Encourage complete communities that promote age, income, educational, empoyment, and ethnic diversity with mixed use development within existing areas already served by infrastructure and mass transit. Accept that the paradigm of moving further out to find affordability is not sustainable and results in a poor allocation of resources, as well as settlement patterns that are not culturally satisfying. The idea that a succesful society relies upon people being in constant motion and transitory has proofed out to not be enjoyable, to be unsupportive of families as they age, and to undermine community building. There was an idea of community 100 years ago that can still be seen in movies of the 30s. It is even evident in early television, although by the early 60s, comedies had moved from urban environments to suburban sprawl. We waste three resources with sprawl land use patterns. Clever industry may be able to reduce the waste of resources spent in fuel supporting a commute oriented life-style, but the cost to maintain that system, as well as the impacts on the environment, cannot be sustained. More significantly, the other two resources are non-renewable. We cannot recapture the time lost in long distance communiting. That lost time results in the other lost resource: strong families and communities that rely upon people being available and able to spend time together. |
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