Struggling with a name for your new development?

Land developers:

In your rush to accommodate population growth (often called "economic growth"), do you sometimes draw a blank on what to name your latest subdivision? Many of those trendy names like "River's End" are getting stale. No need to worry about a lack of creativity. Just fall back on an old standard: name your development for whatever piece of nature it replaced or destroyed.

Some examples:

If grassland once existed where Yukon Denials and 6,000 sq. ft. castles stand, don't mourn that cheap remnant of nature. Just call it THE MEADOWS. Average people won't notice. They're too busy pushing paper and drawing debt so they can afford your creations. Money is the judge and jury for everything that's right.

If hundreds of oak trees were reduced to dozens, call that development THE OAKS. A very common name, that one. Many oak trees fall to the dozer as the U.S. population grows by 3 million annually. Revel in the glory of world population growth that exceeds 70 million per annum (net gain). Think of all the homes that will be needed, even if you aren't personally building them. The sound of hammers ringing in the morning is like.....victory.

If your "master planned community" just invaded 500 acres of wetlands or vernal pools, call it THE LAKES. The existence of an artificial pond can justify that title. Just make sure you can steal water from somewhere to fill it. Of course there's no shortage of water, even in the desert. All it takes is imagination and total lack of concern for anything else.

If you just won a battle against Godless environmentalists and pushed

50 homes into national forest boundaries, call that piece of paradise THE PINES. Pray it doesn't suffer the recent fate of a Lake Tahoe community where homes have blocked natural brush-clearing fires.

It's easy to divide, conquer and pretend the landscape is fine by using name-psychology. It also makes potential homeowners believe they're not really destroying wilderness. After all, if you surround wilderness on all sides by development and leave a pocket in the middle, can it really be considered nature?

Ringing an area with sprawl, then cutting to the core is a good strategy for your long term plans. Nature is wasted space begging to be filled with houses. If it stays empty, some dirty animals might find a stronghold and the ESA may be invoked. Too bad they dumped Mr. Pombo but you have plenty of conservative allies. Funny thing about the word "conservative." Most people of that ilk think conservation is beneath them. They're all about consumption.

Home-builders have decades of expansion to look forward to. Sure, it has to end sometime (finite planet) but you can make a buck now, so who cares about the future? The California State Department of Finance released a report saying California's population may reach 60 million by 2050. Third-world America is well on its way. This means white flight to the hills and they must be developed!

Developers, you must always focus on what really matters for human progress. If the land doesn't get MORE CROWDED every day, we are failing our children. At some point, all but the harshest habitat will be vanquished, paved, and renamed, and you can bask in the glory of it while sitting in 5 MPH traffic.

E.A.

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Housing starts are a leading indicator of mindless population growth.

Reply to
Enough Already
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So what do you suggest? We kill every other baby? Shoot those who have IQ's less than 120? Hold a lottery for houses, and have everyone else live in camps outdoors in the area between the runways at the local airport?

There are few things that are as sure as death and taxes. Some of them are that people have to have a place to live, a place to work, and highways between the two so they can drive from home to work.

Unless you can solve the problem of how to run a country without having anyone go to work, then all you are doing is blowing smoke out your butt. Your posting might have been funny, but it was not at all constructive.

-john-

Reply to
John A. Weeks III

Change zoning laws to allow more dense development, and discourage excessive suburban-density development? Tax fossil-fuel-based carbon emissions[1], so that the true cost of long commutes is borne by those choosing where to live? Use the proceeds from said tax (along with general funds) to subsidize dense development, mass transit, personal rapid transit, and alternative energy? Cap the number of children one can claim a tax credit and other government benefits for, with exceptions for children who were adopted, or already conceived when the rule change went into effect? Get rid of abstinence-only sex education? Free contraception for all?

There are many things that could be done that fall short of the drastic measures you list.

Obviously, many of these things would need to be phased in gradually, so as to give people and the economy time to adjust (the goal is to change behavior, not to impose crippling taxes), but continuing down our current path is a recipe for disaster.

-Scott

[1] Yes, gasoline is already taxed, but not nearly enough.
Reply to
Scott Wood

You betchya. Your idea. So you shouldn't mind send me a buck extra for every gallon you buy, would you?

Stupid idea? Yeah but so is yours.

Reply to
Glenn

But why do any of them unless there is a need. People have been predicting the end of the world every year for the past 2006 years, and so far, life has only seemed to improve. If you just leave things alone and don't meddle with the economy, things will work itself out based on economics. 100 years from now, we my have

50-billion people, and life will be 10 times better.

For the most part, these extremest groups that want to control population or dictate where people live are far less interested in ecology and welfare and are far more interested in trying to tell others what to do and gain control over the masses. We have to be vigilant and not fall for these totalitarian ideas.

-john-

Reply to
John A. Weeks III

Amen.

Reply to
Sherman L. Cahal

Frankly, I think this post is hilarious. Where my parents live, its called Eagle Ridge. They also have Eagle Hills and Eagle View subdivisions nearby. There is no ridge there, no hills, no view, and if there were one, you can't see any eagles. I'm surprised here in the Omaha area, there is no Buffalo Ridge, or Buffalo Hills, or Buffalo View, because the irony would be too obvious.

Reply to
DandyDan

That will work. Forced sterilization too!

I like that one. We're safe aren't we?

Won't work, too ugly. Gotta hide 'em!

Reply to
PeterD

You don't consider global warming and exhaustion of oil supplies to be a need? Hell, even if you don't care about that, the unaffordability of decent housing in many areas that isn't a long commute from the bulk of the jobs is enough of a reason to revise the zoning in a lot of areas. Do you like sitting in traffic?

Some of those claims are more credible than others.

Keep on telling yourself that.

I didn't suggest forcibly controlling population, or dictating where people live -- just providing economic incentives for more people to make choices that lead to a sustainable society (and helping people who would like to make such a choice but currently can't afford it due to artificial scarcity caused by density restrictions).

Because you say so?

Yawn.

-Scott

Reply to
Scott Wood

Had a good chuckle with the above comments. I had a weird idea years ago of finding some land in Johnson County, Kansas not already annexed by one of the many growing communities like Overland Park and Olathe. The name idea: Missouri City, only because there is Kansas City, MO, Kansas City, KS and Missouri City, MO.

And that despite a multi-billion-dollar abortion industry. Go figure.

Reply to
My Land of Misery

"Excessive" is a little vague for a legal term.

Reply to
RJ

...and you might have gotten a squawk or two from Missouri City, Texas. ;-) (I'd suspect the Texas one is probably a bit more populous than its Missouri namesake, being between Houston to the northeast and Sugar Land to the southwest.)

Reply to
The Chief Instigator

Multi *billion*? Aren't we exaggerating just a wee bit? Maximum costs range from $700 to $1000 per procedure, and not all clients pay the full fare. To get to the billions mark you would need 1 000 000 women paying the $1000 cost per year, and in a few years, the total number of women having an abortion was less than 1 million.

Reply to
EAST COAST HIVE MIND

The existing-homeowner cartel is doing that now, and all it achieves is to make development "leapfrog" outside the county or state that imposes the zoning. (It has also already forced even some employed people into homelessness and led to the creation of millions of illegal "granny" apartments.)

Such policies might make sense if there were a shortage of farmland or parks -- but if there were, the problem would solve itself because the market price of land for those uses would rise to match its price for building houses. (I include parks because the outdoor activities done there are primarily for rich people and therefore could and should be funded by charging admission. I'm not asserting that the poor can't hike or camp -- only that such activities aren't novel or fun for people who are either homeless or scared that they may be soon.)

Zoning that severely, artificially limits the supply of housing, or of good quality housing is already the law -- and it's the law because it benefits the rich people who own homes today, and existing homeowners effectively own and operate every urban planning agency in America for the purpose of keeping the price of good housing super-God-outrageous. The real shortage they fear is of cash in their own pockets at the expense of the owners of unbuilt land they're now using as "viewshed" without paying for it.

The supply of housing is so severely limited by today's zoning laws that residents don't really choose where to live -- they live in the least bad location they can afford, relative to the job they have available to live on. Blaming them for that is blaming the victim. The people running the cartel (aka the Sierra Club) are the ones who should be paying the tax.

All unnecessary and/or harmful.

William Simon showed that the total externality from having kids is positive. Still, I'm all for cutting the subsidies, or at least means-testing them.

Here I totally agree with you, if only to solve the Marching Morons problem.

True. And that "current path" is more of the "smart growth" zoning laws you advocate. They're the problem, not the solution.

Reply to
John David Galt

Back 20 years ago, when I was doing developments, I just named them all after me: Joseph Hills, Joseph Heights, Joseph Lakes. I guess I could have folled the thread starters idea and called my little lower west side Erie project, Joseph Slums, since that was what had been there.

Eric

Reply to
armourereric

In article , John David Galt wrote: ...

Are you referring to this William Simon:

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If so, sounds like a right wing crank to me.

Anyway, this is just something you either believe or you don't - that having kids is TMIJITW. It is a "2 kinds of people in the world" thing.

Reply to
Kenny McCormack

This is usenet, not a statute. :-)

The decision of how much suburban zoning is excessive should still be made by people, not some formula -- I just think we should elect people who have a different view on such matters than those currently doing the job.

-Scott

Reply to
Scott Wood

[snip]

That's exactly my point -- I was advocating eliminating (or substantially increasing) the maximum allowed density in many areas.

I wouldn't prohibit large-lot single family dwellings, but if the land is zoned to allow higher density, and it's in a location where there is sufficient demand for such, the market price (and along with that, the property taxes) of that land will rise to the point that (other than a handful of rich people) most people would sell, and redevelopment could occur.

Well, I was saying what I thought would help, not commenting on the likelihood of it actually happening. :-)

Hence the zoning changes and the "unnecessary and/or harmful" subsidy paid for by said tax to promote affordable, denser development closer to where the jobs are.

Why?

-Scott

Reply to
Scott Wood

Yes and no.

In general, many aspects of life in the U.S. has gotten better, but other aspects have gotten worse. For myself, driving is a nightmare, anywhere I want to go (when I want to go) I face traffic, nuts on the road, congestion, and more and more traffic lights. Don't blame NIMBYs for this, my state DOT says there is no money to expand roads to accomodate. [They spent quite a bit of money to "improve" a diamond-interchange by basically using the shoulder as another lane. Helped a little but not much.]

Many people have lost important fringe benefits from work once taken for granted. This becomes an effective decrease in compensation but doesn't show up in official statistics.

The cost of housing has climbed dramatically. Years ago one spouse could be a homemaker, but today both spouses must work to achieve the same lifestyle as in the past.

I don't consider any of this improvements.

When one speaks of "economics" working things out, that requires a good deal of open competition. But in our "open" society we have had many companies merge or acquire reducing competition. For suppliers, it means one buyer calls the shots. For workers it means one company calls the shots and one can't change jobs to get a better deal. Cities used to have three or four full service department stores, now we basically have two national chains. Banks have greatly consolidated.

Today, we have very high corporate management making a very high order of magnitude pay compared to the lowest workers as compared to some years ago. We see corporate leaders screw up a company but leave with a generous golden parachutte while the every day workers lose their jobs with squat.

Back in the Great Depression this country realized it simply can't depend on "economics" to "work things out".

True.

But there are extremist groups on the other side of the coin as well.

Reply to
hancock4

Perhaps this country should shut the door on illegal immigration to reduce population growth.

Another problem with housing--and the high cost of it--is the abandonment of old cities and suburbs. Old places have lost population. These places need to be rebuilt, with good living values, so people are attracted to come back and raise families there, and industry comes back to provide jobs. Many people fled the cities NOT for a split level house but to get away from crime, lousy schools, etc. Clean up the crime and fix the schools.

We are approaching a crisis when the baby boomers become too old to drive. That will be a huge block of people who can't get around.

Don't forget places to park at home and work. For employers who provide parking, they need more square footage of parking area than workers get for their workspace. Doesn't sound like a very efficient use of land. (Remember a parking space requires a free space for the vehicle to freely enter and exit at any time).

To build the highways and parking to serve the above adequately, we'll need so much land we'll end up tearing down the homes and work places. "Destroying the village in order to save it"

Reply to
hancock4

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