dispatches from TJICistan

http://www.boston.com/news/local/article…

Plan envisions bustling town centers

‘MetroFuture’ puts focus on suburbs

Planners mapping the future of Greater Boston want to encourage people to live and work in suburban town centers, and cut pollution, water usage, and traffic to improve the quality of life over the next two decades.

The “MetroFuture” planning recommendations by the quasi-public Metropolitan Area Planning Council were made after three years…

Oh, good.

The Party is making decisions about how we should live, and then, eventually, telling us about them.

The aim is to have 80 percent of new housing and new jobs in cities and larger municipal centers such as Framingham, Peabody, Norwood, and Marlborough. That would enable more people to walk or use mass transit and thereby reduce traffic and pollution, according to the plan.

So, of the million possible variables, the ones they’ve chosen to optimize are the minimization of the average distance one has to drive to get to work.

Things they have implicitly then de-prioritized:

• open space per family
• privacy per family
• floor space per family
• minimal overall commute time per individual
• noise abatement
• etc.

“Implementation will be hard ,” said Marc Draisen , executive director of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. “It is a bold plan with big ideas that requires change from the way we’ve been doing things. It’s going to take time, and it’s going to take effort.”

The vision of the anointed ™.

“In the municipal world, we are reactive and deal with problems when it’s too late,” said Michelle Ciccolo , assistant administrator and community development director in Hudson. “This plan enables communities to look at plans and see what would happen if we don’t change business as usual.”

Some might argue that the purpose of governments is to deal with the choices that individuals make. If individuals open a lot of jewelry stores, and jewelry thefts go up as a result, then perhaps the government should deploy cops where they’re needed. If individuals start riding bikes, then perhaps the government should create bike lanes.

Having government figure out what it wants, and then dictate to us how we have to live to be in conformance with the plan…not so much.

Glaeser said that a growing number of people want to live close to transit and downtown centers, but others are interested in the new large-lot homes that populate new suburbs. Many of these people, he said, are the sort of workers Massachusetts is trying to keep and attract: young families.

It figures that the first person quoted in the article who makes any sense is in the private sector.

Draisen said that communities need to work together and implement better zoning and planning tools.

Isn’t it zoning that is responsible for most of the ills that the New Urbanists identify? Minimum lot size, minimum set backs, lack of comingling of residences and business, downtown neighborhoods that are dead after 5pm, etc. ?

What arrogance that these folks think “Oh, the previous generation of statists screwed up, but we – with a whole extra 20 years of data – are prepared to make the Best Decisions Ever that will be right and correct in perpetuity”.

Bah.

“Wouldn’t it be better to protect green space and steer development of small homes to near the town centers and transit centers?” he said.

Letting yuppies build McMansions on big yards is one way to protect green space.

The problem is, the statists don’t really care about green space per se. They care about government owned (or at least government controlled) green space. Which is better? 20 acres of land lumped into a government owned wetland sanctuary that no one ever visits, or 20 houses, each on 1 acre lots, covered with gardens, yards, trees, and tree-houses? The government employee doesn’t get to meddle in the individual lots, so he’s always going to say that the government owned patch is better.

Mayor Thomas Ambrosino of Revere said he likes the plan’s outline, so far.

“When you’re planning for such a long-term vision, you have to be bold,” he said. ““

Mmmm…destruction of individual freedoms?

Or, wait, as mayor, perhaps he counts that in the “benefits” column, not as a “harm”.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 1st, 2007 at 7:53 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.