Free Republic

Childhood Obesity Report Calls For Government Regulations to Limit Access to ‘Unhealthy’ Restaurant Chains Wednesday, September 02, 2009 By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer (CNSNews.com) - A newly released report by the Institute for Medicine and the National Research Council details strategies for local governments to combat what it calls an epidemic of childhood obesity, including enacting zoning and land-use regulations that would “restrict fast food establishments near school grounds and public playgrounds.” The report, “Local Government Actions to Prevent Childhood Obesity,” was compiled by the Committee on Childhood Obesity Prevention Actions for Local Governments, a committee of health care...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is moving forward with a floor vote on climate change legislation this week even though many Democrats are undecided on the controversial bill. Pelosi’s gamble to schedule a Friday vote is one of the riskiest moves she has made as Speaker. There are at least eight Democrats who are firm “no” votes, while many others are on the fence (see chart page 14). In an indication that Democrats lack the necessary votes to pass it on their side of the aisle, Pelosi and other party leaders have met with centrist Republicans seeking their support. Pelosi and...

You may not have noticed, but Hollywood has: you’re miserable. No, really. According to Census Bureau numbers, roughly 75 percent of Americans live in suburbs. And, according to one of last year’s Golden Globe nominees for best picture, that’s eating away at us. “Our whole existence here [in the ’burbs] is based on this great premise that we’re special. That we’re superior to the whole thing,” declares the female lead in the movie Revolutionary Road. “But we’re not. We’re just like everyone else. We bought into the same, ridiculous delusion.” That “delusion,” as depicted in the film, is that a...

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist signed a controversial growth management bill that some say will stimulate the state's economy but others warn will increase urban sprawl. ___ Gov. Charlie Crist on Monday approved changes to Florida growth laws that supporters say will strengthen the economy and opponents predict will increase urban sprawl and traffic gridlock. The bill rewrites Florida's 25-year-old growth management law, principally by allowing developers in the most urban counties to add more housing developments without expanding roads and by allowing counties and cities to designate new urban areas that also would be exempt from certain road-building requirements. Sponsored...

A southern Utah county has taken its fight to manage roads in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to a federal appeals court, claiming that federal officials improperly closed routes to traffic. Lawyers for Kane County argued Wednesday before the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver that the county managed the roads for years before the nearly 2-million-acre monument was designated in 1996.

Surprise, Ariz., doesn't look very surprising. It might be anywhere in the suburban West. Home Depot and Wal-Mart rise like islands from an ocean of pavement, and late-model SUVs gleam in the midday sun. Homes with red-tiled roofs line up like stucco boxes on a giant supermarket shelf. There's little to distinguish this from the hundreds of square miles of housing developments that have sprouted around Las Vegas and San Diego. If it weren't for the palm trees, you could be in suburban Salt Lake City. But only Surprise has the Radiant Church. Inside this 55,000-square-foot behemoth, 50-inch plasma-screen televisions...

Tim Clements was excited about getting his new business up and running. Several weeks ago, he put up an impressive sign on the gate of his 10-acre horse farm on remote Hampstead Drive, tucked away in a pastoral setting in southeast Hernando not far from the Pasco County line. He named the business the CJ Dude Ranch, combining his last name and that of David Jennings, co-owner of the property. "I just named it for us two dudes,'' he said. "Two guys on a farm with horses.'' Clements put the finishing touches on a new Web site, cjduderanch.com, that features...

Looking back three years ago, it is hard to fathom how much has changed from the frenzied pace of development then going forward. Land and housing prices were still rising, ever-larger development projects were being launched, and growth debates were raging across Southern California. That’s all gone now. As key real estate players suddenly find themselves without jobs, as more developers file bankruptcy, and more projects bite the dust, the depth of this “downturn” is sinking in. Many, of course, have “been through this before.” By that they mean, they’ve weathered the cyclical postwar busts that have intermittently interrupted the...

Like so many others, I have long been a visitor to New Orleans. In my case, the first visit was 1979, when we studied the city to influence the design of the new town of Seaside. I have been back often – for New Orleans is one of the best places to learn architecture and urbanism in the United States. My emphasis on design might seem unusual, but it shouldn't be, for the design of New Orleans possesses a unique quality and character comparable to the music and the cuisine that receives most of the attention. During those visits, sadly,...

The downturn has accomplished what a generation of designers and planners could not: it has turned back the tide of suburban sprawl. In the wake of the foreclosure crisis many new subdivisions are left half built and more established suburbs face abandonment. Cul-de-sac neighborhoods once filled with the sound of backyard barbecues and playing children are falling silent. Communities like Elk Grove, Calif., and Windy Ridge, N.C., are slowly turning into ghost towns with overgrown lawns, vacant strip malls and squatters camping in empty homes.

Contrary to a parade of films and books demonizing life in the 'burbs, those who live there love it ___ Suburban angst makes for good novels and films, but people who live between the country and the city in the United States like their lawns and driveways. Suburbanites are significantly more satisfied with their communities than people who live in cities, small towns or rural areas, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center's Social & Demographics Trends Project. "Ever since there have been suburbs, there have been harsh critiques of suburbs - a common one being that they...

MIDDLESEX, Vt. - Paul Gillies, a Montpelier attorney, traveled a slow and circuitous route on an unpaved mountain track until he reached a hairpin bend in the route. Nearby, where fresh snow resembled a dazzling white comforter, a gap between the pine trees appeared to expose remnants of an old, unused road. Gillies, 60, was in his element. He studied the landscape, gauged the possibilities, and wondered whether he had stumbled on yet another of the thousands of forgotten roads that have vanished from the map. In Vermont, the issue has become more than just a matter of curiosity about...

THE lawns are green and well-tended. The swimming pools are filled with water, not mosquitoes. Steve Cushman, head of the local chamber of commerce, counts just 27 empty storefronts out of 410 along the city’s main shopping street—a rate that many cities in California would envy. In the past year Santa Barbara County has seen a slight increase in employment. The secret to its health? Hostility to development and lack of youth. Nowhere in California is immune to recession, but the oldest areas are proving most resistant. Of the ten counties with the lowest unemployment rates, nine, including Santa Barbara,...

Court rules for state in American Indian land case I. – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday limited the federal government's authority to hold land in trust for Indian tribes, a victory for Rhode Island and other states seeking to impose local laws and control over development on Indian lands. The court's ruling applies to tribes recognized by the federal government after the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. The U.S. government argued that the law allows it to take land into trust for tribes regardless of when they were recognized, but Justice Clarence Thomas said in his majority opinion that the...

The financial meltdown has produced a vast patchwork of foreclosed and abandoned single-family homes across America, accelerating the decades-long migration of our nation's poor from cities to the suburban fringe. In 2005, as rising property values reduced affordable-housing stock in inner-city neighborhoods, suburban poverty, in raw numbers, topped urban poverty for the first time. The trend will continue. By 2025, predicts planning expert Arthur C. Nelson, America will face a market surplus of 22 million large-lot homes (a sixth of an acre or more), attracting millions of low-income residents deeper into suburbia where decay and social and geographic isolation will...

Like many other artists inhabiting the cluster of old brick ware­houses in Fort Point, Andrew Woodward had cast a wary eye toward the wave of development sweeping the neighborhood near the Boston waterfront. But rather than getting priced out, Woodward is moving into a 92-unit converted warehouse topped by a gleaming glass-and-steel canopy. Woodward and his wife, a furniture maker, were able to purchase one of three affordable live/work spaces at FP3—which opened last summer with penthouse units starting at $1.8 million and studios at $350,000—thanks to a program aimed at keeping artists in Boston. With its concierge and swanky...

It didn't take Jim Risch long to show his true colors. On his very first vote in the U.S. Senate, Risch joined Mike Crapo and 10 other liberal Republican and 54 Democratic senators to stop a Republican filibuster, which would have continued debate and allowed for possible amendments to a huge omnibus public land-grab bill. The Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009 will cordon off more than 3 million acres from energy leasing by restricting various areas as "federal wilderness" or "wild and scenic" riverway. The act includes 160 separate land measures, including Sen. Crapo's Owyhee Canyonlands wilderness. It...

When clothes dryers account for at least 6% of the electricity used by U.S. households, is it any wonder that line-drying is coming back? In places where the practice is banned as an unsightly nuisance to neighbors, right-to-dry activists and blogging eco-moms are forming an alliance. Their cause: to reduce energy consumption and to call upon sunlight rather than bleach to get those whites even whiter. The movement also includes homeowners pinched by rising electric bills as well as some celebrity converts. Yes, there's even a blog dedicated to tracking who's who in L.A. line-drying. (For the curious, it's blog.linedryit.com/eco_facts/,...

Accessory apartments benefit society and the economy, and it's time for tax credits to promote them ___ Twenty years ago, we separately produced publications urging that governments should provide incentives for the creation of accessory apartments (sometimes called "mother-in-law apartments") in owner-occupied housing. Our writings pointed out that there was a shortage of small-unit housing; that household sizes had dropped, rendering many large homes ripe for partial use by renters; that it was irrational to maintain regulations that discouraged extended families from living next to each other; and that Germany, Japan and Finland had provided such incentives as housing policy....

GUILFORD — At a special referendum Tuesday, voters resoundingly approved a proposal to spend $15.45 million on 624 acres of open space along the East River. The measure, the only one on the ballot, passed by a more than 5-to-1 margin, with 2,645 people voting in favor of the plan and 486 voting against it. The vote paves the way for the town to buy the East River Preserve, a plot north of Clapboard Hill Road, from the Goss family, which has owned it since the 1920s. Town officials plan to save much of the property as open space, with...

Shortly after homeowner Herbert Harris started to build a wheelchair ramp for his wife and an extra bedroom for his ill daughter, he learned of the violations. Harris lacked permits for the projects, which violated city regulations. So he applied to the Board of Zoning Appeals for a variance, or an exception to zoning rules. At last week' s board meeting, he got the variance, as did eight other property owners. But afterward, Kay Wilson, a city attorney, made a plea to the board's seven members. "Gotta know what the hardship is. Please," she said, a trace of strain in...

What is the single most significant change that can be made in every town and city in America? One that would aid economic development, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, foster healthier lifestyles, reduce dependence on foreign oil, protect open space and wildlife habitats, and reduce wasteful government spending? Scrapping zoning codes.

It is Singapore’s secret Eden, a miniature village called Kampong Buangkok that is hidden in trees among the massed apartment blocks, where a fresh breeze rustles the coconut palms and tropical birds whoop and whistle. With just 28 houses in an area the size of three football fields, it is Singapore’s last rural hamlet, a forgotten straggler in the rush to modernize this high-rise, high-tech city-state. But apparently not for much longer. Kampong Buangkok is designated by the government for demolition and redevelopment, possibly in the near future. When it is gone, one of the world’s most extreme national makeovers...

Scattered along the western stretch of the island of Molokai are the deserted structures of a vanquished people. These structures stand as eerie remnants of a years-long battle waged over the future of this island, an oasis of 7,500 with no traffic lights and no buildings taller than a coconut tree; with the state’s highest unemployment and highest percentage of Native Hawaiians; with a sweet way of saying you are welcome to visit as long as you understand its ways. On one side of the fight were the off-island owners of Molokai Ranch, a sprawl of property covering a third...

Many California planning and environmental groups are heralding the passage of legislation designed to address global warming by curbing suburban sprawl as a watershed moment, perhaps the state's most important land-use law in more than 30 years. "It's a sea change in the way we're planning and funding growth and development," said Stephanie Reyes, senior policy advocate with San Francisco's Greenbelt Alliance. "The winds are shifting, and this is the time to get on board." But she and other advocates acknowledge that the importance of SB375, signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in late September, lies as much in...

Riverside County’s economy is strongly linked with housing, and growth projections suggest that this will be a continuing trend, specifically in western Riverside County, far into the future. The recent surge in home foreclosures in the Inland Empire has resulted in a related significant decline in new home construction. There are probably thousands construction-related jobs that have been lost or are in jeopardy of being lost as long as foreclosed homes flood the market in this region. Through the Red Team effort, local government leaders are partnering with business leaders to get an understanding of the severity of these issues...

Many California planning and environmental groups are heralding the passage of legislation designed to address global warming by curbing suburban sprawl as a watershed moment, perhaps the state's most important land-use law in more than 30 years. "It's a sea change in the way we're planning and funding growth and development," said Stephanie Reyes, senior policy advocate with San Francisco's Greenbelt Alliance. "The winds are shifting, and this is the time to get on board." But she and other advocates acknowledge that the importance of SB375, signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in late September, lies as much in...

Local Government's Permit Policies Cost Taxpayers It is seldom that we find a community so devastated by a lawsuit that it faces bankruptcy. It is even more unusual to see the exposure potentially repeat itself in a similarly explosive lawsuit. Unfortunately, this seems to be me case in San Mateo County. In January, I published a Viewpoint article about the case of Joyce Yamagiwa, Trustee vs. City of Half Moon Bay. The City of Half Moon Bay had prohibited development on a 24-acre parcel because the parcel was determined to constitute wetlands. The California Coastal Act prohibits residential development on...

Obama must act boldly to rescue the American people.. [...] Creation of a new Home Owner's Loan Corporation (HOLC), the New Deal era agency that bought mortgages from homeowners at risk of defaulting and offered them more affordable terms. Include a law with a sunset clause allowing below median-value homeowners facing foreclosure the right to rent-to-own their homes at fair-market value rates. [...]

...So YOU thought KELO was abusive...??? KLEPTOCRACY 201 - Today's Lesson Today, class, we will learn how to exercise 'eminent domain' without that pesky need to pay the owner ANYTHING for the property... ...and using this new method, you can not only strong-arm the property away from its rightful owner, but you STILL get to keep shaking down the "property owner" for all those great  PROPERTY TAXES on the parcel, AS WELL! ...WHAT could be BETTER than THAT???!!! ...It's a Kleptocrat's DREAM!!!

The smart-development movement has made sprawl worse, not better

Bobby Prigel says building an organic creamery will keep his farm alive. But preservationists say it will spoil the rural landscape. GLEN ARM, Md. -- Bobby Prigel seems like a poster child for the local-food movement. A fourth-generation dairy farmer, he wants to build a creamery to make organic butter, yogurt, cheese and ice cream. He wants to sell those products to consumers in nearby Baltimore instead of shipping his milk out of state. He wants to make enough money to pass on the farm to a fifth generation. But some neighbors and conservationists are challenging Prigel's plans. Opponents, led...

ELLIE WOOTEN, the likable mayor of this likable Central Valley city, is on her way to the office when her cellphone rings. A constituent wants her mortgage payments reduced, and is hoping that the mayor has some clout with her lender. Although Merced has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, this borrower isn’t in such dire straits. She’s not even behind on her mortgage. But her oldest daughter is turning 18, which means an end to $500 a month in child support. She just wants a better deal. The mayor hangs up and shrugs: “It’s a surprise...

SACRAMENTO – California is on the verge of initiating a historic rewrite of local planning laws, fusing for the first time the issues of urban growth and global warming. Unprecedented nationally, the complex legislation would steer communities toward land-use policies to contain sprawl, using as much as $12 billion a year in state-controlled transportation funds as an incentive. “This bill will change the way California grows,” said state Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, its author. Under the measure, the state Air Resources Board would establish targets for 17 regions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as part of a broader campaign to...

BOSTON — As a wave of home foreclosures courses through the United States, some of the nation’s hardest hit cities think they have found a way to ease the blight left on their communities by the crisis. Using taxpayer and private money, Boston, Minneapolis, San Diego and a handful of other places are buying foreclosed properties to refurbish and resell them to developers and homeowners in an effort to prevent troubled neighborhoods from sliding into urban decay. The efforts so far have been taken on a small scale. But local officials say they can become an important pillar of any...

U.S. Rep. Henry Brown on Thursday defended a bill that would help future homeowners on the undeveloped southwestern end of Kiawah Island qualify for federally subsidized flood insurance. Brown, R-S.C., said he introduced the bill last month at the behest of the town of Kiawah Island, and that "I had no idea there was a developer" connected with the legislation.

It looks almost like an average-size house that's been sliced in half. At 12 feet wide, the neat, new single-family home is squeezed onto the slenderest of strips of land on a Brooklyn Park street of modest, post-World War II houses. The home joins an 18-foot-wide one built in the past year in the community that spans Anne Arundel County and Baltimore City. A similar house is planned for another of the 25-foot-wide empty lots in the area. While building on these infill lots in mature, developed communities with established roads, sidewalks and other infrastructure is considered "smart growth," residents...

Today’s dangerous housing problems in the Southwestern part of Houston have been greatly exacerbated by the actions of Houston city government in the settlement of large numbers of Katrina evacuees in the area. But the problem does not lie solely in past actions. The City of Houston, in violation of provisions of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, continues to act to concentrate the predominately low-income, African-American evacuees in these deteriorated, high crime, segregated apartments. So far neither the state or the federal government has acted to stop the city’s actions. Let’s look back to 2005 to see how this developed....

A fisherman turned drug smuggler turned retired old salt, Floyd Brown claims he can find his way back here – one of the last Florida frontiers – without a compass from anywhere in the Gulf of Mexico. It's a skill, he says, he put to use more than once when he ferried bales of marijuana from Latin America to the Shark River in the 1970s. A direct descendant of the 19th century pirates who first settled here in these 10,000 islands, Brown is like many residents in Everglades City. Together they've managed to engineer a modern day coup in Florida:...

As the military prepares to close Fort Lawton, an Army Reserve base nestled in Seattle's Magnolia neighborhood, a city proposal to develop a 200-home subdivision that includes housing for the homeless angers some residents. ___ A newly released city plan to redevelop the soon-to-be-closed Fort Lawton in Seattle calls for building a 200-home subdivision of market-rate and affordable housing on about 18 acres. At a final community meeting Saturday at Fort Lawton, those living near the Army Reserve base said they didn't oppose housing for the homeless, but they worried that the total number of homes proposed and the percentage...

Welcome to Hyattsville, population 15,000, where the downtown looks more like New York City and the neighborhoods more like Iowa. The City Council this spring passed a law reaffirming residents' rights to grow vegetables on front lawns. Three months later, some residents have 8-foot-high corn patches in front of their homes, and neighbors say they don't mind. "I think some people might consider different types of landscapes unsightly, just like different painting schemes or building additions - which may increase or decrease property values - but it is still permitted by our code," Mayor William F. Gardiner said. Residents always...

Think there's no such thing as too much parking? Take a look at Tysons Corner, where there's more parking than jobs, more parking than office space, more parking than in downtown Washington. That must change, said advocates and politicians seeking to transform Virginia's largest business hub from suburb to city. Reducing parking, charging for parking and finding new uses for the acres of parking that separate Tysons' buildings and the people inside is at the heart of plans to remake the area.... "Who wants parking spaces to be the hallmark of a development?" said Clark Tyler, chairman of a Fairfax...

American visitors to Paris, Rome, Prague, or Barcelona, comparing what they see with what is familiar from their own continent, will recognize how careless their countrymen often have been in their attempts to create cities. But the American who leaves the routes prescribed by the Ministries of Tourism will quickly see that Paris is miraculous in no small measure because modern architects have not been able to get their hands on it. Elsewhere, European cities are going the way of cities in America: high-rise offices in the center, surrounded first by a ring of lawless dereliction, and then by the...

A Brooklyn neighborhood finally recovers from decades of misguided urban policies ___ These days, when Morris Todash walks the streets of Bushwick, a two-square-mile neighborhood of 100,000 people in central Brooklyn, he likes what he sees. On the long-abandoned seven-acre site of the former Rheingold Brewery, new two-family homes and condominiums have sprung up. On the side streets along Broadway—not so long ago, pockmarked with desolate lots where stray dogs wandered amid burned-out cars—more new homes arise and old ones get impressive face-lifts. New businesses—an organic grocery store, a fashionable restaurant—seem to be opening on every corner. Todash, whose insurance...

PORTLAND, Ore. — Not every neighborhood in this city is one of those Northwest destinations where passion for espresso, the environment and plenty of exercise define the cultural common ground. A few places are still described as frontiers, where pioneers move because prices are relatively reasonable, the location is convenient and, they say, they “want the diversity.” Yet one person’s frontier, it turns out, is often another’s front porch. It has been true across the country: gentrification, which increases housing prices and tension, sometimes has racial overtones and can seem like a dirty word. Now Portland is encouraging black and...

Across the state, a four-letter word is spoken — sometimes righteously, other times disdainfully — in council chambers, planning offices and courtrooms. COAH. The revised, third-round Council on Affordable Housing Rules could bring the most confusion — and legal wrangling — yet seen in the decades-old, statewide program. The council's new regulations and requirements plan for 115,000 new affordable housing units statewide. The cost estimate for the building of those units is estimated by attorneys and planners to amount to as much as $18.5 billion across the Garden State. Statewide concerns on both sides of the controversy span from the...

IS IT getting too expensive to build affordable housing in Massachusetts? more stories like this Emergency Hub ranks high on inner city business list What happens when doctors want to get a life? American pilots blame management for delays, poor service American pilots to protest at Logan On average, it costs more than $200,000 a unit to build such housing and many projects cost significantly more. A new proposal in the state Senate would make those projects even more expensive. The Senate housing bill would require nonprofit entities and for-profit firms that build most of the region's affordable housing to...

New homes built in Montgomery County would have to meet federal energy efficiency standards under innovative legislation approved yesterday by the County Council over the objections of builders who said that the mandate would drive up costs for consumers. The measure, meant to reduce energy consumption by 15 to 30 percent, is part of a far-reaching environmental initiative. It includes property tax credits for residents who switch to renewable energy, a requirement that residents disclose utility costs when they sell a home and a plan to get county officials to trade in their government-issued sport-utility vehicles. "We are attacking literally...

Economists say home prices are nowhere near hitting bottom. But even in regions that have taken a beating, some neighborhoods remain practically unscathed. And a pattern is emerging as to which neighborhoods those are. The ones with short commutes are faring better than places with long drives into the city. Some analysts see a pause in what has long been inexorable — urban sprawl. The Washington, D.C., metropolitan area has been hit hard. Prices tumbled an average of 11 percent in the past year. That's the big picture. But a look at Ashburn, Va., about 40 miles from the center...

BOULDER, Colo. -- When suburbanites look out their front doors, a lot of them want to see a lush green lawn. Kipp Nash wants to see vegetables, and not all of his neighbors are thrilled. "I'd rather see green grass" than brown dirt patches, says 82-year-old Florence Tatum, who lives in Mr. Nash's Boulder neighborhood, across the street from a house with a freshly dug manure patch out front. "But those days are slipping away." work. A school-bus driver, Mr. Nash rises at 5 a.m. and, after returning from his morning route, spends his days planting, watering and tending his...