[at-l] Regional Planning - Oil Dependent Sprawl

[RoksnRoots at aol.com (RoksnRoots@aol.com)]

         James Howard Kunstler from 'Atlantic' - Article "End Of The Binge":


         

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                      " Instead, we shifted into party-hearty suburban 
turbo-development overdrive and elaborated with greater recklessness than ever on a 
hyper car-dependent living arrangement that was profitable to construct but 
which has exceedingly poor prospects as an armature for daily life in the 
decades to come. To make matters worse, we surrendered the bulk of our manufacturing 
economy to other nations with cheaper labor and fewer environmental scruples 
and actually made the doomed suburban expansion project, and all its ancillary 
activities such as mortgage-lending, real estate sales, strip-mall commerce, 
and easy motoring, the new basis of our economy. This was the dirty secret of 
our economy from Reagan on: The creation of ever more suburban sprawl and its 
accessories was mostly what we did in America. Subtract it from everything 
else and there was little left but haircutting and open-heart surgery. The 
economy wasn't about "information" or buying and selling things on the Internet. It 
was about bulldozing 200 acres of red clay 38 miles outside Atlanta, plunking 
McHouses down on half-acre lots, tilting up a programmed set of national chain 
retail outlets on the nearest "collector" highway, granting no-money-down 
interest-only mortgages to anyone with a pulse regardless of creditworthiness (or 
lack of), and then flipping those mortgages into yet more abstract tradable 
securitized debt instruments.

         Thus, when the Tom Friedmans and David Brookses beat the drum for 
the global economy, it is not clear whether they are really talking about 
international trade relations or the sleazy destructive rackets that have 
insidiously replaced the former productive activity of the United States - especially 
insofar as the suburban project can be categorized as the greatest misallocation 
of resources in the history of the world precisely because it will be so 
value-less in the future.

         It must be obvious, by the way, that this ominous shift from 
value-based economic activity to the short-term luxury lifestyle racket was supported 
by both major political parties. Bill Clinton was as much a booster for a 
suburban-development-based economy as Ronald Reagan or both Bushes - and in some 
ways, Clinton was more the pure product of a Wal-Mart society than the 
Republicans ever could be. Nor did Clinton's successors as Democratic presidential 
candidates deviate from the program. Neither Al Gore nor John Kerry dared stand 
up against the destructive activities of the suburban "home-builders" or the 
idea that America might be imperiling its future by making such massive 
misinvestments in automobile dependency. Clinton, Gore, and Kerry were equal 
enthusiasts for the permanent offshoring of industry - in effect, the continued 
dismantling of America's manufacturing base. (I write as a registered Democrat, 
incidentally) "

                                                                              
                                                                              
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