From: jgacker@news.gsfc.nasa.gov (James G. Acker)
Subject: Re: Suburbs: the great untouchable (Was: Save planet...)
Organization: Goddard Space Flight Center
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 14:48:39 GMT

Michael Smith (p00004@psilink.com) wrote:
: >DATE:   30 Dec 92 19:40:03 GMT
: >FROM:   James G. Acker <jgacker@news.gsfc.nasa.gov>
: >	But what if...
: >
: >	I walked to the store, and bought my 3+ grocery (reusable sacks, BTW)
: >sacks -- I want to pick my own produce, thank you -- and then took them to
: >a delivery truck, and walked home? 
: 
: Back to the future....
: 
: This is exactly how I shop, on the upper West Side of Manhattan. A 
: bonus: since all the deliveries are quite local, most of them are made 
: by a guy with a handcart. It costs exactly $2 a load.

	So it IS a good idea?  (I think that's what you're saying).
I'd pitch it to the local grocery store chain, which controls a high
percentage of the market.  Would it work?

: It seems inescapable to me that suburbanization is to blame for a great 
: deal of our wastefulness and (environmental) destructiveness. This is an 
: issue that few people posting in these groups address directly, although 
: transportation questions, in particular, are inextricably linked with 
: settlement patterns. 

	Absolutely.  Though I have to point out, the two suburbs
I've most recently lived in:  Columbia, Md and Reston, Va, are planned
communities with a much higher density than typical older suburbs and
at least some effort to preserve greenspace.  Though if Vandy
saw the recent destruction around Columbia due to one new road, he'd
freak.  I don't like it (but the plans were underway before I arrived
here.)
	The problem is:  both of these exurbs are just a little too far
out for a good transportation link.  The MARC trains which allow
Baltimore to Washington commuting would almost work -- if I worked in
D.C.  There is a park-and-ride system that would work (I could walk to
the pickup-point) if I worked in Baltimore.
	I don't.  I WORK IN A SUBURB, too -- as do a lot of folks
around here.   The Naval Surface Weapons Command is in Silver Spring.
CIA is in Langley.  GSFC is in Greenbelt.  The NSF move to Arlington --
even with an EXtremely convenient Metro station -- is being hotly
contested.  DOE has a Germantown Facility.  NIST is in Gaithersburg.
Census Bureau is in Suitland, etc., etc., etc., etc.
	The problem is not just where we live, it's Where We Work.
I recommend "Edge City" to everyone!
	Because of the growth of the suburban business center,
both transit and housing need to address this issue.  About 35% of the
people who live in Columbia also work in Columbia.  If telecommuting
from the suburbs was increased, and offices decentralized, maybe we
could really make some progress, to where 50% or more of suburban
residents didn't have to drive somewhere to work.

: Since the '20's we in the US have been the "beneficiaries" of Federal 
: and local policies encouraging suburbanization. Shouldn't those of us 
: concerned about environmental damage -- and, I would claim, human 
: quality-of-life, too -- step up to this issue, and make an explicit goal 
: of stopping, and then reversing, this trend? I realize that the 
: single-family house, on its exiguous greensward, in its homogenized 
: socioeconomic laager, is the most sacred of all sacred cows, at least in 
: the US. But the holier the steer, the juicier the steak, I always say.  
: 
: --Michael Smith

	The Chesapeake Bay Preservation Initiative* did attempt to
address the issue -- before land owners and real-estate developers
shot it down in flames.  They objected to the states essentially
ordering landowners to be beholden to their land -- they wouldn't
be able to sell it at a profit, to a developer who would develop it
at a profit, into another suburban strip.  Land ownership rights are
practically in the Constitution -- so how do we at the grass-roots
level change those ideas?????

* Chesapeake Bay 2000 Plan

	Jim Acker
	jgacker@neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov


Newsgroups: sci.environment