Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

Hastert's profits on highway projects top $2 million

The very model of integrity:

At issue is a series of events that left [Republican Speaker of the House Dennis] Hastert $2 million richer and his district well on its way to securing a highway that has been the subject of a dispute between pro-growth and slow-growth forces for years. The controversy has been extensively reported by the Illinois news media.

In 2002, Hastert was driving to a parade in Sycamore, Ill., when he saw a post-and-beam house he fell in love with, according to Dallas C. Ingemunson, a longtime friend and ally of Hastert's who made the land deals for the speaker. Hastert struck a deal with the owner on the spot, purchasing the house near Plano, Ill., and 195 acres for $2.1 million.

In February 2004, Ingemunson, treasurer of Hastert's campaign committee and chairman of the Kendall County Republican Party, established Little Rock Trust #225. A week later, through the trust, Hastert and his business partners purchased a 69-acre parcel for $340,000, providing road access to part of Hastert's farm that had been landlocked. Hastert owned a quarter of that parcel.

In May 2005, Hastert transferred the 69 acres of previously hemmed-in land from his farm to the land trust. That summer, Hastert personally intervened during House and Senate negotiations over a huge transportation and infrastructure bill to secure two separate earmarks, $152 million to help build the Prairie Parkway through Kendall County and $55 million for an interchange 5 1/2 miles from his property. President Bush signed the bill into law on Aug. 10.

Then, on Dec. 7, Little Rock Trust #225 sold the Hastert parcels to a subsidiary of the Robert Arthur Land Co. for nearly $5 million. The deal netted Hastert a $2 million profit.

Link: Lawmakers' Profits are Scrutinized

A Sense of Permanence

There is a reason that human beings long for a sense of permanence. This longing is not limited to children, for it touches the profoundest aspects of our existence: that life is short, fraught with uncertainty, and sometimes tragic. We know not where we come from, still less where we are going, and to keep from going crazy while we are here, we want to believe that we truly belong to a specific part of the world.

pg. 275, THE GEOGRAPHY OF NOWHERE by James Howard Kunstler

Census paints stark contrast

Estimates show Madison up, Milwaukee down

The early story of 21st century Wisconsin can be told as a tale of two cities.

Milwaukee's population is shrinking.

Madison's is growing.

That's what the numbers say, numbers delivered today by the U.S. Census Bureau, which released yet another batch of population estimates that detail the rich tapestry and ever-changing nature of the state and country.

Milwaukee's population slipped to 578,887 in 2005, while Madison's increased to 221,551, the bureau estimates.

Link: JS Online:Census paints stark contrast.

Plaza puzzler: Erie St. resistance a reminder of bad old days

Turn a derelict patch of asphalt into stormwater-fed groves of winter-worthy bamboo and grasses - - a public space complete with lighting and benches? No; might attract rats.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Whitney Gould writes:

Risk-averse. Resistant to change. Parochial.

Those were the old stereotypes about Milwaukee. Thankfully, they have begun to fade. Credit, among other things, an influx of creative types, the downtown renewal and architectural breakthroughs like the Calatrava addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum.

But last week, at a neighborhood meeting in the Historic Third Ward, I thought for a moment that the bad old days were back. The meeting, organized by the city to address concerns about a proposed waterfront plaza at the terminus of Erie St., seemed about to revive the nasty, not-in-my-backyard attitudes that for years had sent young people with new ideas fleeing to other cities.

Early this year, a well-regarded Boston firm, Stoss Landscape Urbanism, won an international competition to design the quarter-acre Erie St. Plaza, which would be funded with about $850,000 in increased tax revenue from nearby condo development.

Stoss envisions turning what is now a derelict patch of asphalt into storm-water-fed groves of winter-hardy bamboo and islands of marsh grasses and lawn; the site would be dotted with fiberglass benches lighted from within.

 

Erie St. Plaza

Rendering/Stoss Landscape Urbanism

It's an inviting, environmentally sustainable project that any forward-looking city would kill for.

But don't tell that to critics, many of them residents of developer Peter Renner's nearby Harbor Front and Hansen's Landing condos who had bought their properties after the plaza was approved by several Third Ward organizations.

To hear the naysayers, you'd think a toxic waste dump was being proposed. Or a rat motel.

"When you put all these kinds of things in combination next to the Milwaukee and the Kinnickinnic rivers, you create a delight for rodents," charged Gary Marsack, president of the Hansen's Landing condo association.

Link: JS Online:Plaza puzzler: Erie St. resistance a reminder of bad old days.

The Cost of That Commute

The trade-off: Endless hours in a car to get anywhere in order to have a bigger house in the middle of nothing.

In exchange for an extra bedroom in a cookie-cutter house that from the sidewalk looks like one big garage, in a development named Pheasant Run that hasn’t seen a pheasant since the trees were clear-cut, we Americans have bought ourselves a life of driving.

On average, Americans commute 25 minutes each way to work, up 18 percent from 20 years ago. While that might not seem outrageous, more than 10 million of us now drive more than an hour to work, up 50 percent from 1990. Then there’s the growing number of us who commute at least an hour and a half to work – each way. According to the Census Bureau, such megacommuters have increased 95 percent since 1990, to 3.4 million workers.

And it’s all about the house.

When people are weighing the pros and cons of buying a larger house 40 miles from work, or buying closer in and making due without an eat-in kitchen, I don’t think they realize exactly what those 800 additional square feet are costing in human terms.

Link: The Columbus Dispatch - Editorials.

Welcome to SPRAWLED OUT, a blog which will accompany my work on a book designed to use my city of Franklin, Wisconsin as an example of the community planning process in modern American cities and towns around the country. As the title implies, there will be a certain bias against the sort of unchecked, freeway-fed expansion that the United States has seen since the end of World War II.

Ultimately, our built environment is a reflection of who we are and who we aspire to be. It should not be taken lightly, nor left solely in the hands of carpetbaggers and opportunists.