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Smart Growth

=

Dumb Move

for Utah

 

 

 


 

 

What is “Smart Growth?”

 

The term “Smart Growth” was confiscated by environmentalists and misapplied as a label for their brand of no-growth, which they intend to implement by governmental force. 

 

What does “Smart Growth” entail? 

 

 

Who are the major players behind “Smart Growth?”

 

·        Envision Utah

·        Utah Environmental Congress

·        Future Moves Coalition

·        Numerous government planners and planning/zoning departments

·        "New Urban" architects, planners, and gurus such as Peter Calthorpe and John Fregonese

·        Coalition for Utah's Future

·        Utahns for Better Transportation

·        Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson

·        The Sierra Club

·        Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance

·        UTA (Utah Transit Authority)

Let’s Talk Sense

 

Salt Lake valley dwellers in particular are bombarded with an onslaught of “Smart Growth” talk and hype.  But all the other counties and rural ares should remember that these trends will affect them, too.  And they also pay the taxes which are diverted for “Smart Growth.” 

 

Newspaper headlines constantly herald: 

 

 

Let us briefly examine these slogans, claims, theories, and supposedly politically-correct policies. 


Urban Sprawl

 

 “Urban Sprawl” is simply a negative label for what everyone else calls growth.  The problem with growth is that smart growth-ers and environmentalists don’t want any.  In fact, they want to reduce growth because they think the earth is overpopulated.  The American dream of one’s own home on one’s own property is despised by these “neo-urbanism” disciples.  They hysterically claim that urbanization is destroying the land, is a major cause of pollution, and is a prime cause of all society’s ills.  In typical elitist intolerance, application of the “Urban Sprawl” label is simply a way to negatively slogan-ize their dislike of what the rest of us want. 

 

Revitalization of the Inner Cities and Downtowns

 

An aim of smart growth-ers is to “revitalize” downtowns and inner cities.  RDAs (Redevelopment Agencies) are one of the tools used in these misguided efforts.  RDAs have largely devolved into a method for stealing tax money and bestowing it upon favored business interests.  In turn those businesses naturally support further “revitalization” efforts. 

 

A core instigating group of these inner city subsidy efforts are the politicians who want to save, maintain, consolidate, and grow their power base.  Politicians maintain excellent networking and support structures, and the old-time inner city businesses provide financial backing to mount outside efforts in raiding the rest of the state's coffers in support of their selfish interests.  Mayors and City Councils, especially, don’t want to see their power go away.  Joining them, the inner city businesses don’t like to have to follow the population and they dislike folding as a result of refusing to change with the times.  Met with the challenge of suburban malls, they support zoning and other restrictions against development and push for subsidies to themselves as a buffer against the forces of the free market.  Professional-oriented businesses such as banks and law firms are often tied to inner cities and thus they usually support forcing the non-city public-at-large to sustain their downtown interests and comfort zones. 

 

Why should the rest of the state subsidize downtown Salt Lake City?  All the arguments for that are mere rationalizations.  Smart growth-ers support these efforts because they fit with their no-growth, congestion-compounding, transit-oriented fantasies. 

 

Walkable Communities

 

Those who live in the suburbs already reside in "walkable" communities, and often do stroll the neighborhood whenever they feel so inclined. What smart growth-ers want is a restricted infrastructure where it is difficult or impossible to use an automobile in our neighborhoods, to force residents into walking whether they want to or not, and a demanded reliance on rail or other public transportation.

 

What “Walkable Communities” amount to is a design derived by planners and architects that may or may not have anything to do with what people really want, but which supports the twisted notions of environmentalists and smart growth-ers who think they know what is best for the rest of us.  Similar terms such as “livable” and “sustainable” are also used, but the end result is the same: environmentalists want to force others to live how and where they think we should live rather than the way we want to live.  In the years before private transportation allowed the public to come and go as they please, people were forced to walk as a major means of transportation.  The ability to move about in the distances and with the freedom we enjoy in our modern times was unknown.  Those favoring “Walkable Communities” dream of days past, days which will never again be any more than reversion to outhouses or life without modern medicines.  They seek laws to enforce their design choices, to curtail parking, restrict store frontages, etc.  Progress has become a dirty word for smart growth-ers.  “Sustainable” means no growth, obstructionism, environmental nonsense, and “we-know-better-than-you.” 

 

Asphalt and Cement

 

Another hysteria-building effort of smart growth-ers is the bogus claim that we are paving over the land.  In fact, far less than 5% of America is urbanized, and a much, much smaller portion of that consists of pavement and cement.  Asphalt and cement have their places.  They provide great benefits in more cost-effective ways than other options.  When better solutions are discovered, you can be sure that the free market will be the best mechanism to develop, spread, and bring improved technology to reality. 

 

Green Belts and Open Spaces

 

There is nothing wrong with “green” or “open” spaces.  The problem with “Smart Growth” is that the environmentalists want to control how, when, and where such spaces exist instead of letting freedom reign.  They want laws to enforce who can do what with land and when and where they can do it.  As always with governmental intrusions into such matters, the simple fact is that more problems are caused by such intervention than are ever solved.  Land that was once of lesser value becomes worth more and more over time with biased political influences in control.  Squeezing, zoning laws, increased congestion, and other such negative results eventually compound the whole endeavor, and quality of life suffers. 


Public Transit, or Government v. Private Transportation

 

If one were to believe the never-ending stream of fantastic success stories appearing in Utah newspapers, the only conclusion that could be drawn is that trains are wildly popular and on the verge of replacing all other modes of transportation.  Nothing could be further from the truth. 

 

The UTA is headed by an overpaid bureaucrat (nearly $300,000 annually including benefits; the normal bogus claims are made that a competent manager can’t be found for less).  The organization has a tremendous publicity budget and an able publicity staff that churns out regular hype for the system.  Like obedient puppy dogs, the newspapers unfailingly print all this blather.  (This is not surprising as most media people, including those at both of Utah’s major newspapers, favor environmental programs in general.) 

 

Given that “transit” – and trains in particular—are touted as “the” solution to all of our transportation problems, significant space must be devoted to debunking much of the nonsense surrounding the many prevalent and misleading transit myths.  Consider:

 

·        Rail is outdated technology—expensive outdated technology!

·        Trax is managed by overpaid bureaucrats with kingdom-building and job protection in mind.

·        Rail costs more and returns less than any other existing mass transit technology.

·        One single lane of freeway moves 3 times more traffic than a whole rail line, and does it much faster and much more efficiently.

·        Rail transit costs 600 times more per passenger mile than highways!

·        Trax is an abysmal failure.  Trax accounts for about 1˝ % of regional North-South passenger miles traveled!  In spite of the hype, daily N-S Trax ridership hovers around 21,000—a tiny portion. 

·        Despite UTA claims, Trax “removes” at most some 3 to 5 thousand vehicles per day from roads—a mere drop in the 3,500,000 daily bucket.

·        Congestion reduction costs of Trax are10 times more than I-15’s re-do.

·        Each $1 Trax fare requires a $5 to $8 taxpayer subsidy!

·        So-called “commuter rail” – in the multiple $billions—is only slightly better. 

·        Rail is “politically correct,” practically foolish, and economically stupid. 

·        Rail “solutions” are yuppie oriented, divert money from programs for those truly in need, and are public transit’s Rolls Royces. 

·        Buses, subsidized at only 3 to 1, are more efficient and more flexible. 

·        An auto-driving suburban mother can do in 2 hours what it takes a “public transit” housewife all day to accomplish.  And transit is called progress?

·        Autos replaced trains because they were better.  Rail advocates want us to revert to trains and reverse a century of advancement.

 

Some years ago, environmentalists and other social reengineers concluded that automobiles were evil.  (For example, the Sierra Club calls the automobile “unfriendly” and “anti-social.”)  They fostered campaigns to affect public opinion and lobbied Congress to pass legislation favoring and heavily subsidizing rail “solutions.”  The fact is that if riders were required to pay the true cost of a ticket to ride the rails, nearly every rail system in America would rapidly reach bankruptcy.  You seldom hear much about the above list of hard facts of transit in the usual public media. 

 

The American highway system is the envy of the world.  Just try to travel on highway systems built elsewhere—where they exist—and you will quickly realize why.  Our system used to sustain itself by road taxes paid by users, mostly through gasoline taxes.  Environmentalists convinced Congress to raid the Highway Trust Fund and apportion large chunks of it as “grants” to subsidize rail.  This scenario was assisted by the lobbying efforts of several large national and international firms who profit from manufacture, sale, and construction of rail systems.  The whole process is quite dishonest—to collect taxes from the public under one guise and then spend them elsewhere—but unfortunately it happens all the time. 

 

The automobile brought unequalled freedom, mobility, and economic power to the average American.  Tax waste, neglect, and failure to plan ahead and to provide adequate infrastructure are the roots of our transportation problems (consider the constant road budget woes and “catch-up” efforts).  Why would anyone in his or her right mind want to give up over a century of progress and return to the inefficiency and expense of rail if the true facts were known?  Pollution continues to go down (today’s cars emit less than 1% of what they emitted in 1970), efficiency continues to go up, and the economic, social, and practical empowerment of individual transportation is so undeniable that only the ignorant—or environmental kooks—would willingly attempt to destroy it.  But that is what “Smart Growth” aims to do.  If you hear smart growth-ers admitting we need “both rail and highways,” remember that they only go along temporarily to conquer later. 

 

These are the same people who oppose new airports (though they’re happy to catch a flight when they want to travel), yet claim we should revert to costly, inefficient, antiquated “rail” transportation. 

 

Who in the world wants to depend on government-controlled transportation? . Who wants a situation such as that in France where if transit employees decide to strike, the whole economy shuts down? If the road infrastructure were allowed to diminish to where half of the citizenry depended upon rail, the actual result would leave all of us reliant upon it, because if there were a strike, breakdown, or deliberate governmental intervention, the reduced road capacity could not handle the demand and hence everyone would be left at the mercy of "public" transportation.

 

If rail even provided the needs of certain smaller groups, those less fortunate who cannot afford a car - those unable to drive such as the elderly or handicapped - we could assign more realistic benefits to its use.  But Trax and other proposed Utah rail systems are nearly one hundred percent “yuppie” transportation designed to encourage commuters away from cars.  To get rail built requires massive subsidies, and then the rest of us subsidize it forever after.  Rail is more costly and inefficient than any other existing transportation technology.  Trains will never solve Utah’s predominant transportation needs. 

 

Transit-Oriented Development

 

The problems of inefficiency are not lost on rail advocates though they don’t admit it.  They know that only a small portion of those living close to a rail line usually find trains practical in spite of the massive subsidies provided by governmental construction grants and other subsidies.  Beyond the publicity hype, doctored statistics, and ongoing tax raid-and-rape necessary to support rail systems, even train bureaucrats and other rail advocates can count the small ridership numbers. 

 

One solution devised by smart growth-ers and rail advocates for this dilemma is called “Transit-Oriented Development.”  The idea is to force high-density development around and along rail hubs and lines, in the hopes that ridership numbers will increase as a result.

 

This solution has failed in almost every instance where it has been utilized.  Over time, such housing is considered less desirable by the public (most of whom dream of their own home in the suburbs anyway), the housing developments dwindle and decay—and before long the taxpayers are expected to subsidize the “revitalization” of these areas that were a poor decision in the first place. Smart growth-ers denigrate what they call "strip malls." Yet their policies soon result in true "transit-oriented strip malls" of run-down commercial areas along rail corridors.

 

Furthermore, the only way rail advocates can enforce their aims is to pass laws to prohibit land use that does not conform to their “transit-oriented development” goals, and to massively subsidize projects that do meet their criteria.  Thus they entice developers to build something they would otherwise never build, simply because they can still make a profit due to those subsidies. 

 

Think of it.  First our taxes designated for roads are stolen to build expensive rail systems.  Next when not enough people choose to use rail, laws are passed restricting the right to build and develop according to free enterprise.  Then the citizens’ tax money is re-appropriated to subsidize projects which the market does not support.  And you thought this was a free country?  Welcome to “Smart Growth.”

 

Anti-Legacy Highway, Anti-Roads in General

 

Opposition to the Legacy Highway is rooted in Smart Growth and environmentalism.  It has really nothing to do with a few acres of so-called “wetland” and everyone knows that; the “wetland” nonsense is merely a vehicle for argument and lawsuits based on a foolish law passed by Congress.  Likewise, the claims that rail will really solve the problem are privately recognized as ludicrous.  But to obstructionist fanatics, any argument will do. 

 

Not only is the Legacy Highway project a target, but so is every highway and other road-building project on the drawing boards.  Where roads already exist the idea is to reduce their capacity.  Have you noticed the continual reduction of lanes in road maintenance projects, the additions of center “islands” and corner “cut-outs” that reduce the ability of traffic to move?  Do you love the epidemic of speed bumps and other traffic-choking measures conjured up under the euphemistic name of “traffic calming?”  Such measures are designed to cut the flow of traffic and increase congestion.  Thank “Smart Growth” for all of it. 

 

Did it ever seem strange to you that environmental and smart growth-er "elites" decided that there must be privileged access to road systems? The rest of us pay the same taxes as those whose affairs don't have anything to do with commuting or who can carpool because it happens to work for them in a particular circumstance; why is it that we are denied access to carpool lanes and carpool onramps that we paid for just as much as anyone else?

 

Smart growth-ers fight at every hearing, over every piece of legislation and every vote, in the media, and then in the courts via sympathetic judges—to keep all roads from being built, expanded, or even maintained.  They derive inane drivel such as “We can’t build our way out of congestion,” which is as bright as saying “We can’t inoculate our way out of smallpox.”  They bombard the media with innocent-sounding theories of a dream world that will never be. 

 

Smart growth-ers claim that building roads and highways creates congestion because the people move where the roads and highways are.  In fact this is often not the case at all because homes and developments usually go where the land is available and other costs make sense.  But even if their specious claim that “transit” would solve the problems better were true—and it patently is not—then building transit would accomplish exactly the same result!  The fact is, roads become congested because we haven’t been building enough of them and not fast enough, and when one finally gets built it often takes gridlock congestion to arise over time before politicians get off the dime to expand and build more.  Transit can’t do anything to solve this problem, and it is much more expensive to build and operate. 

 

So if you believe the automobile is evil and if you believe that the world is overpopulated and doomed as a result, fight against roads.  Push transit instead.  Create congestion.  Even cause congestion.  Spew anti-auto propaganda at every opportunity, and praise government-controlled transportation.  Insult automobiles and drivers.  Attempt to force people into the inner cities and cramped high-density housing, feeling less likely to want children.  Label the American dream as harmful and selfish.  Insult and demean families with more than two children.  Fight all development.  Label developers as an evil segment of society.  Restrict all building, all expansion, obstruct all growth, all progress—bury your head in the sand and do your best in the fruitless quest to force reality into conforming with your contorted views. 

 

Most of the bad driving we see is a result of frustration on the part of drivers who can’t get where they need to go in a timely manner due to the congestion exacerbated by obstructionists, of whom the “Smart Growth” gang are now the leading proponents.  Had politicians planned ahead, expanded the infrastructure, and built roads to match growth, we wouldn’t suffer from the congestion that irritates and frustrates drivers and spurs them to poor driving habits and rudeness. 

 

The Sierra Club and other national environmental organizations have specifically targeted Utah as a target for action.  The push for “Smart Growth,” the campaign against Legacy and all Utah highways are not simply local movements.  Significant impetus and funding come from outsiders who dislike Utah and seek to make us an “example” of their perverse agenda. 

 

Some of the “Smart Growth” organizations have managed to get a few prominent Utahns to serve or affiliate with them, and there are many good people who like them simply because they believe the high-sounding labels, accept political-correctness, and do not understand the roots and true consequences and the goals of these organizations. 

 

Envision Utah, Utahns for Better Transportation, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, The Sierra Club, and other smart growth-ers are part of the congestion coalition.  What they espouse causes greater congestion.  Though they claim just the opposite, you realize that congestion is the intention of “Smart Growth” if you really know and understand their principles and underlying goals. 


The Real Story

 

 

What is the real story behind “Smart Growth?”

 

 “Smart Growth” is an outgrowth of environmentalism.  Smart Growth is really just an environmental fad.  Unfortunately, this fad is seriously undermining the quality of life for the rest of us.  Let’s examine this sad fad’s roots.

 

Every intelligent person wants a good environment, but today’s environmentalism has become a political and economical force largely driven by fanaticism.  Environmentalism has become an $8-billion per year global political and business enterprise. 

 

We’ve heard all the doomsday hysteria and insults from people like Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich, Jay Forrester, the Meadowses, Amory Lovins, and Lester Brown.  The same environmental “prophets” who predicted global calamity from global cooling in 1975 began predicting disaster from global warming in 1992.  Whatever it takes.  Get the people stirred up.  Keep the movement going. 

 

On balance, environmentalism has worsened the problems of the environment, whatever they may be, rather than helped them.  The solution for environmentalists is always more government, when in truth government is the worst solution.  If we put the government in charge of the environment as well as the economy, the environment will soon be in just as much trouble as the economy.  Everywhere in history where central planners have come to power they have laid to waste.  In a democratic microcosm such as Utah, people like Rocky Anderson are one of the worst kind of crackpot: a political demagogue and environmental extremist, with a following.  Organizations which support socialistic governmental control over freedom are foes of both freedom and right. 

 

There are many relative newcomers to Utah who espouse environmentalism and “Smart Growth” thinking, most in ignorance of the facts and the principles upon which the state’s civilization was carved out of a wilderness no one else wanted by those seeking the right to worship God and to create and enjoy a wholesome family environment.  To many of these, having “discovered” what was once considered mere desolation, the cry is to “protect wild Utah” and other environmentalistic agenda as they now selfishly seek to shut the door to others, browbeat the family-minded into curtailing birth rates, and invoke other efforts at choking all growth and progress. 

 

Environmentalism has degenerated into a force that pays more attention to seal pups than to Third World babies, that fights genetically-minded foods at the expense of starving millions (organic farming can only feed 4 billion of the world’s 6 billion—which 2 billion are willing to volunteer to die?), fights DDT in a sort of “sustainable mosquitoes—expendable people” solution, and other such mind-boggling ironies.  One writer/researcher has tallied the dead in developing countries—due to environmentalism—at over 20 million human lives! 

 

Environmentalism has become fully flowered as anti-human.  Environmentalism really wants to do away with over half of the earth’s population.  The question is simply, how?  The millions eliminated in wars and genocides and the untold millions snuffed out through abortions (worldwide there is one abortion for every three births) are too weak and inefficient: 

 

- Jacques Cousteau, champion of oceans and prominent environmentalist, said “It’s terrible to have to say this.  World population must be stabilized, and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day.” 

 

- Not content with fighting less-than-optimum or clean or very clean, or any other kind of increased power generation in “civilized” America, eco-imperialism proudly boasts of having blocked ”almost 300 hydroelectric projects in developing countries” (Friends of the Earth’s Brent Blackwelder).  Gar Smith of the Earth Island Institute says that once African villagers get electricity, “they spend too much time watching television and listening to the radio.” 

 

- Edwin Cohn, International Development official and environmentalist, says that people in the third world are “better dead than alive and riotously reproducing.” 

 

- Garrett Hardin, environmentalist and professor at UC Santa Barbara, said that “Every life saved this year in a poor country diminishes the quality of life for subsequent generations.”  Hardin’s essay, Living on a Lifeboat, considered an environmental literature milestone, is summarized by popular Finnish author and enviro-kook Pentti Linkola, who claims that we occupy a sinking ship with one hundred passengers and a lifeboat for only ten.  “Those who hate life try to pull more people on board and drown everybody.  Those who love and respect life use axes to chop off the extra hands hanging on the gunwale.”

 

The more environmentalists’ scenarios of catastrophe fail to come about, the more strident they become.  When one computer “model” breaks down in the face of reality they simply reprogram or create another.  The high priests of environmentalism hold international conferences heralding ever more junk science and trumpeting ever more remanufactured cries of doom, as they attempt to prop one another up while further refusing to face reality.  They have cried “If we keep sailing we’ll die—the world is flat!” for so long that they can no longer allow themselves to consider contrary, rational truths or precepts.  Unfortunately there are millions of followers who, like anxious teenagers adopting some “Save the kittens!” cause, are also in denial, have no interest in investigating the facts, and continue to believe and push for the extremism preached from enviro-pulpits. 

 

Today you can ask scholars and researchers like Julian Simon, David Gelernter, Dr. Bruce Ames, Paul Driessen, Peter Huber, and Bjorn Lomborg, and hear a very different story about the condition of the environment: 

 

·        The earth’s population has stabilized and will begin to shrink; all the doomsday predictions were utter nonsense.

·        The air and water in the developed world is becoming less, not more, polluted.

·        Overall North America sucks more carbon dioxide out of the air that it puts into it. 

·        Acid rain does not kill forests.

·        Global warming is occurring, but we will probably lose no more than 0.7 percent of all species (who’s to say that may not be the “normal” rate?) and its total impact will not pose a devastating problem for our future.  The Kyoto treaty is “chicken little” hysteria based on false conclusions, and would wreak economic havoc. 

·        Fewer, not more, people in the world are starving. 

·        We are not running out of energy or natural resources. 

·        Per historical trends, there will be more and more food per person for the world’s population. 

·        In 1930 we lived an average of 30 years; today it is 67.

·        We have reduced poverty more in the last 50 years than we did in the preceding 500 years. 

·        The same technologies that would enable us to destroy life on the earth also can enable us not to do so. 

·        And etc. 

 

There is still much room for improvement.  But the dire predictions of environmentalism have become false cries of “wolf!” and, like feminism, the movement is beginning to lose ground. 

 

The above examples do not suggest that there are no problems.  Far from it.  But our spiritual problems are really the worst of all, and they are indeed a cause for alarm. 

 

The root cause of today’s environmentalism is a loss of belief in God.  Any devout environmentalist will readily deny Biblical creationism in favor of Darwinism.  Today’s environmentalism directly conflicts with the existence of God.  Environmentalists who believe in God can really only claim belief in Christianity to a certain degree at best.  To such people, man is merely the ultimate predator rather than the creation of God.  To them, Utah’s propensity for large families is despicable and destructive rather than a wonderful thing. 

 

Such things as Clinton’s underhanded action creating one of the largest (2 million acres) federal land grabs in recent history - environmentalism under the guise of a “monument” – the Grand Staircase Escalante Monument debacle, are no accident.  Utah is a focus point and hotbed of anti-family, anti-people, virulent environmentalism—often cloaked in “Smart Growth” garb. 

 

Once you give up belief in God, why heed his scriptural teachings?  Why believe in anything requiring faith versus the research and teachings of science?  If you believe that life was simply a result of some molecular or biological accident or “bang” it is easy to suppose the earth could be destroyed by some similar accident, meteoric collision, or acts of man.  Such lack of belief is fatuous; believing in a superior intelligence—a Creator—is a thousand times more logical. 

 

But Utah is the one state where such a loss of belief should never prevail.  It is unfortunate that we cannot avoid all unpleasant statements or disagreements and surround ourselves with continual peace and contentment.  Wise citizens cannot justify “going along to get along” if the cost threatens the things that matter the most and which are dearest to the hearts of those who believe in God and family.  Those who so believe must speak out and take action to defend their way of life. 


In the beginning, God spoke to our first parents and gave them commandments:

 

Genesis 1

1  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth…

27  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28  And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

 

Genesis 9

1  And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.

 

Psalms 127

3  Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.

4  As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth.

5  Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them…

 

If you believe in the Christian God of America, can you ignore such plain scriptural declarations?  True Christians cannot participate in pagan worship of “Mother Earth.” 

 

Mormonism, Utah’s prevailing religion, offers further applicable scriptural quotes: 

 

1 Nephi 17

36  Behold, the Lord hath created the earth that it should be inhabited; and he hath created his children that they should possess it.

 

D&C 104

17  …[T]he earth is full, and there is enough and to spare; yea, I prepared all things, and have given unto the children of men to be agents unto themselves.

 

D&C 49

15  …[F]or marriage is ordained of God unto man.

16  Wherefore, it is lawful that he should have one wife, and they twain shall be one flesh, and all this that the earth might answer the end of its creation;

17  And that it might be filled with the measure of man, according to his creation before the world was made…

19  For, behold, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and that which cometh of the earth, is ordained for the use of man for food and for raiment, and that he might have in abundance.

 

Moses 1

39  For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.

 

The next time you hear or deal with the nonsense of “Smart Growth,” tell them you don’t want to live in crowded “high-density” apartments or condos near noisy train tracks.  Remind them that you love your home in the suburbs, that you don’t want subsidized, government-controlled rail to ride because you’re happy with the freedom and power of the private auto and trust that free-market manufacturing will continue to result in improvements.  Tell them we could “build our way out of congestion” if they’d just let us—and to get roads built, stop taxing you to prop up decaying inner cities, and stop interfering with your life! 

 

“Smart Growth” is anti-family, anti-human, anti-god, and anti-freedom—and a prime cause of congestion.  Those who think otherwise simply do not understand “Smart Growth,” its roots, and the principles and forces behind its foundation. 

 

Utahns need to wake up and get smart about “Smart Growth.” 

 

 

 

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Selected Secular Sources and References

 

 

- The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths, by Randal O’Toole, Thoreau Institute, Bandon, OR, 2001

 

- www.heartland.org

 

- Hard Green, by Peter Huber, Basic Books, New York, 1999

 

- Eco-Imperialism, by Paul Driessen, Free Enterprise Press, Bellingham, WA, 2003

 

- The Skeptical Environmentalist, by Bjorn Lomborg, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 2001

 

 

 

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