb A to escape crime, drug gangs in old neighborhood.

7. As funny brown folk population increases, renters outnumber owners. Property tax receipts in Suburb A drop, forcing city to allow roads, infrastructure to decay. As suburb A becomes a slum, white folks move to suburb B, a former wildgrass prairie twenty miles from downtown.

RETURN TO STEP ONE. REPEAT UNTIL ALL PRAIRIE HAS BEEN CONVERTED TO SLUM.

There's got to be a better way.