"Urbanism,
Suburbanism and the Good Life"
Fred Barnes
NATIONAL DESK special airing on PBS
Friday, June 9, 2000
The role of government in deciding
how families should organize their lives and where they
should live and work is the subject of "Urbanism,
Suburbanism and the Good Life," an informative,
one-hour NATIONAL DESK special airing on PBS Friday,
June 9, 2000, 9:00 p.m. ET (check
local listings).
Hosted by broadcast journalist Fred
Barnes, this episode of NATIONAL DESK examines the
phenomenon called "sprawl" by some, new
urbanism or smart growth by others — and the
increasingly hostile debate over where and how Americans
should spend their lives. The United States was once a
rural nation, but urbanization shifted the American
Dream to a home in the suburbs. Now, Americans are told
by the new urbanists that this dream is no longer
appropriate.
Today, in cities across the nation, as
populations shift and inner cities search for new
identities and purpose, the advent of telecommuting
offers many people greater choice and flexibility in
workplace routine. Cities and local governments are
struggling to cope with the increasing sprawl fueled by
a prosperous economy and a mobile society.
Much of the current debate stems from
the vision of city and regional planners and government
officials who believe cities and broader metropolitan
areas should be allowed to expand or, alternatively, be
confined. Many believe that a clear direction is
necessary to effectively chart the future of America’s
metropolitan areas and control the growth of newly
emerging population centers.
Strong sentiment on the other side,
however, maintains that the market should be dictated by
self-determination — letting individual families
privately decide how and where to live. They believe
U.S. cities, outlying suburbs and the highways and
transportation systems connecting them evolved in this
way.
"If you ask new urbanists what
they’re trying to do, they’ll say all the problems
with American cities are due to bad planning,"
remarks the Thoreau Institute’s Randall O’Toole.
"And so what’s their solution? — Let’s give
planners more power than ever to plan our cities."
Steven Hayward of the Pacific Research Institute adds,
"There seems to be an imperative among planners
that we need to compel people or otherwise engage in
some social engineering to get people to live
differently than they want to live."
While the debate appears largely about
where and how much expansion should be allowed, the
issues are complex and how they are resolved will impact
the lives of future generations, both culturally and
economically.
Offering another perspective is Jo
Kwong of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, who
says, "When we’re talking about supporting
so-called smart growth, it means you have to live within
this boundary. You have to pick a house within this
area. You will see property values that are twice what
they currently are. You will have to take mass transit.
When people start realizing what the trade-offs really
mean, I think that the sprawl issue will take on a new
meaning."
Among others expressing concern is
John Charles of the Cascade Policy Institute who, in
discussing the role of political leaders in favor of
smart growth, says, "They want to have massive
government intervention in the real estate market to
dictate where development will occur, to have huge cross
subsidies so that politically correct forms of
development get subsidies and politically incorrect
forms of low density development don’t get
subsidies."
Gregg Easterbrook of New Republic
magazine challenges smart-growth proponents who believe
government agencies will decide the future of a
community, designing residential, commercial and
shopping areas. "No thanks," says Easterbrook.
"There is no chance that any government agency is
going to be able to bat more than 200 in designing such
projects."
NATIONAL DESK also reviews the results
of two planned residential and commercial development
areas in Portland, Oregon, and Kentlands, Maryland. Town
planners, residents and others offer views on the merits
of these experiments in social engineering.
As program host Barnes notes, the
longer growth goes on, the more anti-growth sentiment
builds. He concludes, "Sprawl is going to be one of
the great issues of the 21st Century."
Day & time: check
with your local station
Credits
Underwriters: Lynde & Harry
Bradley Foundation Inc., John M. Olin Foundation, Sarah
Scaife Foundation, Public Television Viewers, PBS and
Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Producer: Whidbey
Island Films. Executive producers: Lionel Chetwynd,
Conrad Denke and Norman S. Powell. Format: CC STEREO
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