Mr.Liberal, Please save us from ourselves !

  By D.C.

 I have noticed that the NY Times uses it's Saturday edition to run op-eds about their Utopian urban planning fantasies. These liberal fantasies usually go something like this. We can only create true social equality if everyone is forced to live crammed into urban flats and totally dependent on public transit.

 They will throw around some environmental nonsense, but liberals don't really care about that stuff. Those are just more excuses to justify their Socialist goals. Those goals are to create a false equality by reducing society to the lowest common denominator and micro-managing the daily aspects of citizen's lives. The easiest way to accomplish this is to make the society more and more dependent on government.

 Christopher Leinberger has one of these liberal fantasies in today's NY Times. Let's just call Chris, Mr.Liberal to make it easy. All you really need to know about Mr. Liberal is that he is a urban planner and a fellow at the Brookings Institute.

 Mr. Liberal writes this truly frightening piece, "The Death of the Fringe Suburb". Yes, according to Mr.Liberal, those of us who live in places like Oak Creek or Franklin or Greenfield, our communities are dying out here. We are dinosaurs, throwbacks to days gone by. We are doomed. Mr.Liberal tells us so;

"DRIVE through any number of outer-ring suburbs in America, and you’ll see boarded-up and vacant strip malls, surrounded by vast seas of empty parking spaces. These forlorn monuments to the real estate crash are not going to come back to life, even when the economy recovers. And that’s because the demand for the housing that once supported commercial activity in many exurbs isn’t coming back, either."

But what happened Mr. Liberal ? Why has this tragedy befallen us ? Did we bring it on ourselves ? Tell us old wise one;

"It was predominantly the collapse of the car-dependent suburban fringe that caused the mortgage collapse."

I knew it ! Those cars, evil SUVs, and our selfish greed that brought us to desire a single family home ! We dared to have more than one bathroom and a small backyard for our kids to play in ! How could we have been so selfish ? It was that American dream ! Your right Mr.Liberal ! It is our own fault !

(Sobbing) What can we do ?

"Reinvesting in America’s built environment — which makes up a third of the country’s assets — and reviving the construction trades are vital for lifting our economic growth rate."

OK,and ?

"The cities and inner-ring suburbs that will be the foundation of the recovery require significant investment at a time of government retrenchment. Bus and light-rail systems, bike lanes and pedestrian improvements — what traffic engineers dismissively call “alternative transportation” — are vital."

Bike lanes and choo choo trains, Uh huh.

"As Congress works to reauthorize highway and transit legislation, it must give metropolitan areas greater flexibility for financing transportation, rather than mandating that the vast bulk of the money can be used only for roads."

Yes, I get that part. Roads are bad because cars are bad. More trains and bicycles. Mr.Liberal, this really sounds like it is going to cost a lot of tax money. We are kind of broke, you know ?

"For too long, we over-invested in the wrong places. Those retail centers and subdivisions will never be worth what they cost to build. We have to stop throwing good money after bad. It is time to instead build what the market wants: mixed-income, walkable cities and suburbs that will support the knowledge economy, promote environmental sustainability and create jobs."

So, our homes and our communities we live in now are worthless ? Well,you are the egghead here. So, if you say I should live in a Soviet era, two room flat with a shared public toilet at the end of the hall and ride a monorail to work, then I guess I should. Our recycling bins haven't worked, so I see no other way to promote environmental sustainability.

 Oh, by the way Mr. Liberal. You know, some people abuse taxpayer dollars to enrich themselves on useless and wasteful projects. Like that solar panel company who ripped us off for a whole lot of cash. We wouldn't want to get taken to the cleaners again. Your not going to make anything out of this are you ?

"Disclosure,I am the president of Locus, a coalition of real estate developers and investors and a project of Smart Growth America, which supports walkable neighborhoods and transit-oriented development."

Really ?