Posted on 01/22/2015 11:03:06 AM PST by Twotone
Here's one way to solve global warming: Spend $90 trillion (£59 trillion) over the next few years to redesign all the cities — as in all the cities on earth — so people live in more densely packed neighborhoods and don't need cars.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
China already tried this with their empty cities.
Proof that being rich doesn’t make you smart.
I still have a copy of that around here somewhere. I’ve forgotten bits, might ought to dig it up.
UN Agenda 21 ( Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from the list.)
Sadly, Houston was the last major city without zoning restrictions, but not any more.
No surprise there.
So, every human has to come up with $13,850? Please check my math.
First defense against this lunacy is arguing that the issue is not the absurdity of proving of “climate change” or “global warming” (sounds like “weather” to me) but the even greater absurdity of presuming that such is man-made without a preponderance of evidence. If it is not man made, then no justification for government involvement.
The second defense is U.S. sovereignty against such ludicrous ideas.
The third defense is state sovereignty to nullify if the U.S. decides unconstitutionally to go along with these absurdities.
The WSJ has an article about a poll that says that young Millennials overwhelmingly dream of a house in the suburbs, not an urban village
It flies in the face of all the propaganda about urban villages and walkable communities. In the end, even the Millennials value their privacy and space over a short commute.
Puts me in mind of Nicolae Ceausescu’s scheme to force all rural residents into cities and level all rural villages in order to obtain a marginal increase in arable farmland.
You left out the government overrun on the project, so add a couple zeros.
They can use their own money first.
Arcosanti is a sort of pilot program, testing the various theories that go into a Arcology, but only in an experimental framework, and only from a societal perspective. They’re not really doing much if any work on how a megastructure arcology would work from a mechanical perspective.
Yeah, I think what surprised me was the breadth of the different groups, how they were all interconnected, and with the more “moderate” sites used as gateways to the more radical ones. Again, conceptually no surprise (I’m familiar with how the Democrats “Catalist” system interlinks partisan groups), but seeing how impressive it is, views first hand.
I have been saying this is their end game for years. They even admit to it in the American Community Survey when they tell you they ask all those personal questions to aid in their “community planning”. Why do they need to know how far you drive to work? So they can plan the high rise there, that’s why.
This planned community is the reason for the global warming lie, you must submit to save the planet.
You say you prefer to live in the country? Do you have a government permit to grow a certain food? Then you cannot go out into the countryside, it is completely restricted to keep it pristine.
These people are serious.
In one of William W. Johnstone’s Out of the Asges books, this is what the so called president does. People got fed up and that is when Ben Raines and like mindd people formed the Tri States out west. If y’all have not read this series, do so.
The city-suburb balance has always involved a push-pull equation. The suburbs offer new homes, typically larger homes, bigger yards, etc. That is their legitimate competitive advantage. Call it the "pull."
The suburbs have also been havens to which the middle class escapes to avoid city taxes, corrupt government, crime, and crummy schools. These are the "push" factors. From the standpoint of urban policy, these are the most important things to address. If the cities could clean up their act, many more people would choose to skip the commute. A walkable, bikeable city neighborhood with schools, churches, jobs, restaurants, and light shopping within blocks is a nice place to live. I know. I live in one.
Perhaps the cities' greatest problem is that middle class flight has tilted municipal politics overwhelmingly into the control of public employee unions and client constituencies, largely the welfare class. This makes reform extraordinarily difficult. But not impossible. When suburbanites are routinely enduring 1-2 hour commutes each way -- and God forbid someone gets a flat tire on the beltway -- it begins to occur to an increasing number of people that it would be nice to get their lives back.
As always, I think that school reform/school choice/vouchers is perhaps the easiest place to seek a breakthrough. Young people move to the cities for their jobs. They enjoy the amenities and the convenience. Then come kids, and the schools force them into the private schooling/suburban flight dilemma. Meanwhile, the underclass kids rot in schools that are just patronage and kickback machines for the local democrat party -- and they know it. There is a constituency for serious reform on both ends of the spectrum, and it is good urban as well as educational policy.
A second useful point of attack is subsidies for urban sprawl, in the form of subsidized extension of transportation and utility infrastructure. If suburban development had to pay the full marginal costs, the economics would be very different. And if close-in communities can muster the political strength to block new arterial roads that degrade their older, "in the way" neighborhoods, the pressures on suburban commutes mount rapidly.
I live in one of those neighborhoods that suburbanites often think is "in the way," and the fact is, road expansion is destructive. It is my property values and my quality of life that the roadbuilding lobby is quite happy to destroy. I tend to think people should live closer to their jobs, whether the job is downtown or on the Dulles corridor. I am certainly not willing to sacrifice the tree plats, front yards, and local parks of urban neighborhoods in order to turn pleasant streets into commuter raceways.
Last but not least, exclusionary zoning and occupancy regulations in the suburbs need to be addressed, The cities should not be treated as the default dumping grounds for the poor. The poor need to live reasonably close to job centers if we expect them to work, and excessive concentration of the welfare class leads to disastrous results. Dispersion is the key. This does not mean that a multi-family housing unit needs to be placed on every cul-de-sac, but suburban planners need to accept their fair share of apartments, duplexes, boarding houses, etc. Dispersion is the key to reintegrating the underclass into American society.
The immediate deal-breaking problem, of course, is that bad policy since the 1960's has produced a viciously dysfunctional, drug addicted, heavily criminal element in the underclass. No one, including most of the residents of poor, inner city neighborhoods, wants these people anywhere near them. But they are there, and permanent quarantine is not a good solution. But I have to head to the airport. I will yield the floor for discussions of remedies.
... 90 trillion dollars out of thin air...
That is the real objective
Algore wants you to give up your small town and suburban life to live like a sardine in gargantuan mega-cities.
So the sheeple can be more easily controlled. Fighting mythical climate change has nothing to do with it - that’s simply an excuse to advance soft lifestyle despotism.
The Khmer Rouge emptied their cities.
Algore wants to empty the countryside and the suburbs.
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