Re:The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American...
by ctdonath on Tuesday July 29, 2014 @05:05PM
(#8105019)
The post I responded to wasn't addressing sustainability. But to run with yours...
The article covers sweeping statements & accusations, ignoring local realities. If a particular town made a bad deal with a developer, that's not the same category as those that made a good deal; a big screwup can skew the average when lumped in among several successes. Ranting about sewer maintenance doesn't apply to a neighborhood that doesn't have sewers (mine has backyard septic systems/fields; your offal is your problem), and likewise for public water vs private wells. It's a solvable problem: should taxes be higher? if so, raise them accordingly and look for alternate solutions like encouraging domestic self-sufficiency.
It's a paperwork problem. Much of what the article describes involves carefully negotiated & balanced deals, followed later with absurd & overbearing demands for "improvements" - no surprise the latter are "unsustainable". Build a community with suitable roads and lawns designed to balance them ... then demand a >50% increase in road width, destroying lawns and vastly altering traffic dynamics? Build a suitable sewer system, then vastly raise & over-engineer requirements, then have to accommodate normal repairs to the absurd new requirements? Yeah, that's not going to work. The problem isn't suburbs, it's overbearing overpowered know-it-alls who don't have to deal with consequences of their unilateral declarations.
The article covers sweeping statements & accusations, ignoring local realities. If a particular town made a bad deal with a developer, that's not the same category as those that made a good deal; a big screwup can skew the average when lumped in among several successes. Ranting about sewer maintenance doesn't apply to a neighborhood that doesn't have sewers (mine has backyard septic systems/fields; your offal is your problem), and likewise for public water vs private wells. It's a solvable problem: should taxes be higher? if so, raise them accordingly and look for alternate solutions like encouraging domestic self-sufficiency.
It's a paperwork problem. Much of what the article describes involves carefully negotiated & balanced deals, followed later with absurd & overbearing demands for "improvements" - no surprise the latter are "unsustainable". Build a community with suitable roads and lawns designed to balance them ... then demand a >50% increase in road width, destroying lawns and vastly altering traffic dynamics? Build a suitable sewer system, then vastly raise & over-engineer requirements, then have to accommodate normal repairs to the absurd new requirements? Yeah, that's not going to work. The problem isn't suburbs, it's overbearing overpowered know-it-alls who don't have to deal with consequences of their unilateral declarations.