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Disenchanted with Conservation Easements

By | | News commentary
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The Antiplanner used to think that conservation easements were a great idea. Only 30 percent of the nation’s land is public, and easements provided a way to protect some of the remaining 70 percent from development.

But lately I’ve come to have my doubts. To get tax credits for easements, they have to be perpetual. And who are we to try to decide the fate of land for future generations? Just as it might be unwise to wantonly destroy something that people in the future might value, it could be similarly inappropriate to lock it up and throw away the key.

Is Colorado running out of open space?
Flickr photo by Gord McKenna.

In recent days, the Rocky Mountain News has documented some other abuses of the easement process:

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Here’s What’s Wrong with Bush & the Neocons

By | | News commentary, Planning Disasters
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The Antiplanner is not too excited about the presidential primaries, which seem to be little more than a reality show for political activists. It certainly has kept them chattering about who will get thrown off the island for over a year. But it has also not only kept them from noticing how bad our government really is, they haven’t even noticed that nearly all the people running are the ones who were responsible for making it so bad.

Instead, we imprint our own images of how we think things ought to be on a candidate and then imagine how wonderful life would be if only our candidate were to get elected. If our candidate should happen to get elected, there will be plenty of scapegoats to blame things on when we fail to achieve nirvana. All of this has become greatly exaggerated now that election campaigns are lasting two full years.

Some may call me cynical, but as Lily Tomlin says, no matter how cynical you are, you can’t keep up.

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Congestion Is Our Friend?

By | | News commentary, Regional planning, Transportation
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Few planners are as outspoken about the need for urban congestion as Dom Nozzi, a senior planner in Gainesville, Florida. In Saturday’s Gainesville Sun, he writes about all the wonderful benefits congestion can produce:

1. A disincentive for sprawl
2. A reduction in pollution
3. A reduction in average car speeds
4. A healthier urban core
5. Political pressure for more transit and bike paths
6. Infill, mixed use, and higher density residential

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Make Mortgage Relief Conditional on Land-Use Reform

By | | News commentary
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President Bush’s 2009 budget includes a proposal to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on programs aimed at helping people avoid foreclosure on their homes. Although the programs are small and won’t help many of the people who are in trouble, any help at all sends the wrong signal: that you can borrow beyond your means and the feds will bail you out when you get in trouble.

But, as the Antiplanner has noted before, the real reason why many people bought houses that were more expensive than they could afford was that state and local land-use rules had driven up housing prices. So Heritage Foundation scholar Ron Utt has an idea: make mortgage relief conditional on deregulation of land use.

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Audit of Salt Lake City Transit

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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The Auditor General of the Utah legislature has released a report critical of the Utah Transit Authority, which runs light rail and buses and is building commuter rail in the Salt Lake City-Ogden area. Many of the criticisms will be familiar to Antiplanner readers:

  • UTA has systematically overestimated light-rail ridership by about 20 percent (i)
  • Bus ridership is so low that the service is less efficient than other transit agencies (i)
  • While light rail may emit less air pollution than cars, the buses “create so much air pollution that they negate any gains in air quality created by light rail.” (ii)

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Typically empty UTA bus.
Flickr photo by Theorris.

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You Have a Right to Be Forced to Buy Health Insurance

By | | News commentary
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Monday, the eminent left-wing economist, Paul Krugman, suggested that Hillary Clinton’s health-care plan was better than Barack Obama’s because Clinton’s would come closer to insuring everyone “at only slightly higher cost.” Of course, Krugman never questioned whether the left-wing goal of universal health insurance makes sense in the first place.

I remember a couple of decades ago seeing a demonstration in Washington with signs saying, “health care is a right, not a privilege.” At the time, it seemed like a very peculiar thing to say. All the other rights we are used to — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc. — are designed to protect people from the government. They are promises that the government won’t interfere in certain aspects of our lives.

To say that health care is a right is just the opposite: it is a promise that the government will interfere in our lives, by taking our money and giving it to people who need health care.

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Is Dulles Rail Dead or Alive?

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Dulles Rail All But Dead shrills the Washington Post. The idea of extending Washington’s MetroRail system 23 miles to (and slightly beyond) Dulles Airport has been around for years, but its huge expense — at least $5 billion or more than $200 million per mile — has been daunting.

To provide local matching funds, northern Virginia counties recently created a huge transportation authority that would tax home sales, hotel rooms, rental cars, and auto repairs to pay for local road and transit projects. It was generally understood that a large share of the authority’s money would go to Dulles rail, but local officials were counting on federal funding for at least half the cost of the project.

Only 12 percent of air travelers who fly out of National Airport use MetroRail to get to and from the airport. No other airport rail line in the country carries more than 8 percent of air travelers.
Flickr photo by sethladd.

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TriMet Crime Coverup

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Light-rail associated crime has been a big issue in Portland, so you would think the media would be all over the story when a woman was assaulted at a light-rail station in Portland last Christmas Eve. Instead — nothing.

Normally, says the Gresham Outlook, the police inform the media about such crimes. But in this case, the police were silent. Why? Because the woman reported the crime to the TriMet transit police. Apparently, TriMet was not interested in more bad publicity for its fabled rail system.

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Is Phoenix a “Real City”?

By | | City planning, News commentary
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The notion that real cities have big downtowns is firmly ingrained in the minds of many urban planners and city officials. As Joel Garreau points out in Edge City, this ignores the fact that such downtowns were only built for about a century, from roughly 1820 to 1920.

Modern cities, which planners deride by calling them “sprawl,” have job centers spread out all over the place. San Jose, Phoenix, and Los Angeles are all typical examples. Planners and officials try to re-create obsolete downtowns by building pork-barrel projects such as convention centers and giving developers huge subsidies for hotels and office buildings. This enriches developers and contractors, but it never really creates a “real” downtown.

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Former Mayor Endorses Antiplanners

By | | City planning, News commentary
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Former Houston mayor Bob Lanier joined a group of realtors and developers in opposing new ordinances that would impose more standards on new developments, says the Houston Chronicle. Because of Lanier’s popularity — he had an 78 percent approval rating when he was term-limited from office — and reputation as a “kingmaker,” What is Kamagra? It is an effective, reliable, functional and pocket-friendly medicine available in three different forms of consumption which includes* Kamagra levitra no prescription tablets * Kamagra jellies * Kamagra soft tablets Any of these forms can be obtained through any of authorized pharmacy. This is because tadalafil soft tabs is known to lead to depression in certain individuals, as well. – Neurotransmitter Imbalances & Abnormalities in Brain Physiology Neurotransmitters are chemical “messengers” in the brain that regulate mood, thought, and memory. Fortunately, the advanced ayurvedic treatment to eliminate PE is there to solve your problems, aid you best levitra price in forgetting your past traumas and help you lead a better and healthy life that you deserve. If any medicine affects your sex life, then you can take 100mg of kamagra jelly within a day. look at this now cialis tab his endorsement is likely to have a lot of influence.

The Chronicle also reports that the developer group, which calls itself Houstonians for Responsible Growth, gave each member of the city council a copy of the Ultimate Antiplanning book. While this is flattering, it probably won’t have quite as much impact as Lanier’s endorsement.