This Land : The Battle Over Sprawl and the Future of America by Flint Anthony

Author:Flint, Anthony. [Anthony., Flint,]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2011-01-15T18:33:47.410000+00:00

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T H I S L A N D

America’s world-famous big-box shopping strips are spread out and cheaply constructed. They offer millions of acres of parking lots—and unrivaled convenience for consumers looking for low prices and extensive choices. Dining and entertainment have been seamlessly added to the mix. Representing billions in the retail industry, big-box stores are courted by towns seeking commercial revenue. They have become the new corner store, inextricably linked to customers in single-family home subdivisions—staunchly defended as the American dream. Anthony Flint.

affordable, that trying to change things only creates problems, and that mass transit systems are generally a bad idea. Don’t change the rules of development. Keep everything the way it is. If anything, build more roads to make the suburbs work better.

One doesn’t have to look far to see who benefits from these views: conventional homebuilders, roadbuilders, big-box stores, chain and fast-food restaurants, and every other business interest, right down to the lawn care industry, that makes money being a part of existing suburban development patterns—for shorthand, Sprawl Inc. These business interests are very active behind the scenes, in statehouses across the country. But they also support the dream defenders, who make the case so eloquently.

All the men at the Holiday Inn are entitled to their opinions, and they can’t be expected to work for free. But the connections between the dream defenders and Sprawl Inc. are hidden to casual readers of Dream Defenders and Sprawl Inc.

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those op-ed essays or anyone else casting votes on ballot measures or in town meetings on development issues. Everywhere they have gone—in Portland, in Cincinnati, and in Minnesota—the American Dream Coalition has attracted local newspaper articles that have detailed the objections to growth management or light rail projects. What’s almost always left unreported are the sponsors behind the annual event, who enable the dream defenders in the first place. They include

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The Home Builders Association of Central Arizona, based in

Phoenix, which in 2000 gave $50,000 to a campaign to defeat

Proposition 202, a measure that would have required the adoption of growth boundaries, special fees for developers to pay for public facilities outside designated urban areas, and limits on new development that tapped water supplies. The measure was defeated by

more than a two-to-one margin. Other state homebuilders associ-

ations, including the Home Builders Association of Kentucky, have co-sponsored the conference, and the National Association of

Home Builders, the nationwide lobbying group based in Wash-

ington, D.C., always sends a representative.

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The Tennessee Road Builders Association, a trade association with a membership of 370 contractors and associated companies with a focus on funding highway construction through tax revenues. Association president Kent Starwalt has been extensively quoted as rebutting studies critical of the transportation costs of sprawl, and in 2000 he spearheaded a group deceptively called the Tennessee Smart Growth Alliance, whose message was that “living, working

and commuting in the suburbs is not a crime.” The coalition in-

cluded the Associated Builders and Contractors of Middle Ten-

nessee, the Home Builders Association of Tennessee, the Tennessee Council of Retail Merchants, the Tennessee Petroleum Council,

and the Tennessee Ready Mix Concrete Association.

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