How the Tea Party is upending urban planning

[mhays]

It's encouraging when a local business community rallies for something progressive. This is also indicative of rail's viability. (Of course they're supporting it because it'll be helpful for business, not out of idealism...which is a valuable point.)

[mhays]

Originally Posted by 1Boston

I personally do not like Tea Party activists, which i can tell many of you agree, but i respect them for speaking up for what they believe in. Even if I completely disagree with a lot of their ideas

I'd respect them more if they looked into their topics before getting mad about them. Instead they let some shouting head on TV or radio get them mad for ratings purposes....

[M II A II R II K]

Activists Fight Green Projects, Seeing U.N. Plot


February 3, 2012

By LESLIE KAUFMAN and KATE ZERNIKE

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/us...pagewanted=all

Across the country, activists with ties to the Tea Party are railing against all sorts of local and state efforts to control sprawl and conserve energy. They brand government action for things like expanding public transportation routes and preserving open space as part of a United Nations-led conspiracy to deny property rights and herd citizens toward cities. They are showing up at planning meetings to denounce bike lanes on public streets and smart meters on home appliances — efforts they equate to a big-government blueprint against individual rights.

- Local officials say they would dismiss such notions except that the growing and often heated protests are having an effect. In Maine, the Tea Party-backed Republican governor canceled a project to ease congestion along the Route 1 corridor after protesters complained it was part of the United Nations plot. Similar opposition helped doom a high-speed train line in Florida. And more than a dozen cities, towns and counties, under new pressure, have cut off financing for a program that offers expertise on how to measure and cut carbon emissions.

- The protests date to 1992 when the United Nations passed a sweeping, but nonbinding, 100-plus-page resolution called Agenda 21 that was designed to encourage nations to use fewer resources and conserve open land by steering development to already dense areas. They have gained momentum in the past two years because of the emergence of the Tea Party movement, harnessing its suspicion about government power and belief that man-made global warming is a hoax. In January, the Republican Party adopted its own resolution against what it called “the destructive and insidious nature” of Agenda 21. And Newt Gingrich took aim at it during a Republican debate in November.

- Fox News has also helped spread the message. In June, after President Obama signed an executive order creating a White House Rural Council to “enhance federal engagement with rural communities,” Fox programs linked the order to Agenda 21. A Fox commentator, Eric Bolling, said the council sounded “eerily similar to a U.N. plan called Agenda 21, where a centralized planning agency would be responsible for oversight into all areas of our lives. A one world order.”

- The movement has been particularly effective in Tea Party strongholds like Virginia, Florida and Texas, but the police have been called in to contain protests in states including Maryland and California, where opponents are fighting laws passed in recent years to encourage development around public transportation hubs and dense areas in an effort to save money and preserve rural communities. One group has become a particular target. Iclei — Local Governments for Sustainability USA, an Oakland, Calif.-based nonprofit, sells software and offers advice to communities looking to reduce their carbon footprints.

- The Republican National Committee resolution, passed without fanfare on Jan. 13, declared, “The United Nations Agenda 21 plan of radical so-called ‘sustainable development’ views the American way of life of private property ownership, single family homes, private car ownership and individual travel choices, and privately owned farms; all as destructive to the environment.” Other conservatives have welcomed the scrutiny of land-use issues, but they do not agree with the emphasis on Agenda 21.

.....

[M II A II R II K]

Why Planners Need to Take Agenda 21 Criticism More Seriously


Feb 07, 2012

By Andrew H. Whittemore

Read More: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/nei...eriously/1159/

.....

It’d be easy to wholly dismiss the Agenda 21’ers, the nickname that’s stuck here in Texas for those who believe that a non-binding, 1992 United Nations action plan aimed at aiding world governments in pursuing sustainability is the source of a vast urban planning conspiracy. These individuals have interpreted the UN’s Agenda 21 as an international plot, implemented by a Town Hall near you, to herd humanity into habitation zones and save the rest for the animals at the behest of enviro-fascists and their bicycle advocate shock troops.

- Tea Partiers see UN infiltration in the North Central Texas Council of Government’s economic development plan, “Vision North Texas.” A “Hike and Bike System Master Plan” in Arlington that did not mention sustainability but used other cues has been at least halved in scope. The suburbs of Rowlett and McKinney are also in the foray. Planners are preoccupied with denying any conspiracy. This may be necessary, as the American Planning Association pointed out in its November memo, “Agenda 21: Myths and Facts,” but denials don’t often produce better long-term dialogue. Not to mention, a lack of reflection would be unfortunate, because these events speak to deep-seeded conservative concerns about property rights, the planning process, and the paradigms guiding planning today.

- Appreciating sustainability requires understanding the global and often indirect impacts of individual actions that on their face are local and intimate. “Think globally, act locally” inspires many, but Agenda 21’ers believe it submits individuals to a compromising global commons. It opens doors, frighteningly, to the possibility that many profitable or enjoyed activities should cease despite never having directly witnessed their negative consequences. Rather than expect many Americans to reject their perceptions, it may be useful for planners to express greater appreciation for current conditions, these being understood by Agenda 21’ers and others as free-market conditions.

- Changing demographics and tastes indicate to developers the need for denser, mixed-use construction, and regulators must accommodate this trend, but Agenda 21’ers don’t like to see it. Another contribution of the Agenda 21’ers is therefore in highlighting the selectivity of many conservatives—Wendell Cox, Ronald Utt and Randall O’Toole come to mind— in criticizing planning activities, and planners shouldn’t shy away from providing lessons on what a laissez-faire approach to development actually means. It does not mean miles upon miles of detached housing with green lawns, dependent as that is on zoning, federal mortgage insurance, tax deductions, utility subsidies, eminent domain and other expenditures involved in road and water infrastructure, and more.

.....

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

Activists Fight Green Projects, Seeing U.N. Plot


February 3, 2012

By LESLIE KAUFMAN and KATE ZERNIKE

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/us...pagewanted=all

Who, besides Faux Noos keeps feeding these assholes the purple Kool-Aid?

[Jasonhouse]

Originally Posted by 1Boston

I personally do not like Tea Party activists, which i can tell many of you agree, but i respect them for speaking up for what they believe in. Even if I completely disagree with a lot of their ideas

Respect should not be blindly given to whoever has the loudest mouth. Respect should correctly be reserved only for those who not only have the courage to speak out, but who are also verifiably CORRECT in their prognostications. Everyone else is just another guy with an opinion.

[waltlantz]

What's CORRECT in one place may not be CORRECT in another you know.

I don't know what to do about anti-smart growth peeps frankly....

But like some have said, they have done A HELL of a job actually putting pressure on bodies. OWS is so limp dicked.....

[MolsonExport]

Bunch of clueless, angry folk. I am sorry, but I can't fucking stand the Tea Party. Always angry, and always for the wrong reasons (e.g., the notion of a Black President). Completely selfish (no help, no way, nobody but me and mine). Ignorant as fuck (practically the lot of them are anti-science, climate-change deniers; but dogmatically cling to the passages in the Bible). Axiomatically opposed to raising taxes (which might help society and only hurt the wallet of a few) but stoutly in favor of wars (which kill thousands, disrupt millions, and cost billions).

They are the biggest bunch of fools. Agents of the super rich, and against their own best interests, and they are completely ignorant of the fact.

[Chicago103]

Originally Posted by Krases

Hard truths about why conservatives and libertarians hate urbanism

By Stephen Smith

November 20th, 2010



Link: http://marketurbanism.com/2010/11/20...hate-urbanism/

A very good article, I have actually long been an advocate of making the conservative/free market argument for urban planning and density. I am anti-NIMBY and pro development and am against minimum parking requirements, all pro-free market ideas. I have also argued that dense walkable communities are good for traditional family values. After all it was the free market that create the incredible density that once existed in our urban centers so how the hell is advocating a return to that (where market demand often exists no less) some kind of social engineering or communism?! I say fight fire with fire and blame high divorce rates and the collapse of the family on suburban sprawl. It was actually government intervention that created suburban sprawl, the true conspiracy if there ever was one is the one that actually largely succeeded in their goals to make sprawl the status quo. They have actually convinced their enslaved drones that we are actually the enemy out to enslave them, it's classic Orwellian double speak. If we make this argument you will reach some rational moderate conservatives, all we need is enough to tip the scales in our favor. That being said there are just some brainwashed paranoid people that you just can't reach.

[zilfondel]

Originally Posted by Jasonhouse

Respect should not be blindly given to whoever has the loudest mouth. Respect should correctly be reserved only for those who not only have the courage to speak out, but who are also verifiably CORRECT in their prognostications. Everyone else is just another guy with an opinion.

A wise man once succinctly said:

Whats the difference between ***holes and opinions?

Everyone has one, and they all stink.

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Bunch of clueless, angry folk. I am sorry, but I can't fucking stand the Tea Party. Always angry, and always for the wrong reasons (e.g., the notion of a Black President). Completely selfish (no help, no way, nobody but me and mine). Ignorant as fuck (practically the lot of them are anti-science, climate-change deniers; but dogmatically cling to the passages in the Bible). Axiomatically opposed to raising taxes (which might help society and only hurt the wallet of a few) but stoutly in favor of wars (which kill thousands, disrupt millions, and cost billions).

They are the biggest bunch of fools. Agents of the super rich, and against their own best interests, and they are completely ignorant of the fact.

Wow, very well put!

[waltlantz]

That Market Urbanism piece is GREAT.

Urbanists do have to tap into a more conservative/libertarian oriented argument if they really want to get their point across.

It's the market that is prodding some people back into the cities, not wholesale planning.

I don't think that I agree in the idea that a majority of urbanists are "statists" or, I think that is too broad a stroke. Painting them as "anti-capitalist" is evebn worse.

As far as active development of dense communities they may be somewhat statist but you get what I am saying.

[Nexis4Jersey]

Lucky they haven't nor they will gain a hold in the Northeast , where we value land usage seriously....most people support tighter controls on sprawl...and Urban Redevelopment....

[JManc]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Who, besides Faux Noos keeps feeding these assholes the purple Kool-Aid?

Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Michel Savage, etc...

[yaletown_fella]

"81 percent of Tea Party Republicans want military spending to stay the same or increase"
Nuff said...The Tea Party is a movement of neo-con endorsing sheep. It's an insult to libertarianism.

[M II A II R II K]

Originally Posted by Nexis4Jersey

Lucky they haven't nor they will gain a hold in the Northeast , where we value land usage seriously....most people support tighter controls on sprawl...and Urban Redevelopment....

But those ARC plans were ruined.

[Nexis4Jersey]

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

But those ARC plans were ruined.

Those plans became so mangled , the project killed itself..

[BnaBreaker]

Let's humor these lunatics and their ridiculous fears for just a second. If the so-called evil tyrants in the UN wanted to control the movement of the global populace, wouldn't the best way to achieve that be to herd everyone into isolated pseudo-communities of anti-social pods that are generally surrounded by some type of fencing and have only one or two paths that connect them to the outside world (many of which are already equipped with security checkpoints), where there is only one allowed mode of transportation, and where in order to obtain even the most vital supplies that sustain life, you must drive your automobile miles to a government subsidized commercial pod?

[J. Will]

Originally Posted by Nexis4Jersey

Lucky they haven't nor they will gain a hold in the Northeast , where we value land usage seriously....most people support tighter controls on sprawl...and Urban Redevelopment....

Because Maine is clearly not part of the NE.

[Nexis4Jersey]

Originally Posted by J. Will

Because Maine is clearly not part of the NE.

I don't much about that project , but that doesn't make any sense considering how popular the idea of expanding the Rail network is.....maybe there just anti - Road?