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Blueprint America: Road to the Future looks at the choices the country can make as it invests in its aging and changing infrastructure, and how they can affect how Americans live.
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Urban Spawl is National; Wisconsin has lost 1/3 of its farmland to sprawl. Governor Jim Doyle is in an effort to buy-back developers rights. California: they’re running out of water as fast as land — the latter depleting the former — with no plan for sustainablility. On and On the examples go.
The American Dream was for a little white house and a picket fence; that dream became a nightmare when housing square footage and acre lots ran out of Levittown and into the American Countryside. There is a solution, it begins with establishing urban and rural/urban population density standards. Realize that cars and inefficient housing are the problem, not the solution. The Future is: Infill and Refill
Remember how hugely successful and influential the tobacco industry became, and then the revelation of its toxicity? Well parallels could be drawn with the auto industry on how it promoted the feeling of freedom along with other identity buttresses. We could well treat the auto industry the same way by raising taxes on privately own cars. By reducing cars on the road we could reduce the road systems we fund by our taxes, There are many strategies that can be implemented but it means to accept downsizing the role of the auto industry as we know it.
We need planned communities with centralized access to food and clothing, medical care and entertainment with access to internet communication and travel except for emergencies if we do not want to regulate population growth.
Why is no one taking on the biggest question? That is the US admitting too many people? Our current rate of immigration, both legal and illegal, is completely unsustainable and will destroy the quality of life country we know and love today in the US. The wild world is being destroyed at a frightening rate, all in the name of money.
Take New York City where I live, Mayor Bloomberg talks of adding 1 million people in ten years. Where? How will they get around? The subways are packed and they are cutting service, the roads are jammed and they are falling apart. Ask anyone in the Bronx, they will tell you cars are a necessity.
Mayor Bloomberg encourages all forms of immigration to the city even as demand for services outpaces our ability to provide it.
This population growth is a completely stock-market driven phenomenon. How else can companies like Home Depot, Toll Brothers Builders and McDonalds, etc, expect to continually receive buy ratings based on unlimited growth? Unlimited growth? Get real, we live in bubble. Population growth must be brought under control and we must take control at home, in the US, first.
Higher population density? We already live like sardines. Why should we stand for it?
from Dick Joseph , Croton on Hudson, NY.
75% of our population live within 50 miles of both the East and West Coast.
Dilemna: How do we cut across States’Rights to develop a sane land policy to induce population shifts to the more open spaces? Have a ‘gold rush’ type of movement;with millions of U.S. Government acres to be used for planned villages and towns…with a limit to population density per sq. mile. ‘Uncle Sam’ can award subsidies to the pioneers who dare to change their lives by moving to planned communities in such vast areas.
This idea would consider the balance of nature and preservation of Wildlife as well.
On second thought,despite Medical and Agricultural breakthroughs, perhaps Malthus was right—that population outpaces provisions for life–especially in the African belt.
©2009 Educational Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved.Produced by THIRTEEN WNET New York ©2009 Educational Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved.
Major Support for Blueprint America is provided by the Rockefeller Foundation.
05/17/2009 :: 07:58:14 PM
BikeDenver.org » Blueprint America: What Denver, Portland and New York have in common (Rocky Mountain PBS May 20th) Says:
[...] Blueprint America: Road to the Future, an original documentary part of a PBS multi-platform series on the country’s aging and changing infrastructure, will examine the choices we can make as the country invests in its infrastructure, and how they can affect the way we live: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/road-to-the-future/video-preview/574/ [...]