It's hard not to imagine a tone of science fiction-like awe in the voice of East Troy's planner, Victor Kranitz, when he's quoted in the editorial below: "It was like a big subdivision with little lots." What manner of witchcraft ... ?
For your entertainment, here's a bizarre screed by Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel staff writer Patrick McIlheran. Go ahead; read it and return here for my screed.
McIlheran leans right, politically speaking (it always pays to Google the author of an editorial in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel as they don't mind slipping in a shill every now and then), but in this case it seems like his misguided opinion on new urbanism suffers as much from a willful ignorance as it does from that lovely "I got mine; you get yours" ethos that makes many conservatives so huggable.
McIlheran sets up an inept straw man argument: in his world-view, proponents of conservation subdivisions are primarily interested in preserving farmland and leaving "rows of soybeans undisturbed" - - "But we have enough food already!" he fairly cackles. "You dumb tree-hugging liberals."
In leaning so hard on that fairly absurd viewpoint, he effectively avoids mention of the multitude of genuine ills created by the business-as-usual sprawl he embraces.
- Keep building cul-de-sacs with single road access to already overburdened collector roads and the sound of birdies outside your window will soon be drowned out by the drone of steady traffic a quarter mile away on the only road within another mile that leads to the highway. (Then, "thems that have" will simply move further out, huh?)
- Ignore farmland and pasture preservation and watch as land is quickly eroded by unchecked water runoff (goodbye trees) and river banks collapse (hello basement flooding).
- Isolate your family on your two acre lot and prepare to chain your children to vehicle availability. You will need to drive them to their friend's house for "play dates" (no sidewalks, and the nearby collector road is a terror to cross); to the ball park to get a few swings in; to the store or mall; to the school that you can see from your house but cannot walk to because there are no sidewalks or roadways that lead to it, etc.
- Worse, when your son or daughter reaches the age of 16 you will virtually have to buy him or her a car in order for them to get to work, school, or any other independent destination. Beyond the expense, I don't have to tell you that cars kill drivers between 16 and 20 with astounding regularity (not to mention the other vehicles and pedestrians involved in these mishaps). The car is the greatest single killer of young people in our country. Car-related deaths of adolescent males in the suburbs are equal to gunshot deaths in the city, so you pretty much negate the "safer in the suburbs" benefit if subdivisions continue to cater to "vehicle flow" at the expense of pedestrians.
- Watch the cost of stringing sewer and power out to sprawled subdivisions become ruinous for your city government (surely you've seen the formula: $1 of residential tax income cost suburban city governments about $1.33 largely due to reactionary "planning" and "no-close-neighbor" developments), and then - - here comes the big conservative boogie man - - watch your property tax go up.
McIlheran further strains the bounds of logic by quoting from Robert Bruegmann's book SPRAWL: A COMPACT HISTORY. You see, sprawl isn't so bad because, hey, in the 1800's "London's elite" hated the "inexpensive row housing developers peddled to the middle class. Now, such houses are the model of compact urbanity." Wonderful. First of all, I challenge anyone to personally identify with the impressions and/or discomforture of "London's elite" in the 19th century; secondly - - and most importantly, Mr. McIlheran - - they didn't have cars and a federally subsidized freeway system in 1800's London! The issue isn't the physical form of the housing; it's the utter slave-like reliance on gas and asphalt engendered by sprawling out further and further with no thought to walkable, usable community-building.
McIlheran may be surprised to learn that some of his better-read cohorts on the right are in favor of conservation subdivisions. I'll quote an article from the Reason Foundation website, home of Reason magazine (Here's your endorsement: "'You want a good magazine? Reason magazine... It's a magazine for libertarians. It's a magazine for everybody. It's a magazine for the world. Reason magazine: A good, good magazine.' - Rush Limbaugh"):
From the developer's perspective, conservation subdivisions offer lower development-related expenses with a high-quality, highly-marketable product as the end result. Having homes clustered on smaller lots reduces development costs since there are fewer trees to clear, less land to grade, and less road, water, and sewer infrastructure needed to serve the development.
Conservation subdivisions also target the growing consumer market for homes in natural settings with less property to maintain. Even with smaller lots, housing prices and resale values in conservation subdivisions compare favorably to those in traditional subdivisions. In fact, consumers have shown a willingness to pay a premium for the environmental amenities and quality of life that conservation subdivisions offer. Many people would gladly trade lot size for proximity to natural scenery.
The rest is here; It's a very good article.
I'll close with McIlheran's clumsily deployed citation from Bruegmann's book, projected into the future: "Milwaukee's elite of the early 21st century hated the denser housing configurations that new urbanists peddled to the middle class. Now that gas is $12 a gallon, such communities are the model of sustainable urbanity."
When arm's length is just close enough
by Patrick McIleran
Victor Kranitz has nothing against conservation. "My wife and I are nature lovers," he says. "We like birds and trees, and it's all there" on the 11 acres the couple lives on in the Town of East Troy.
Same for his neighbors, who made the news lately when the town scotched a planned "conservation subdivision" on part of the old Rainbow Springs resort.
The plan would have put 154 homes on 413 acres of the site, clustered so that much of the land would stay open. Kranitz, who heads the town's plan commission, says nobody objected to conserving woods so much as how homes would be clumped into de facto villages.
"It was like a big subdivision with little lots," he said. People nearby have pretty strenuously said they want their neighborhood to remain a stretch of woody, 2- to 5-acre lots - a "no-close-neighbor area," as he says real estate people call it.
As such, Kranitz and his neighbors constitute one of the great hate objects of urban planning: the exurban spread of houses on great, big yards. It consumes land that ought to be farm or forest, say critics, while its inhabitants ought to be mingling with neighbors in corner stores they reach by sidewalk.
This is the heart of any talk about "urban sprawl." When cities spread, arguments spawn, the most passionate among them about aesthetics.
This isn't new, says Robert Bruegmann. The architectural historian at the University of Illinois at Chicago wrote an eye-opening book last year, "Sprawl: A Compact History."
Cities spread and people then deplore it, he says. London's elite in the 1800s saw as vulgar the inexpensive row housing developers peddled to the middle class. Now, such houses are the model of compact urbanity.
People try dressing the argument as a matter of "smart" or "dumb" growth, but, he says, the "emotional linchpin" is still "some deep-seated notions about how people ought to live in relation to nature."
Or in relation to cornfields. The latest argument is that 5-acre lots drive out agriculture. Much is made of preserving that classic rural Wisconsin countryside.
But again, why? We're not pinched for land to grow food. We subsidize farms since food is so plentifully cheap they scarcely turn a profit. America's losing farmland faster than it's gaining suburbia because we just don't need as much. That's why the United States is seeing farms revert to forest. It's not being eaten by suburbia. Suburbia is nibbling the surplus.
Besides, as farms are often long rows of one kind of plant, fertilized and tilled, they're hardly nature. One may prefer them to 5-acre yards, but it's just an aesthetic preference.
If so, the 5-acre lots have some things going for them. They make more room for nature than farms do, and they let inhabitants enjoy nature right outside the window. To say land was "consumed" when a farm was subdivided discounts the fact that for tens of thousands of people in suburban Milwaukee, the joy of living amid trees and frogs may outweigh society's more abstract satisfaction of knowing that soybeans stretch undisturbed beyond a tidy urban boundary.
People gain something from sprawl, says Bruegmann, which is why hardly anyone ever believes his own neighborhood constitutes it. One big gain is privacy: Middle-class people spread out to find the privacy that in cities only the wealthy can afford.
Kranitz admits his town isn't the average-guy paradise it once was, since land is now expensive. My own feelings about his zoning are mixed, since it means that if I want 2 acres, I'd have to head out farther. Conservation subdivisions, often pricey, don't help much as their open space is shared, not private.
Perhaps I won't want 2 acres. Maybe, if gas hits $4, I'll appreciate my neighborhood where I could walk to the store if I wanted to. Maybe others will, too. Fine: Bay View awaits, as does the Village of East Troy, with its small lots. Options abound.
They abound because people can sprawl and find them. They make choices and pay the price and usually find what they want.
And while the Town of East Troy's zoning constrains those options, at least the zoning is an aesthetic choice people make about their own neighborhood. If they seem snobby about people choosing little lots, at least it's because they'd have to live next to the little lots. It's self-interest, rather than some philosophical bossiness about other people's lives.
Far less justifiable is the aesthetic choice, made by people who live far away, that compact cities belted by a nostalgic landscape of little farms are simply superior to letting people bid for their few acres of paradise.
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