Creeping Incrementalism
If Teh Plan is to have everyone — everyone — living in 800sf apartments over “small businesses” in a “walkable neighborhood” near a “smart train,” you could either have ‘em all move to Brooklyn, or…
With suburban voters set to be the swing constituency of the 2012 election, the administration’s plans for this segment of the electorate deserve scrutiny.
…Obama is a longtime supporter of “regionalism,” the idea that the suburbs should be folded into the cities, merging schools, housing, transportation, and above all taxation.
…The goal: income equalization via a massive redistribution of suburban tax money to the cities.
..Obama’s plans to undercut the political and economic independence of America’s suburbs reach back decades. The community organizers who trained him in the mid-1980s blamed the plight of cities on taxpayer “flight” to suburbia.
Hm… “Two Americas” reverb ….
Yep. You selfish bassturds who worked your arses off and left the decaying, crime-ridden inner cities for the sub-bucolic joys of the ‘burbs… *shakes head* Do you not realize what you have done to your urban brothers?!?
One of Obama’s original trainers, Mike Kruglik, has [pulled an "ACORN" and*] hived off a new organization called Building One America, which continues Gamaliel’s anti-suburban crusade under another name.
[Kurtz quote from a raadio interview -- cited for the beauty of the phrase.
One approach is to force suburban residents into densely packed cities by blocking development on the outskirts of metropolitan areas [aka "infill" check], and by discouraging driving with a blizzard of taxes, fees, and regulations [check]. Step two is to move the poor out of cities by imposing low-income-housing quotas on development [check] in middle-class suburbs. Step three is to export the controversial “regional tax-base sharing” scheme currently in place in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area to the rest of the country.
Which of these Planning Mechanisms are in effect in your area?
The centerpiece of the Obama administration’s anti-suburban plans is a little-known and seemingly modest program called the Sustainable Communities Initiative. The “regional planning grants” funded under this initiative — many of them in battleground states like Florida, Virginia, and Ohio — are set to recommend redistributive policies, as well as transportation and development plans, designed to undercut America’s suburbs. Few have noticed this because the program’s goals are muffled in the impenetrable jargon of “sustainability,” while its recommendations are to be unveiled only in a possible second Obama term.
Obama’s former community-organizing mentors and colleagues want the administration to condition future federal aid on state adherence to the recommendations served up by these anti-suburban planning commissions. That would quickly turn an apparently modest set of regional-planning grants into a lever for sweeping social change.
It works because the density of people in the inner urban areas is, obviously, higher than in the ‘burbs. We ruralites – *pfaff* – done for. In a demoooocracy the Power lies with the Mob That Wants — not with reason [ie what will work] or ideology [aka Values or The Law].
And the urban and “inner ring” representatives politicians want that Big Tax Payoff from those Eeeevil Rich People in ‘burbs like the Philly Main Line, Indian Village [Detroit], Oak Park, Hyde Park, etc. [Chicago], Palo Alto [S.F.] etc. But this will also kill nice little ‘burbs like regular people live in.
The other problem with the ‘burbs? People who have a little plot of land are able to be more self-sufficient than those with nothing but window boxes. [If there is a water table somewhat close to the surface...] Therefore they’re less manageable — less governable. We ruralite wild things — *pfaff* — done for.
Here are some of the catch phrases you might hear in connection with this effort:
“sustainability” … taxpayer “flight” to suburbia … “anti-sprawl” movement … social reform … social progress … regional tax-base … regional tax-base shaaaaring … “climate change” … “Smart growth” … transit-friendly … walkable … bike-friendly …cocmplete streets … mixed-use development … sense of commuuuunity … distribute the costs and benefits of development … preserve and enhance natural and cultural resources … promote public health … a unique sense of place [odd since all these "mixed-use" developments look alike] … New Urbanism … Form-Based Coding … reducing carbon emission ….
The only way *I* can think of to fight this is to become very very familiar with your local Planning Commissioners. Go to the meetings regularly and take all your neighbors and friends. Befriend them as individuals and talk to them gently and firmly. If they still embrace this “fundamental transformation” replace them.
Others are fighting it:
Norman OK Remember that zoning allows the municipality to use its police powers to exercise authority over privately owned property so we want to very careful about instituting any new zoning.
* “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” B∅
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33 Comments!
Miss Barbarian:
I am so overloaded by this crap, as I’m sure most of you guys are, that I suggest trying this
People who lack their own, individually controlled transportation are less free, and are more easily managed and manipulated. Notice how the in guise of “regional planning” and “reducing carbon emissions” they are finding a need to “reduce vehicular mobility.” First through taxes and fees, then through regulation. Loss of the 2nd Amendment isn’t the only thing we need to fear in the march of tyranny.
As an irony, the UAW is far too short-sighted to realize that its political allies are hard at work reducing the need for its very existence.
Isn’t this little excerpt (below) from the Texas link wonderful?
Dubious composition aside, it’s the Alice in Wonderland world of socialist thinking. “… the Soviet Union’s enormous and rapid economic and social progress…”
You mean like multi-block-long breadlines to the bakery with no bread? Women being forced into labor as lumber jacks with no power equipment, so they get to fell trees by hand and drag them through the forrest like mules? That kind of “enormous and rapid economic and social progress?”
Why am I inveighing about nut case ideology like this? Because it is infiltrating local, “regional” and state government at every level…. and if things continue as they are, our lives will be in the hands of these people soon, if not now.
While part of the answer is involvement in local government, a *lot* of it is to cut off the torrent of federal money (which is deficit money anyway; it’s not like there’s actually any federal revenue to support it) that is funding state, “regional” and local spending. We must force local expenditures to be funded from the (actual revenue) resources of each individual state or local entity.
By the way, ignoring the uselessness of “fast” rail to the people of CA, explain to me again how people in the other 49 states (or, according to some, 56 states) are benefited by a “regional” “fast” rail system in CA, even if it does work. And if there is no benefit, why are federal “matching funds” being used to partly finance it? It is one thing for CA to take itself to hell in a hand basket, and another for money to get taken out of the pockets of the good people of, for example, North Dakota, Wyoming, Maine, Florida, and Kansas to help them get there.
I wonder if the people of Iowa who vote Democratic understand that they are voting to send their money to CA to fund an ill conceived and local train that will be bankrupt before the first passenger ever gets on board. I wonder if the Republican party can ever figure out how to explain this to them and find the will to do so.
I’m not really picking on the CA train here, it’s just an example of vast exercises in folly (such as “regionalism”) that is being financed and empowered by deficit federal dollars.
(Just to clarify, I do understand that some things, for example water, can’t necessarily be handled just by locals. I’m not a libertarian.)
Russia
Two wolves and a sheep voting on what to eat for lunch.
HINT: We are indeed done for.
We had a couple of centuries of a pretty good run, but in the last few decades we’ve had a government put in place that NO politician electable on a national scale will have the guts or the power to dismantle.
MC
From time to time, I still think of Claire Wolfe’s quip. “America is in an awkward stage where it is too late to work within the system, and too early too shoot the bastards.”
It may indeed be to late to do much at the federal level. Many states have the same problem, though several governors and state legislatures are showing some degree of backbone. Local gummint might be where we have the best chance. Zoning boards, as was mentioned, city councils, even in the smallest of towns. Meetings most of us consider to dry or boring to attend. The world is run by those who show up.
I spent four hours in traffic court in downtown Richmond this morning (charge dismissed, BTW), got to see a parade of urban types.
Quite a few were charged with operating without a license, without insurance, and when the judge inquired about bail or attorney fees, all but one said they had no job, no money, no assets and needed a public defender.
Severalmost were sporting a couple hundred to a thousand bucks worth of tattoos and…ta dah!
…most were stopped for reckless driving and then busted additionally for the license, insurance, DUI and possession of drugs offenses.
Now if you’re driving illegally and doing illegal stuff while driving illegally, WTF would you drive recklessly and call attention to yourself from the law?
This is a big part of why the flight to suburbia. I and lots of others don’t want to live with these glittering jewels of colossal stupidity.
“… living in 800sf apartments …”
A mansion!!! (Cultural reference: The Four Yorkshiremen)
Mayor Bloomberg is thinking more like 300 sqft.
I’ve heard about the “Gamaliel Foundation”, but didn’t know about this:
Creepy O-cult video of the day
mojo: “Two wolves and a sheep voting on what to eat for lunch.”
That’s democracy. Liberty is an armed sheep.
IinD — 10++++++++++++++++!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, Congress didn’t twig to it; why should these guyz?
oh, yeah…
Dick; ya don’t hafta live with ‘em; just pay for ‘em.
As a planner who encourages “walkable development” as well as multi-modal transportation I would say that what is essential is that people have options about how they want to live. It seems no more reasonable for local governments to exclude by law the sort of dense, walkable, pedestrian oriented neighborhood developments many peple desire than it does for the govenrment to require them.
Review your local zoning code and you will see that the types of traditional town designs that served us well for generations are expressly prohibited by the development standards imposed on new development. And many of those standards are strongly supported by owners of single family homes in suburban style subdivisions who prefer that no new people be accomodated in their cities. The power of the government is brought to bear on the market that would otherwise call for allowing more types of housing. It is these types of prohibition on densification and a variety of housing types that contributes to housing be so horribly unaffordbale.
I’ve held the few for several years now that we are past the point of no return.
This crap is just depressing.
From one of the articles linked:
“Fundamentally, property development is an area where government has very little positive to contribute.”
Hahahaha! Let’s see what you think when your neighbor wants to build a four story house or open a body shop in his garage or have four roosters or run a church from his house. People hate zoning until they want to bring down the hammer on their neighbors or oppose new development.
I don’t see it as a normal zoning issue.
This is essentially totalitarianism redux or another zombie resurrection of the central-planning sect.
It rises periodically only to crash and burn in failure.
If I remember my Hayek correctly, the central-planning concept was discredited, even in the eyes of socialists, by the early 40s.
It was dug-up again after WWII by Progs convinced that centralized war materiel planning worked wonders.
The Iron Curtain experience put an end to that fantasy, again.
Well, until enough time elapsed so that people forgot about or never learned about the realities involved.
They have a vision of “Logan’s Run” where everyone lives in clean futuristic domed cities and dies at the age of 30 to make room:
[IMG]http://ultramodernstyle.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/BornModern_09_epcot_city_utopia_LogansRun-e1294660728619.jpg[/IMG]
But they don’t understand it will turn into “Soylent Green”:
[IMG]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_v0fV15P7uQo/TP-o80qiF5I/AAAAAAAAIqg/VgShgA624PA/s1600/Soylent%2BRiot.jpg[/IMG]
I’m having trouble reconciling these two statements, Patrick.
Are you saying that housing is “so horribly unaffordbale” because the gov’t is not involved enough? Or am I misreading?
I would ask what you think would happen if those neighbors who felt put out about those things had no Nanny-gov’t to turn to to “solve” their problems for them? Would they firebomb the garage or slash the tires of all the church-goers? Or might they — or the market — come up with another alternative?
And many of those standards are strongly supported by owners of single family homes in suburban style subdivisions who prefer that no new people be accomodated in their cities.
This was intended to explain that the very people who oppose new standards that would allow or encourage “new urbanist” type developments depend on the existing regulations to insulate them from change. Those existing regulations were created by the local government. So, it’s difficult to claim that the local government cannot now modify the rules. When people resist any change to the zoning (such as height or density) this means that they use the power of the govenrment to artifically inflate (and protect) the value of their properties because the demand increases and there is no supply to meet the demand. The lack of supply is not market driven. It is driven my protectionist zoning regulations.
Or might they — or the market — come up with another alternative?
There are always CC&Rs. Absent those, people rely on the City to enforce the collectively acceptable rules for life in a given city.
You might like this site. It’s one my favorites.
The truly libertarian ideal would be to throw open the doors to any sort of development anywhere. No parking requirements, density or height restrictions. No impact fees for schools or libraries. No analysis of traffic impacts.
We could give people a sporting chance and give them a deadline to establish CC&Rs for their neighrbohoods. After that the sky’s the limit.
Would they firebomb the garage or slash the tires of all the church-goers?
And actually, yes. People do these things to their neighbors. Cameras turned on each other, restraining orders over a formerly shared driveway, etc. We even had an instance where a guy would blare a laugh track from a speaker in the window every time the neighbor walked outside. Fights over water hoses, trees, property lines (which mercifully we do not regulate), views, barking dogs, chickens, parking, yard maintenance, etc. Some of the most annoying thigs you have ever heard.
Absolutely won`t work in America! Anybody remember the “Projects” of the 80s?
America is a big place and I have flown over nearly every inch of it. There is still a massive amount of space in this land. Very few people hope for their children to grow up and have *an apartment*………………
The discussion on this thread has grown complex in ways I haven’t time to parse, much less consider.
(That’s not a complaint. I might come back here and hope to learn something if I can find the time; it’s just that I don’t have it in the foreseeable future.)
However, I’ll offer a possibly simple minded thought. As a general concept, zoning restrictions are a bit like a firearm: it isn’t that the thing is intrinsically good or bad, it’s how it’s used that counts.
My concern isn’t with whether there are zoning rules; it’s how they are used.
It’s always been the case that zoning could, and sometimes was, used to support crony capitalism; that isn’t the fault of the concept, it’s abuse of power.
Increasingly, zoning is used as tool to force dubious — and frankly un-American — lifestyles on citizens.
The same is true for imminent domain. The same is true for all sorts of regulations… and taxes.
All this is why democracy needs a vigilant, energetic and impartial 4th estate (which we mostly no longer have). It’s why citizens must be constantly vigilant.
Some thoughts:
* Where the hell do citizens who are trying really hard to make a living and be responsible for themselves find the time and energy to be constantly vigilant? Beats me. That’s one of the reasons that the fruitcake we-don’t-have-much-else-to-do-so-we’ll-run-your-life crowd and the let’s-profit-along-with-our-Democrat-cronies crowd have made so much progress.
* If conservatives want to fight serious battles for the life of our country, two of the primary battle grounds are control of the press and the educational institutions. Both of these battles have be seriously lost already, and – perhaps – with them the war for America. Can there be a comeback? We will see.
* I personally doubt that politicizing a social conservative agenda will help with any of this, any more than politicizing alcohol consumption (aka Prohibition) helped with either drunkenness or the moral fiber of the country (the opposite, from all appearances). All politicizing social conservative values at this time will do is drain resources, drive off allies, and assure defeat. For example, I do not think that Rick Santorum’s War on Condoms will save us from becoming permanent slaves of an ever expanding government. Of course, I could be wrong; perhaps this last point is a distraction from the main discussion.
* In any case, I don’t think zoning is the main thing to be concerned with here. Zoning is simply a tool (and not the most powerful one) being used by parties with agendas to destroy a way of life and enslave the middle class; preferably without anyone significant ever noticing that it is happening.
Hell, I’m anti-sprawl, but it’s because I don’t want the rotten phockers ruining the peace, solitude, freedom, and isolation of my rural area.
The can keep their fracking covenanted McMansions and chemical-laced lawns far, far away from my trees and fields.
So even though you “would say that what is essential is that people have options about how they want to live,” once one has submitted to some gov’t regulation, one cannot now use that same regulation to resist changes one does not like? Interesting thesis.
Ya blame them for trying to protect the value of their properties?
Is gov’t regulation not a part of the market? Much like floods, storms and scorpion infestations?
CC&Rs are another type of govt. Same animal – different hair style.
Ok. Am I going to hell if I larfed? Hard?
People who have to rely on themselves don’t usually feel safe enough to act like petulant 3 year olds. Those that do don’t last long.
How much of that silly time-wasting squabbling is attributable to the base human “I’m gonna tell Moooom” impulse? [and lack of impulse control?] If there were no “officials” [or Kings or Lords of The Manor] to listen long-sufferingly to the petty squabbles, what might happen?
[And how much is attributable to being too damned close together for sanity? But that's another discussion.]
Yes, people are always gonna be …people. And act like arsses from time to time. But if they, in the end, have to figure out stuff for themselves — like self-reliant grown-ups — I think that behavior damps down.
Gov’t willingness — nay, eagerness — to regulate every last aspect of their lives infantilizes people making them act more like petulant squabbling children. Goofy, acting-out behavior is a “luxury” of the dependent class.
IinD @20 — *standing Ovation*
It was only ever about Power and Control.
What really scares me – more than the bluster and the pride – is that people are smart enough to create complex systems, but dumb enough to think they can be controlled.
When a few people get too much power, EVERYBODY gets bit in the ass.
So even though you “would say that what is essential is that people have options about how they want to live,” once one has submitted to some gov’t regulation, one cannot now use that same regulation to resist changes one does not like?
That’s not what I’m arguing. What I’m arguing is that you can’t say the power of local government to determine zoning is a bad thing while using that same power to preserve your turf. What you are really arguing is that the local police power can be a good thing so long as it serves what you approve of.
Ok. Am I going to hell if I larfed? Hard?
That’s how I get through the day.
Claire 23:
You know, I hadn’t really though about that. It is, of course, manifestly true. If you treat people like children, they will act like children.* This becomes even worse if you create government agencies, laws, regulations and bureaucracies that have the mission of not only treating people like children, but also giving them the license and power to act like them — or at least protect them from the consequences when they do.
* I’ve had some luck while taking care of friends kids in treating them like adults (more or less). I don’t talk down to them, I involve them in choosing their options (except when snatching them away from an oncoming car, which is hardly a time for discourse), I act as though I expect *them* to act like responsible adults… and you know what? They do.
There is going to be a War.
A great many people are going to die in it.
I am probably going to be one of them.
I have pretty much reconciled myself to this.
Ok — *I* haven’t done that. I was on the side of our neighbor — a nasty, quarrelsome little man with a very shady past who has caused me troubles — who was dinged — expensively — for putting up temporary signs on his ag business to get patrons in for special events. Nice, attractive little signs that caused no one any trouble. Well, except me who has at least 10 – 20 people turning around in my blind driveway to go back and visit him. [But my answer to that is a gate on the driveway to keep the lawsuits on the public property and out of my yard.]
This is what makes me argue against how the powers are used.
Well YES, that is what I’m arguing. Isn’t that the way it ought to be?
We have two facets here: 1] the power itself and 2] how it is used.
I have a favorite fantasy of starting a hog farm with the poop pit right next to my neighbor’s fancy-schmancy over-priced tasting mansion. Especially when his bad wedding bands fill the night air with ear-watering discordance.
But knowing the way this power is used around here, I would have planners’ morons up my sleeve checking on my barn heights and horse pens…
That’s what makes me argue against the power itself. People can’t handle it. So they use it badly. And tyrannically.
Which goes to the point of the post: Form Based Planning, New Urbanism, the war on the ‘burbs, and decimation of the ruralites. Bad things. Tyrannical stealing by the govt from one part of the population to give to another part.
^ Claire, hmm… savoring your points.
and…. “I have a favorite fantasy of starting a hog farm….”
Don’t remember exactly when, but there was news a year or two ago about this guy who had a hog farm, maybe down in Texas… don’t remember for sure….. anyhow, one day while he’s minding his own business and his pigs, some Islamists buy the property next door to put up some Muslim thing…. a mosque or Center for Enlightenment or something …. so then they, the new comers, demand that he shut down his hog farm because it’s offensive to them.*
Instead, he set up a track, started having public hog racing events which he publicized, and invited them to come. Don’t think I ever heard how it came out. There might have been courts involved or something.
* Much like people who create a new subdivision out in the country next to a shooting range and then demand that the range close in the interest of public safety and sensibilities.
(30) I-in-D new subdivision out in the country next to a shooting range
That happened here about twenty years ago. There was a club on a wonderful piece of dirt with a fishing lake, pistol and rifle ranges out to 300 yards, archery, and best of all, an easy ten minutes away for me.
The fucking developers put up high density McMansions all around it and after the yuppie assholes movied into their “estate living”, they complained about the noise, so the club put up more sound baffling, evergreen tree walls etc, stopped large caliber shooting at certain times, but there was no end to it. Lots of bleating about “scawy guns” and “for the children” to newsies and county supervisors and next thing we know, it’s shut down through rezoning and now another “estate living” Beigeville around the lake.. Twenty years and I’m still pissed.
Tyrannical stealing by the govt from one part of the population to give to another part.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.
Rural population density is pretty low, dick, so it doesn’t take but one or two subdivisions to completely destroy what was once a beautiful place to live.
It was part of the reason I left my previous house.