Originally Posted by
jcwitte
Urban Sprawl and suburbia is the scourge of the earth. It is not at all a part of any anwser to any of our environmental problems. And there is no way that every citizen in your environmental utopia is going to join the volunteer fire department and pass buckets along when a fire breaks out.
This is the sort of thing that one person could do if they were so inclined, but to expect many people to do so is a dream. If you are really into protecting the environment, maybe you ought to move into a city (even if it requires commitment) and work to get the city to enact environmentally responsible laws. In the city, you will find many like minded citizens to help you in your grass roots movement. Out in the suburbs in your mobile home, you'd be a loner passed off as a unabomber-like eccentric.
As with Jeff, I challenge you to give any kind of justification for your kneejerk reaction that sprawl is, by necessity, an environmental bane. I am in no way proposing some kind of environmental utopia. On the contrary my proposal is something that can be accomplished one individual at a time without the need to transform cities, have a great exodus of population, or even change job or school district. My example of a volunteer fire department was only meant to illustrate the very real fact that sprawl in itself does not imply increased travel. The key notion has absolutely nothing to do with fire departments, utopian cooperation, or any other kind of idealistic nonsense. The key notion is that while density is measured by area, travel is measured by distance and the two are only linked when travel is haphazardly oriented in all directions.
For your information I've been a city dweller for many years now and I assure you that isolation to small homogenous communities is not the answer. If you want to inspire others then you need to live among them and show them what can be done one baby step at a time. Isolating yourself amongst likeminded radicals is exactly the opposite and it only guarantees the pervasion of ignorance elsewhere. Laws are meaningless without economic and societal support and for those you need to be a neighbor to the world, not some self righteous hipster regentrifying the ghetto.
Originally Posted by
acroy
this just comes down to the fact that the "American way of life" involves:
a house in the 'burbs with a grill, a nice lawn, hopefully a pool;
2 cars in the garage
1 if not 2 jobs 30-90 minutes away
2-3 kids who are picked up & dropped off by their parents at school (what the hell is that about anyway? walk or ride the dam bus dammitt!)
A lifestyle based on consuming every bit of available income & then some (look at the proposed "solution" to our current economic bad news: a gift of money from the government so consumers will go SPEND IT and thus SAVE US ALL FROM DISASTER!)
A conviction that it's a God-given right to live as above,
And finally, never feeling satisfied by it all
None of this is a problem as long as those pick-ups, drop-offs, and 30-90 minute trips are by pedal or solar car. The problem is when that 90 minute trip is also a 60 mile trip. That's when you start needing to abuse natural resources.