Housing, transportation and economic development are being controlled by Federal, Regional and Local government entities and planners. It's a top-down world, and we're at the bottom.
What if we don't like the plans the planners' plan for us?
Is it too late to stop the transformation of America's cities and neighborhoods?
How do we return to local control?
Below are excerpts from an online article from CP and DR, a professional journal for California planners. The article describes how planning objectives have moved beyond "needed housing" or transportation, or density, to combine employment and the location of workers' housing within transit-oriented developments. HUD is promoting "live where you work" in very literal terms, and is adding economic development and social equity (income distribution) to housing development. Grants are never "free" money - you get the money only if you agree to the philosophical terms of the bribe. You can't just take the money and forget where it came from or what the bargain was. Urban planning is not about ecological sustainability or eliminating greenhouse gases - it's much, much more.
HUD Grants Promote Marriage of Economic, Land Use Planning In Bay Area
California Planning and Development Report, By Josh Stephens on 18 January 2012
Excerpts:
“This plan is about implementing a long-term vision for a region to be more environmentally, economically, and socially stable and prosperous,” said Johnson.
To curb housing costs, Bay Area Planners will be using the grant money to implement housing that is not only affordable for low-income residents but is also in close proximity to job centers – thus reducing housing costs without imposing onerous transportation costs on those residents who can least afford them and without perpetuating what many planners consider inefficient growth patterns.
“It’s…intending to make a better economy by moving away from the old model of ‘live where you want and drive an hour to work,’” said Kevin Riley, director of Planning & Inspection for the City of Santa Clara.
Live and work
“This particular economic development strategy is really looking at how do we associate jobs and transit better,” said Jeremy Madsen, executive director of environmental group Greenbelt Alliance. “How do we get beyond the old-style auto-oriented business park and into something that is a little more sustainable and meeting the new paradigms around planning.”
The notion of a region-wide effort to coordinate housing and transportation may sound familiar, since it is nearly identical to the mission of the Sustainable Communities Strategies mandated by Senate Bill 375. But whereas that law compels the state’s metro regions to coordinate land use and transportation planning for the sake of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the HUD grant does so for the purpose of economic vitality and social equity.
This is scary for a number of reasons. First and foremost, is the government beginning to take over key life decisions for us such as where we should live and how. Second, it is forcing lower income and higher income people into the same complex a form that has as yet to be proven realistically viable. Where has it been done successfully? Third, it implies that people can be forced into what planners want. I somehow doubt that is going to work.
ReplyDeleteWhat this will do is force up the prices of single family homes; many will want to live in them but few will be available.
Lake Oswego should resist this trend and protect it's current form. No more dense housing in current neighborhoods. People need to speak up now or it will be too late. The Planning people in City Hall need to be reigned in now.