Monday, September 22, 2014

When the "Planners' complain about "Sprawl", what do they really mean?

"Sprawl" = affordable pleasant single family homes with yards for people, and the commercial enterprises that come along to serve people and employ some of them. Industrial parks can sometimes come along too, but usually the industrial site came first, which caused population influx (see below).

"Sprawl" draws the wrath of wanna-be Party Commissars who euphemistically call themselves "urban planners", more on them later.

However, "sprawl" is a simple result of population influx and The Two Out Of Three Rule.

The Two Out of Three Rule is the simple principle that while buyers want homes that are (1) affordable, (2) convenient (usually to/from work), and (3) safe and pleasant, in the Real World most people can only have Two out of those Three.

(3) Safe and Pleasant, for most people, means (a) no or at least minimal criminality, (b) a yard for themselves and their families, (c) a park nearby that is also non or at least minimally criminal.

"Sprawl", therefore, is the result of homebuyers giving up, or going short on, convenience (usually to/from work), in favor of having, or going long on, affordability and safety and pleasant conditions.

This is anathema to the wanna-be Party Commissars who euphemistically call themselves "urban planners", who would rather demand that we the people (who they view as Petty Bourgeois or Aspiring Proles) give up our desires for a yard for ourselves and their families.

The even more extreme wanna-be Party Commissars who euphemistically call themselves "urban planners", insist that we Petty Bourgeois or Aspiring Proles give up our desires for no or at least minimal criminality, and forget or never mind a park nearby that is also non or at least minimally criminal. Why, that's ray-cist!

The wanna-be Party Commissars who euphemistically call themselves "urban planners", pay lip service the "alternative" idea that "New Urbanism", or "infill development", meaning more dense development in the inner city, can house us, the Petty Bourgeois or Aspiring Proles. However, when it comes to *actual* infill development, the same Commissars who claim to want it often *then* turn around and call it "Manhattanization", and end up *curtailing* it, in favor of a "People's Park" here, or a "Community Garden" there, or just restricting denser development in general. And yet they still tut-tut and cluck-cluck about the "Sprawl" that is exacerbated as a result.

Meanwhile many families still want a yard for themselves and/or their families. While dense infill development *can* appeal a good many people, most notably the childless, the single, and the non-heterosexual, a good many people are still simply *not* served by the "New Urbanist" model.

But of course, we are Petty Bourgeois and Aspiring Proles, and our petty bourgeois aspirations must be snuffed out in the warped minds of a good many of the wanna-be Party Commissars who euphemistically call themselves "urban planners".

When New Urbanist infill developments do succeed, they become pricey, because they are convenient and nice and pleasant (at least they are to the the childless, the single, and the non-heterosexual anyway), and so, they are *no longer* affordable.

The Two Out Of Three Rule still holds in any area with significant population influx.

A good many inner city neighborhoods remain definitely *not* pleasant, and thus they fail. They often fail because the same wanna-be Party Commissars who euphemistically call themselves "urban planners" have ideological bents, such as:

--the view that the "authentic" behavior of people in said inner cities is to behave like thugs and criminals because they are racial/ethnic group X, and those of us who are not racial/ethnic group X have some kind of "privilege" that makes us behave like decent citizens. This is known as Turning Crime Into A Civil Right.

--the view that we Petty Bourgeois or Aspiring Proles must not arm and defend ourselves against thuggery and we must depend upon the benevolence of the same wanna-be Party Commissars who euphemistically call themselves "urban planners". This is known as "gun control".

The solution is to tell the wanna-be Party Commissars who euphemistically call themselves "urban planners" to "Put up or SHUT UP."