ABOVE: John Stossel's "market-driven" heaven on earth (From the book Retrofitting Suburbia, 2009).
News Flash: To conservatives whose paychecks and livelihood are not intrinsically tied to protecting the interests of industries who grow fat on the sprawl-based policies, the concepts of Smart Growth and sustainable development are entirely consistent with their core values.
"Journalist" John Stossel -- a demagogue for whom "facts" are very malleable, to say the least -- proclaimed sprawl a "myth" (see "Myth #2"; he has since moved to FOX, which is entirely fitting).
GEOGRAPHY OF NOWHERE author J. H. Kunstler has nothing nice to say about Stossel and his slippery ethics. But you expect that from a lefty, right?
However, it is refreshing and worth noting when a conservative writer at a conservative web site points out the truth:
For the 101st time: sprawl — an umbrella term for the pattern of development seen virtually everywhere in the United States — is not caused by the free market. It is, rather, mandated by a vast and seemingly intractable network of government regulations, from zoning laws and building codes to street design regulations. If Stossel wants to expand Americans’ lifestyle choices, he should attack the very thing he was defending, namely, suburban sprawl.
Read the rest at The American Conservative » Sprawling Misconceptions.
Perhaps the best distillation of the reality of the situation comes from E.D. Kain at True/Slant:
Sprawl is a result of massive statist interventions into our culture and society, and its symptoms are equally enormous. Everything that conservatism has historically stood for is undermined by sprawl. It is not only the physical manifestation of our decline, it is a poison which continues to contribute to that decline. Its repercussions can be felt in our discourse, in our speech, in our way of thinking. This is not merely a matter of aesthetically pleasing communities, but of communities which allow individuals to be a part of the whole. I doubt this is sustainable, this suburban maze – in any way: fiscally, socially, spiritually. It is, as James Howard Kunstler called it, “a peculiar blip in human experience.”
See also the Atlantic Wire, and Andrew Sullivan.
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