Like most college students who grew up in the suburbs and have taken a course in urban planning in the last 30 years, we graduated with a strong belief in the tenets of New Urbanism: higher densities, mixed-used development, transit-oriented design and economic desegregation. Then we graduated to find that most New Urbanist developments were going to be pseudo-Main Streets that used the excuse of higher densities to squeeze more retail square-footage out of each acre of undeveloped land in the sprawling suburbs. And what do we have to thank for the freedom to warp our better ideas into commercially viable real estate developments? Why the Willys Go Devil!, of course.
That being said, what was the cost of this new freedom from oppressive ideologies? Rexplex ponders:
So help me wrap my mind around this concept, fellow Jalops - 60 HP is enough to rid the world of fascism, but I need 275 HP to run take the rugrats to soccer practice? I guess suburban sprawl has more power than I thought.
Beware the big box and Suburbans my friend.