It is always a thrill for an author to receive the dust jacket for a new book, so I’ll indulge myself by presenting the complete jacket for the Antiplanner’s latest book, American Nightmare (click on the image for a full-sized, 1.5 megabyte, view). Here is a brief preview of the book, which is scheduled for publication on May 16.
That’s cool! Congrats.
DS
Looks like this will be interesting reading.
the highwayman Reply:
March 24th, 2012 at 4:17 pm
Though at $26, that’s expensive toilet paper!
Some HUGE factual errors in your book excerpt…
(1) The biggest weapon historically used against “working class” housing has been DOWNZONING, not urban growth boundaries and prohibition of single family housing, e.g., keep “them” who are much more likely to live in apartments out of our city/neighborhood.
(2) In most cities AND suburbs, working class people are far more likely to be renters living in apartments or renting houses.
(3) Most New Urbanists in the San Francisco Bay Area either:
(a) already live in dense neighborhoods, particularly in San Francisco, Oakland and Bezerkely;
(b) if they live in single family houses, it is in traditional streetcar-type neighborhoods in the older cities, not the much newer auto-oriented suburbs.
And (c) Almost NO proponents of Smart Growth or New Urbanism–in the Bay Area at least–that I know of live in places like San Ramon, Alamo or Walnut Creek. Actually such suburbs are the home bases of “Agenda 21″ haters from the Tea Party, although most of the dense growth would be around either transit stations or in the denser, older cities–for the record, places like Palo Alto are older, very well-established job centers.
PlanesnotTrains Reply:
March 23rd, 2012 at 12:12 pm
The world does not revolve around, nor is the Bay Area a reflection of the rest of the country. Moving on.
Dan Reply:
March 23rd, 2012 at 8:17 pm
Oh, Wow. You’re right Mike. Here are some more gross errors.
So few words. So much hokum:
o Tea Partiers tend to be working class
o few members of the middle class have any real understanding or appreciation of what it means to be working class, and they often treat working-class tastes and preferences with sneering contempt and hostility.
o college graduates who …usually live in single-family homes and drive for most of their travel. …and only people with their special skills need to drive?most everyone else should live in apartments and take mass transit.
o urban-growth boundaries and other limits on suburban development [make] housing unaffordable for working-class families.
o planners deliberately increase traffic congestion, limit parking, and put other restrictions on driving.
o conflation and guilt by proximity: “higher-status groups defend the potential threat posed by widespread material abundance to their ‘status-honor’ by designating such economic possessions ‘vulgar’ ”
o By declaring a War on Sprawl, the middle class sought to exclude working-class families from pretentions of middle-class amenities.
o environmental costs of sprawl are in fact negligible:
o The War on Sprawl aims to prevent many people from enjoying these benefits [of...single-family homeownership and automobility].
My, my. Tawdry polemics over scholarship. No doubt it will be touted far and wide.
DS
Many ideas that later “infiltrate” the rest of the U.S. begin in the Bay Area. Check your history. Hippies. Yuppies. Silicon Valley, among many other things.
PlanesnotTrains Reply:
March 23rd, 2012 at 2:12 pm
As delusional about your impact on society as your neighbors.
BTW. Hippies, Yuppies, Silicon Valley… Limited shelf life.
Dan Reply:
March 23rd, 2012 at 8:01 pm
You are obviously young and still learning about the world. Soon enough you’ll know.
DS
PlanesnotTrains Reply:
March 26th, 2012 at 9:31 am
Yeah, 42 years young. Surprised you’re still clinging to your 1960′s failed utopian crackpot ideology.
Congratulations on the new book. I am intrigued by the idea of government policies pushing against each other — federal policies and subsidies for home ownership and local policies and subsidies to block new homes.
By the way, you can pre-order the book for $17.13 at Amazon with free shipping. http://www.amazon.com/American-Nightmare-Government-Undermines-Ownership/dp/1937184889
Off topic, but interesting. Proposal to have cyclists pay a toll to cross bridges into NYC.
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – The city’s former traffic commissioner has a new plan to put tolls on East River bridges. But this proposal has some novel “selling points,†including a first-ever toll for cyclists.
Plan to toll the bridges have come and gone over the past few years, but the latest one by Sam Schwartz is starting to pick up steam, maybe because it goes after everyone.
“I’m trying to be equal opportunity pain throughout the region,†Schwartz said.
Schwartz, known as “Gridlock Sam†to many, wasn’t kidding Friday when he told CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer that his new plan to raise $1.2 billion a year tolling the East River bridges will hit a lot of people. He wants to make everyone pay, even some who think they should be exempt.
“I’m asking the bike riders to pay 50 cents each way to use the bridges coming into our Central Business District,†Schwartz said.
Schwartz also wants to put a new surcharge on yellow and livery cabs, a surcharge on so-called “black cars†and a surcharge on parking in Midtown. New tolls would be put on the Ed Koch Queensboro, the Williamsburg, Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges.
Driver would pay $5 with E-ZPass; $7 without.
PlanesnotTrains Retorted:
As delusional about your impact on society as your neighbors.
Yeah…Nixon…Reagan…Hollywood…environmentalism…hippies…beatniks…television…Silicon Valley…Southern California land scams and housing bubbles (well before those in Florida)…sure, yeah, California hasn’t had much impact on U.S. culture if PnT in his infinite wisdom sayeth so…sheesh…
PlanesnotTrains Reply:
March 26th, 2012 at 9:29 am
Way to move the bar from the Bay Area to California.
Like I said, delousional.
PNT spewed forth:
Like I said, delousional.
And you’re an arrogant ignoramus who can’t spell, and knows virtually nothing about American cultural history, such as it is. Hippies, for example, didn’t come out of the Wyoming wilderness (for one thing, there they would have gotten shot long before they ever made it to San Francisco or Berkeley!).
PlanesnotTrains Reply:
March 29th, 2012 at 2:26 pm
Looks like a guessed right. Got you all flustered.