During a town hall meeting in Ft. Meyers Flordia today, President Barack Obama took a question from a City Councilwoman there who said she wanted stimulus funding for a commuter rail system.
In answering the question, the President went beyond commuter rail and transit and had this to say about some land use issues pertinent to us here in Santa Clarita:
It’s imagining new transportation systems. I’d like to see high speed rail where it can be constructed. I would like for us to invest in mass transit because potentially that’s energy efficient. And I think people are a lot more open now to thinking regionally…
The days where we’re just building sprawl forever, those days are over. I think that Republicans, Democrats, everybody… recognizes that’s not a smart way to design communities. So we should be using this money to help spur this sort of innovative thinking when it comes to transportation.
That will make a big difference.
These sentiments from our new President will rub a lot of Santa Claritans the wrong way, I suspect. One, we love our cars. Two, we hate our mass transit. Three, we love roads and bridges and we’re building new ones even as I write this. Fourth, we love our single family homes on postage-sized plots of land on ridgelines. Fifth, we devote ourselves to certain hobbies, such as real estae speculation and gossip. And sixth, many of us make our livings selling sprawl, frankly.
And what’s wrong with that? After all, what is sprawl to Obama is one Valencia family’s dream home, right? Many of us worked hard with a single goal in mind when we came out to this arid desert: purchasing a home in the peaceful and tranquil suburbs. And certain companies like Newhall Land worked hard to fulfill that dream. Who is Obama to come along and say it’s just sprawl?
And yet, one wonders if the critical mass has been reached. We saw the effects of our lifestyle last year, when run-away fuel costs compelled many to try different modes of transportation or carpool or find work closer to home. It’s clear this lifestyle has many costs, costs that are only increasing, and costs that may not even be clear to us today but will be obvious one hundred years from now (global warming).
It’s also clear that this lifestyle is not scalable forever. Our population is only increasing, but our resources and land are finite. Water is no longer abundant. Fuel is no longer cheap. Even building materials can be hard to come by, compelling companies like CEMEX to mine in populated areas.
I always think high density is the answer to many problems facing us, but every time I suggest that I’m digitally drawn and quartered, tarred and feathered, and run out of town on a rail. It’s obvious no one wants to give up a home for an apartment or condo or trade a boulevard of low-rises for one of skyscrapers. So I’m at a loss as to what the solution is. I’m not sure Obama knows either.
Is sprawl dead? Is, or was, Newhall Land’s plan for “villages” in Newhall Ranch an elegant solution to traffic and sprawl or was it sprawl by just another name? Or are you the type of person who sees vacant land as wasted opportunity and thinks there’s no problem at all?
Anyway, pardon the esoteric nature of this post, but at least Obama got us thinking, yeah?