Posted on 01/29/2006 7:17:24 AM PST by SmithL
A well-made, raised-relief map is a beautiful thing. You know what I'm talking about, don't you? It's a map mode of molded plastic, so that mountains protrude into your personal space. This is handy when you are riding your bicycle across America. You can see where the tough climbs will be. Avoid Gunnison, Colo.
My map of the 48 states is made by Kistler Graphics Inc. in Denver. Not only the texture but also the colors are delightful: a rich mix of tans, greens and blues.
The artist uses one other color, yellow, to mark urban areas. I think about those splotches when I hear gloom and doom about suburban sprawl, and you know why? Because compared to the entire land mass of the United States, they are tiny.
A lot of cities you would consider large do not even merit their own yellow splotch, but merely a black square. For example, Portland, Las Vegas, Indianapolis, Salt Lake City, Miami and Phoenix.
In fact, in the entire western two-thirds of the nation, between the California coast and the Mississippi River, there are just four yellow splotches, and you have to look really hard to find them. They sit unobtrusively next to mountains and rivers. Can you guess them? I'll tell you at the end of this column.
On my map, the distance from San Francisco to New York is 50 centimeters. The distance from International Falls, Minn., to Brownsville, Texas, is 30 centimeters. That means my America comprises roughly 1,500 square centimeters. It looks to me like all the yellow splotches combined could fit into Vermont.
My seat-of-the-pants analysis is confirmed by Steven Hayward, a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco. He writes: "Developed land accounts for less than 5 percent of the total land area in the continental United States. The amount of land developed each year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, is 0.0006 percent."
So I have to ask: Where in the heck is this suburban sprawl crisis?
The answer, to me, seems obvious. There is no crisis. Suburban sprawl is just another hoax that liberal governments use to try to stop us ordinary Americans from doing what is natural.
In this case, we want to find a roomy place to live and have a little money left over after paying the mortgage. But social engineers, trying to perfect humanity, don't want us to spread out. They want us crammed together in dense cities to keep us in line and take away our Swiss Army Knives.
In this sense, the suburban sprawl myth is similar to the global warming hoax. Al Gore types begrudge us the freedom that cars provide, so they scare us with threats like "You're destroying the coral reef of Mexico!"
Well, so what if we are? I didn't even know Mexico had coral reef. As I have asked before: Who ever promised us an Earth that would never, ever change? Who ever said coral reef should exist forever? Ask a dinosaur: Species come and go every day.
In other words, if coral reef does die out, soon enough it will be replaced by some other interesting organism. Did you know there were no bats on Earth until we emerged from the last Ice Age 12,000 years ago? That's right: If not for global warming, there would be no such thing as these fascinating, sonar-equipped flying mice.
This is how the world's climate works, you see. You lose a reef, you gain a bat. Deal with it, OK?
Now some more about suburban sprawl. It is not the evil that it's made out to be. In the New Democrat a few years ago, Fred Siegel wrote that sprawl is "an expression of the upward mobility and growth in homeownership generated by our past half-century of economic success. ...
"An unprecedented 67 percent of Americans now own their own homes. Black homeownership has been increasing at more than three times the rate for whites, and today a record 45 percent of African-Americans are now homeowners.
"Sprawl is part of the price we're paying for creating something new on the face of the earth: the first mass upper-middle class."
The writer Thomas Sowell adds: "In some places housing prices are astronomical -- three times the national average in much of California, for example. Despite the old rule of thumb that housing should cost no more than one-fourth of your income, there are parts of California where tenants and new homebuyers pay at least half their incomes for housing."
So what are middle-class people supposed to do in cities such as San Francisco? Pitch a tent in Golden Gate Park? No, of course not. They move eastward, building communities in the undeveloped land between Oakland and exurbs like Stockton.
And what if they do? As Sowell points out: "You could double the size of every city and town in America, and still nine-tenths of the land would be undeveloped."
Steven Hayward, the researcher quoted above, has found a rich analogy to the suburban sprawl panic in Chapter 7 of "Alice in Wonderland":
"There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep. ...
"The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it: 'No room! No room!' they cried out when they saw Alice coming. 'There's PLENTY of room!' said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large armchair at one end of the table."
Duh!
Readers may send email to mbowers@starnewspapers.com. The four yellow splotches between the California coast and the Mississippi River are Denver, San Antonio, Dallas and Houston.
The DFW area. The Big D, with all of its suburban areas, is HUGE. And what makes it a crisis is that the public transit system sucks, as does the highway system.
Drive from one suburb to another, and you can see something more disturbing. McMansion neighborhoods surrounded by WalMart-Kohls-Target-Home Depot shopping centers, with the same chains of restaurants: Olive Garden, TGI Fridays, Starbucks, Red Lobster, blah, blah, blah. Our suburbs are turning into miniature corporate America leaving NOTHING unique or original.
Natch.
One of the more idiotic statements I've read in the last while.
The solution is for the people who are bothered by "suburban sprawl" to move either back into the inner city or way out to the country.
"Little Boxes" by Malvina Reynolds as sung by our commie friend Pete Seeger in 1962:
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same,
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
And the people in the houses
All went to the university
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same
And there's doctors and lawyers
And business executives
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.
And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same,
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
Words and music by Malvina Reynolds.
Copyright 1962, Schroder Music Company
I hate surburban sprawl because I moved to the edge of the 'burbs to be away from the city, and it moved out here to meet me, and then pass me. I want to be able to get the hell away from the city on a moment's notice, in case there's ever an urgent need to do so, and you sure as hell can't do that if the city has grown up 10 miles past where you live.
I've always thought the suburban sprawl "problem" was a non-issue. Its almost entirely a problem with socialist urbanites.
So what to do? Start mandating that we only build high-rises?
And the market dictates what stores/architectural types/etc survive and thrive in America. If folks don't buy the houses, then developers won't build those houses. If people don't shop at WalMart, then WalMart closes its doors.
FWIW, I agree with you about the houses. I absolutely loathe these new subdivisions where every single house looks like every single other house. These folks are in for a rude awakening re: resale value when they try to move. My wife and I live in the newest house we've ever lived in, and it was built in 1952.
The main argument that I hear in favor of these tract homes is the maintenance argument. I disagree. You spend the first five years fighting to get the builder to fix defects related to shoddy construction, after which you begin an artificially accelerated maintenance schedule caused by the same shoddy materials and workmanship.
So - for the most part, I agree with you. But what can you do when the consumer drives the growth?
"Drive from one suburb to another, and you can see something more disturbing. McMansion neighborhoods surrounded by WalMart-Kohls-Target-Home Depot shopping centers, with the same chains of restaurants: Olive Garden, TGI Fridays, Starbucks, Red Lobster, blah, blah, blah. Our suburbs are turning into miniature corporate America leaving NOTHING unique or original."
Such businesses are thriving, so I guess they're meeting the needs of the residents.
However, one needn't live in the suburbs. When my wife and I moved to Minnesota 18 months ago, we found our home in the city of Saint Paul. If we want the big chain stores, we merely have to drive to the nearest suburb. If we want non-chain businesses, they abound in the city itself.
Just last night, we went to a hole-in-the-wall neighborhood bar, had a drink, then walked a few doors down to a small restaurant and had dinner. I had the rabbit stew, and my wife enjoyed a couple of quail. We know the owner of the restaurant, and our waitress lives a couple of blocks from us.
Folks CHOOSE to live in suburbs.
Personally I don't see a solution, except for individuals to refuse to work for such high pay corporations, take something far less in income, and move to the country and live a simpler life without all the advantages a big city offers.
One of the more idiotic statements I've read in the last while.
I caught that one too. Bats bave been around for millions of years, probably since the days of the dinosaurs. The author casts doubt on the rest of his article with this piece of misinformation.
I don't disagree with what you say. Then again, as long as they're building, I wouldn't mind a Chilis or Macaroni Grill. I live in one of NJs last bastions of rural living. But they're putting in a Lowes (we got Home Depot last year), they're putting in a Staples, we just got Marshalls, and Bed Bath Beyond, etc. It's all happening. I think they are gonna build an Applebees. And a big outlet mall is coming if the lawyers ever settle up. Plus there is constant talk of 500 unit developments here or there. Senior housing. Convenience stores (we just got a Quick Check down the road a piece. The commute to the corporate jobs is still 40 miles though, no matter how many stores they put up here near our homes. I figure the sprawl/growth will pay off nicely for me. I'll sell this place in about 8 years or so, turn a hefty profit, and leave the state. Maybe get a place in New Mexico.
My first thought also when I read this article. I disagree with the author, sprawl is a problem.....perhaps if he made the commute from Granbury Tx. to Dallas every morning he would change his tune.
"I caught that one too. Bats bave been around for millions of years, probably since the days of the dinosaurs. The author casts doubt on the rest of his article with this piece of misinformation."
Even worse, the idiot called them flying MICE. Bats and mice are in completely different families. What a moron!
Some enterprising individuals get rich by buying in the path of progress. When the sprawl reaches your doorstep, sell your land for many times what you paid for it and then go buy yourself another property a few more miles out where you can live comfortably until the sprawl reaches your doorstep again. REPEAT.
It's like washing your hair. Lather, rinse REPEAT.
If you live in one of the smaller states, government is already more powerful than in the larger, more sparsely settled ones. That's not at issue: no growth, slow growth, or fast growth that will be the case.
But perhaps a few wise resolutions taken in time can prevent things from getting completely messed up. When everything up to the state line is developed and paved, there isn't going to be much hope in those parts of the country for the kind of freedom and self-reliance that libertarians prize.
Move...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.