These fundamental issues will determine what Pennsylvania will look like in the coming century, and how our children will live. We have isolated the poor in our older urban areas, consumed enormous quantities of farmland and open space, and forced the middle class into a wearisome life of constant driving. Sprawl is ugly, it's inefficient, it's damaging to the environment, and it is not sustainable. But frankly, there are few middle class Pennsylvanians today who can imagine living any other way. That's why I support the measured and deliberate steps the Ridge administration is taking to combat it.
Sprawl is easy to identify, but difficult to solve.
Proposals to reform our land-use policies and laws are vulnerable to misinformation and demagoguery. Therefore, a steady, logical progression of measures is more likely to succeed than a headline-grabbing program that stirs up so much opposition it dies quickly and contaminates the cause for years to come. Last fall, Gov. Ridge's 21st Century Environment Commission unequivocally concluded that sprawl is the state's No. 1 environmental problem. That alone was a huge step forward. Early this year, the governor formally endorsed the commission's findings and directed state agencies to review their policies in order to eliminate practices that encourage sprawl.