The Progressives’ War on Suburbia

[NACBA]

Obama and the Democrats have embraced the argument that suburbs and sprawl are bad for you. As the last election demonstrated, this is no way to get elected.
You are a political party, and you want to secure the electoral majority. But what happens, as is occurring to the Democrats, when the damned electorate that just won’t live the way—in dense cities and apartments—that you have deemed is best for them?

This gap between party ideology and demographic reality has led to a disconnect that not only devastated the Democrats this year, but could hurt them in the decades to come. University of Washington demographer Richard Morrill notes that the vast majority of the 153 million Americans who live in metropolitan areas with populations of more than 500,000 live in the lower-density suburban places Democrats think they should not. Only 60 million live in core cities.

Despite these realities, the Democratic Party under Barack Obama has increasingly allied itself with its relatively small core urban base. Simply put, the party cannot win—certainly not in off-year elections—if it doesn’t score well with suburbanites. Indeed, Democrats, as they retreat to their coastal redoubts, have become ever more aggressively anti-suburban, particularly in deep blue states such as California. “To minimize sprawl” has become a bedrock catchphrase of the core political ideology.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/16/the-progressives-war-on-suburbia.html

[otherone]

“To minimize sprawl” has become a bedrock catchphrase of the core political ideology.



http://edublogs.loretonh.nsw.edu.au/ingridmon19/files/2014/08/Prison-cells-10yul8y.jpg

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

Ever see those chickens, cage stacked on trucks heading to slaughter?



Replace the chickens with people.

Replace the cages with apartments.

Replace the truck with a city.



That's the UNs Agenda 21.

[Scrooge McDuck]

After going through five years of Architecture school I have seen the inside of the Court Intellectual machine churning out this non-negotiable view that suburbia=evil (the desire to own any piece of actual land is evil) and dense urbanism (planned by your friendly socialist-urban planner architects) is the utopian vision. Its not surprising that architects and self-proclaimed central planners are attracted to the state in order to ram their vision of society down the throats of the stupid populace. They know what is better for the mundanes. Of course the punchline is that they individually get to design the total society and not the other architects/planners. Control is attractive when its you drawing the lines. This is all rooted in environmentalism and anti-humanism, as if it needs to be stated. We are not worthy to interact with the "natural" environment. It's only for looking at.

[Lucille]

That's so weird since I read a piece this morning that stated the exact opposite.

http://blog.chron.com/goplifer/2014/11/the-missing-story-of-the-2014-election/


Few things are as dangerous to a long term strategy as a short-term victory. Republicans this week scored the kind of win that sets one up for spectacular, catastrophic failure and no one is talking about it.

What emerges from the numbers is the continuation of a trend that has been in place for almost two decades. Once again, Republicans are disappearing from the competitive landscape at the national level across the most heavily populated sections of the country while intensifying their hold on a declining electoral bloc of aging, white, rural voters. The 2014 election not only continued that doomed pattern, it doubled down on it. As a result, it became apparent from the numbers last week that no Republican candidate has a credible shot at the White House in 2016, and the chance of the GOP holding the Senate for longer than two years is precisely zero.

AmConMag agrees with that guy ^

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/why-conservatives-should-love-the-city/


While the country is growing urban, conservatives are going rural. They desire to live in places that are losing population relative to the rest of America. For a while, conservatives may benefit from a preference for being spread out. But in the long run, it will be difficult to buck this trend and keep a solid electoral and cultural foothold. The growing share of urban Americans will be a ringing death knell for a strong conservative showing in national elections.

So it's not just progs. They actually have a whole section (http://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/) of their blog devoted to the "New Urbanism."

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/welcome/


Suburban sprawl has, through an accident of history, often been defended by conservative Americans, especially those who mistakenly consider suburban living to be the pure product of free choices and free markets. Yet traditional building of the sort encouraged by New Urbanism is very amenable to conservative sensibilities. Traditional neighborhoods where a family can live within walking distance of their church, or send their child to the grocery store to pick up an ingredient for dinner, are often illegal to build today. Even the supposed free-market success of the automobile over mass transit has itself been heavily subsidized. These issues are of a kind with arguments and concerns that conservatives of all stripes should be very familiar with.

After decades of exploding sprawl, humane environments are making a comeback, and that will be the focus of conversation here at New Urbs. We will be bringing attention to efforts currently under way to rescue and rehabilitate legacy environments, as well as looking at promising new projects. We will be discussing and exploring the ways the federal government has undermined sustainable environments and encouraged sprawl, and the ways local regulations and laws have followed its lead. Transit strategies will be debated, bringing a conservative perspective to a crucial place-building discussion. We will also be taking a hard look at some of the toughest questions facing New Urbanism, such as family-friendliness, affordability, and the balance to be struck between effective design and overzealous mandates.

[Scrooge McDuck]

That's so weird since I read a piece this morning that stated the exact opposite.

http://blog.chron.com/goplifer/2014/11/the-missing-story-of-the-2014-election/



AmConMag agrees with that guy ^

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/why-conservatives-should-love-the-city/



So it's not just progs. They actually have a whole section (http://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/) of their blog devoted to the "New Urbanism."

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/welcome/


True, and there are problems with sprawl that are of course caused by governments and housing bubbles and a lack of free markets, but the urbanism I've come into contact with is obsessed with the environmental, core philosophical distaste with free markets in general.

[dannno]

Let me tell y'all what it's like,
Being male, middle-class and white.
It's a bitch, if you don't believe, listen up to my new CD. (Sha-mon)

I got shit running thought my brain,
It's so intense that I can't explain.
All alone in my white-boy pain,
Shake your booty while the band complains.

I'm rockin' the suburbs, just like Michael Jackson did,
I'm rockin' the suburbs, except that he was talented.
I'm rockin' the suburbs, I take the checks and face the facts,
That some producer with computers fixes all my shitty tracks.

I'm pissed off, but I'm too polite,
When people break in the McDonald's line.
Mom and Dad you made me so uptight,
I'm gonna cuss on the mic tonight.
I don't know how much I can take,
Girl, give me something I can break.

I'm rockin' the suburbs, just like Quiet Riot did,
I'm rockin' the suburbs, except that they were talented.
I'm rockin' the suburbs, I take the cheques and face the facts,
That some producer with computers fixes all my shitty tracks.

In a haze these days, I pull up to the stop light,
I can feel that something's not right.
I can feel that someone's blasting me with hate,
And bass, sending dirty vibes my way.
Cause my Great, Great, Great, Great, Grandad,
Made someone's Great, Great, Great, Great Grandaddies slaves.
It wasn't my idea, it wasn't my idea, never was my idea.

I just drove to the store for some Preparation-H.
y'all don't know what it's like, being male, middle-class and white [Repeats]

It gets me real pissed off, it makes me want to say,
It gets me real pissed off and it makes me want to say,
It gets me real pissed off and it makes me want to say,
Fuck!

Just like Jon Bon Jovi did, I'm rockin' the suburbs,
Except that he was talented, I'm rockin' the suburbs.
I take the checks and face the facts,
That some producer with computers fixes all my shitty tracks.

These days, yeah-yeah, I'm rockin' the suburbs,
Yeah-yeah, I'm rockin' the suburbs, yeah-yeah.
You'd better look out, because I'm gonna say fuck [Repeats]

..

[osan]

Obama and the Democrats have embraced the argument that suburbs and sprawl are bad for you. As the last election demonstrated, this is no way to get elected.
You are a political party, and you want to secure the electoral majority. But what happens, as is occurring to the Democrats, when the damned electorate that just won’t live the way—in dense cities and apartments—that you have deemed is best for them?

A question nobody appears to ask is this: what do these nitwit Democrats intend for the disposition of the countless dollars worth of real estate that, in their endless and perfect wisdom, ought be abandoned by the lowly proles whose lives they seek to improve by stuffing them tightly, as sardines into small cans? It is not only the houses; what of the paved roadways; sewer and water lines; electrical and telephone lines both on poles and buried; gas line branches; sidewalks; curbs; substations; installed switching facilities; industrial, retail, wholesale, and other business spaces? Who would bet they have not given this the least consideration, those empty-headed animals who think they hold the reins to force-march the human race this way and that? Perhaps worse yet, they would see that vast product of human industry reduced to fill, to be heaped in great mountains, covered with earth, and sown with vegetation that their Democrat sons would ski those slopes of detritus on their spring vacations from the colleges for which someone else's labor pays.


This gap between party ideology and demographic reality has led to a disconnect that not only devastated the Democrats this year, but could hurt them in the decades to come.

Would that this were the end of it, let them be consumed in flame to the man. But the idiot I call "Meaner", being an idiot of such discharge, would perceive a vacuum where such can only exist in a world peopled by such low-rent spirits. Nature, in this case human nature, abhorring such conditions will seek feverishly to fill the perceived void, the Republicans being the only choice left in their bereft, shriveled, tiny minds. Those giants of liberty and proper human relations would not look upon this as even a mandate, but as mere opportunity to misspend yet another generation driving the land into further perdition.

The Republican party has a golden opportunity at this moment in our history to amend the great harms done to the land and its people. Were they of firm and righteous character; of proper and attaining intellect, education, and personal disposition, this land could be restored before the next president sought his reelection. How likely do we see this as being the future in store for us? I see no chance of this coming to fruition, and I personally curse them to the man for the slights that they have chosen to make of themselves; timid, small men packaged up in costly suits who, stripped of their raiment, would reveal naught but stick figures of squeamish and smarmy and rattly substance.

The real shame in this is that the Republicans are most likely to usher in a third era of Bush-neoconism with endless war, the further destruction of our liberties, and the wholesale dismantling of that which remains of what was once humanity's ONLY hope for a bright future. And I blame ever stinking last one of us, myself perhaps at the head of my personal list, for this result. And I blame my parents and those of everyone I know and do not know. And I blame the generation before and the one before that. I blame those who failed to butcher to the man those who befouled this land with federalism and the instruments that have made small work of the tyrants machinations and objectives. We are ruined not by necessity, but by our own lust for an end to all things good under the misguided belief that we are somehow improving our lots on this planet. Fie upon the race of men for they damn themselves with the lust and anger of the rapist gone mad through the village.

And yet, as with stupidity, my hope somehow survives, mere shade that it may be, that I will prove the stooge and somehow against the odds as prescribed by history will this change in the guard by some miracle slow the juggernaut that now leads us into oblivion.

[osan]

One other point: I actually agree with stuffing the wad of unwashed, unthinking nitwits into large cities. Just leave the rest of us at our peace. Herd the slackers and non-adepts into great housing blocs. That is all they deserve so far as I am concerned because they strive for nothing better. They would live their lives gladly in a septic tank so long as they are afforded the avoidance of responsibility. In this one sense I am in full agreement with Themme. If you will not think for yourself, someone will think for you, and when that process leads you to the slaughterhouse chute, I will raise a toast to your demise because you deserve nothing other than oblivion.

Our forbears spent two centuries and uncountable effort building the great cities of America. Why do as those sub-apes in Detroit have chosen? Why demolish vast tracts of otherwise serviceable space? Why destroy all the material resources set into place for drainage, sewage, water, gas, and so forth? Why not wipe the superficial slate clean and erect anew? Why not plan such spaces exactly so the majority will flock there to their new cages, all gilt with the conveniences that enable their bottomless lassitude and avarice? I say go to it. Build Trantor, but leave the rest - those for whom the wild and the sufficient survives, for it is from that stock that Theye will need to draw new blood for future generations. Befoul that with the intermingle of the human cattle and you doom Youreselves to extinction.

Bring it on! Pack 'em in! Clean it up!

The greatest problem They have in their thinking is that they operate on the basis of promotion and not attraction. This is one reason They qualify as ill-adept idiots. Promotion invariably fails in a large percentage of cases and when that happens Theye then have either to concede defeat or employ force. Guess that to which they almost universally turn.

Idiots. Vicious, clever, small-minded idiots.