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Date:         Mon, 16 Nov 1998 12:37:22 -0800
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From: Steve Pedery <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Sierra Club, Tom Wolfe, and sprawl...
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 FYI - From the NY Times Week In Review, for those who missed it.

 Steve P.


 Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company The New York Times

 November 15, 1998, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
 The Nation: Dreams of Fields;  The New Politics Of Urban Sprawl

 By TIMOTHY EGAN

 WHAT the author Tom Wolfe did for radical chic in the 1960's, narcissism in
 the 70's, and greed in the 80's, he may now be doing for runaway real estate
 development in his new novel on America at century's end. Urban sprawl, with
 all its strip-mall excess and soul-deadening homogeneity, is not just a
 central backdrop, but almost a character in "A Man in Full," the author's
 latest pen poke at contemporary life.

 "The only way you could tell you were leaving one community and entering
 another was when the franchises started repeating and you spotted another
 7-Eleven, another Wendy's, another Costco, another Home Depot," Mr. Wolfe
 writes. He was describing the Bay Area of California, but it could have been
 any metro area in the country.

 On election day, voters from Southern California to New Jersey showed that
 the sprawl issue may have become a political driving force no less than a
 narrative function in the fictional world of Mr. Wolfe.

 Voters across the country and across party lines, from desert suburbs in the
 West to leafy cul de sacs in the East, voted to stop the march of new malls,
 homes and business parks at the borders of their communities, and to tax
 themselves to buy open space as a hedge against future development.

 For Vice President Al Gore, who has been ratcheting up the sprawl issue as a
 top green concern, edging aside more contentious and somewhat abstract
 environmental concepts like global warming, the votes are seen as the start
 of a winning national campaign. Who, after all, could be against what the
 Sierra Club now describes as an attempt to return to Beaver Cleaver's
 America, albeit with smaller lot sizes?

 Paving Paradise

 "I've come to the conclusion that what we really are faced with here is a
 systematic change from a pattern of uncontrolled sprawl toward a brand new
 path that makes quality of life the goal of all our urban, suburban and
 farmland policies," Mr. Gore said in an interview.

 But Republicans like Gov. Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, have also
 listened to the same complaints around the barbecue. At the very edge of what
 the author Joel Garreau famously labeled "Edge Cities," people say their new
 communities have become too dependent on the automobile, too removed from
 nature, too close to the clutter of boxy retail stores.

 Paving paradise, almost a reflex reaction in Southern California, was halted
 by a huge majority in Ventura County, where voters approved a series of urban
 boundaries around the fast-growing new cities wedged between Los Angeles and
 Santa Barbara, and stripped their elected supervisors of the power to approve
 new subdivisions and put it in the hands of voters instead.

 Developers now will have to get voter approval to push the flood of
 tile-roofed subdivisions any further into land that has some of the last big
 lemon groves in California. About 80 percent of the county will be off-limits
 to developers, unless voters say differently, supporters of the measure said.
 The Los Angeles Times heralded the vote as a "revolution."

 In New Jersey, the most-densely populated state in the nation, voters in 43
 cities and six counties decided to raises their taxes to buy and preserve
 open space. Statewide, by a two-to-one margin, voters also approved spending
 nearly $1 billion over 10 years to buy half of the Garden State's remaining
 garden space.

 Grass Roots

 Nationwide, voters approved nearly 200 state and local ballot initiatives on
 curbing sprawl.

 The idea of Al Gore talking growth management for the next two years and
 beyond may be no more appealing than hearing another flat tax speech from
 Steve Forbes. The Vice President has been pounding the anti-sprawl bully
 pulpit for months, proclaiming the dawn of "an American movement to build
 more liveable communities." The issue is seen by his supporters as a key to
 all those Jeep Cherokee driving suburbanites with few political passions
 beyond the afternoon traffic jam. The elections earlier this month, based
 largely on grass-roots initiatives, have only bolstered Mr. Gore's case, his
 aides say.

 But before Mr. Gore tries to lay a Democratic claim to an issue that cuts
 beyond most political lines, he will have to go through the Republican
 Governor of New Jersey. Just five years ago, Mrs. Whitman was held up by her
 party as a young Margaret Thatcher, with tax cuts as her banner.

 Now, a year into a second term, Mrs. Whitman has made protecting open space
 the primary issue -- and perhaps her legacy -- for the state. In what may be
 an act of heresy to the tax-cutting wing of her party, the Governor has been
 campaigning for tax increases to keep land out of the hands of developers.
 Initially, she proposed an increase in the gas tax, but has settled on the
 kind of selective property tax increases that were approved across New Jersey
 on election day.

 "We have got to understand that once land is gone, it's gone forever," said
 Mrs. Whitman while pushing the new open space measures. She could have been
 just another doorbeller from the Sierra Club, which, in response to a survey
 of members, has put sprawl at the top of its list of environmental concerns.
 The club says 400,000 acres of open space are lost to development every year.

 The successful anti-sprawl campaigns steered away from talk of Government
 control or zoning arcana. They dwelled instead on images of lemon groves and
 tawny hills in Southern California, pumpkin patches and horse farms in New
 Jersey, and wind-whipped dunes in Cape Cod -- all just beyond the exurban
 fringe.

 "We're not trying to subvert the American dream -- we're trying to get back
 to it," said Larry Bohlen, co-chairman of the Sierra Club's national campaign
 to fight sprawl. "It's that 'Leave it to Beaver' town where all the kids walk
 to school."

 Opponents of these measures, led in California by home builders and
 developers, say the new political calculation could change in the blink of an
 eye if the economy turns bad. In bad times, people are less likely to vote to
 restrict growth. But in Oregon, which pioneered boundaries around all its
 major cities in the 1970's, voters have upheld the state's far-reaching
 anti-sprawl laws even during the depths of two recessions over the last 20
 years.

 Developers say the votes this month were not so much an anti-growth chorus as
 they were a reflection of the frustration people feel over traffic and
 crowded schools.

 Still, the opponents say they are stunned by how quickly suburban growth has
 become a pejorative. "We seem to be at a point now where the word sprawl has
 been totally demonized," said Clayton Traylor, vice president for political
 issues for the National Association of Home Builders, which has 195,000
 members.

 Washington politicians may find it difficult to nationalize what is basically
 a local issue. Mr. Gore has raised the possibility of using the Federal tax
 code or major transportation bills to discourage growth that goes against
 community planning goals.

 "In the past, we adopted national policies that spend lots of taxpayer money
 to subsidize out-of-control sprawl," Mr. Gore said. "They suck the life out
 of urban areas, increase congestion in the suburbs and raise taxes on farms."

 Mr. Gore is vague on what, precisely, could be done on a national level. But
 whatever he attempts to do will be met by stiff opposition if it ends up
 slowing development, Mr. Traylor said. Building lobbies for highways and some
 conservatives were outraged that the $217 billion transportation bill that
 was just approved by Congress contained a small amount of money for bike
 paths.

 "To the extent that the Vice President or anyone else at the Federal level
 tries to turn off the spigot for new infrastructure, we'll be there to fight
 them," Mr. Traylor said.

 In Maryland, however, turning off the spigot proved to be a winning political
 cry, as supporters of new developments were hastily dispatched on election
 day. A Republican who favored two huge projects in Anne Arundel County,
 County Executive John G. Gary, was voted out office, while Republicans who
 vowed to pull the plug on new water and sewage systems in neighboring Calvert
 County took control of the Board of Commissioners.

 Homebuilders Heartened


 In other states, developers have tried to co-opt the anti-sprawl movement.
 Arizona voters narrowly approved a measure, sponsored by the state's banking
 and building industry, that would set aside $20 million a year for 11 years
 to buy open space. But in return, the law would ban development fees and
 urban growth restrictions.

 The homebuilders were heartened by at least one of the sprawl votes that went
 the other way. In Georgia, voters turned down a measure to use a real estate
 transfer tax to preserve historical sites and open space. Georgia is the main
 setting for Mr. Wolfe's novel, a place where a huge, troubled development at
 the far edge of suburban Atlanta is at the core of one man's decline.

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