Across the United States, an unprecedented acceleration in suburban sprawl is prompting concerns about the environment, traffic, health and damage to rural communities, but opponents appear powerless to stop the process because of the economic development and profits it generates. Reuters
3 Comments
I read something funny this weekend which seems relevant to post here. I live in a local neighborhood called Broad Ripple, in Indianapolis. (Note to Philadelphians: I call it “the Manayunk of Indyâ€). It is a pre-war residential neighborhood of single family and twin houses, some low-rise apartment buildings, and a little six-block business district with lots of cafes and bars and cutesy stores, but also a good organic grocery store, real-life service businesses like a shoe repair (I dropped my boots there today as a matter of fact), barbers, a pet store etc. all wrapping around a canal with a historic lock that was the impetus of the original settlement. Perfect picture of a little midwestern “urban†village of the type the New Urbanists love. It is surrounded on three sides by typical one-house-per-acre suburbs and strip malls.
So. There is a proposal being reviewed by the local zoning board to build two separate condo projects in the Village: one of density 19 units/acre, the other 23 units/acre. Typical density in this neighborhood is between 2 and 5 units/acre. The neighborhood association is vehemently against this proposal, and this weekend I received a flier in my mailbox announcing the upcoming zoning review meeting to fight it.
What is funny is the adaptation of terminology: the people fighting it are saying “We don't want urban sprawl to invade our village!†In other words, the very type of densification that is supposed to help alleviate the fringe version of we architects would call urban sprawl is now being called urban sprawl, as in “Don't make our neighborhood too urban."
The inversion of terms makes my head spin!!
Yeah... NIMBYism is no longer an adequate phrase to describe the length to which folks will fight what they don't understand [whether it's 'bad' or 'good'].
I think it should now be:
cumuloNIMBYism
lb's story is right on the mark. amazing how terms and ideas can't be twisted around on themselves.
the thing that made me click into this article was my initial shock that 'THIS is NEWS that just hit Reuters?'
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