No urban sprawl Recently, I drove through Buda, Austin, Dripping Springs, Pflugerville, Round Rock, Georgetown and Hutto. It is one continuous sprawl of developments, franchise outlets, stoplights and toll roads. It is not the Austin I once knew. Austin was once a nice city edged with fields of bluebonnets, Indian paint brush, grazing cattle and trees. Now it is just unrelieved suburban sprawl. There is no more "Austin" in Austin. I returned to College Station. It may soon become Bryan-College Station-Wellborn-Millican-Navasota. Soon there may be no more "College Station" in College Station. College Station now covers about 42 square miles. That is about twice the area occupied by Boston. Our density, is very low. Much of the land inside the city is undeveloped. Some established residential areas are being "McMansioned." Others are sinking into absentee-owner rental zones. Development is eating up land south of town at an awesome rate. The most beautiful cities are those that control their growth. These are cities that have defined their edges. These are cities with defined community centers, parks, hike and bike trails and other amenities that increase the quality of life for its citizens. These are cities separated by natural environments. The city stops. Nature begins. City taxpayers cannot afford and should not subsidize suburban sprawl. We must support in-fill development. We need growth, but we need planned growth. Urban sprawl lowers our quality of life. On May 10, we will elect three city council members. Some council candidates support giving developers more freedom to develop. Other candidates support reasoned in-fill, taxpayer quality of life and planned growth. I urge your support for increased taxpayer quality of life planned growth. I urge your support for John Crompton, Dennis Maloney and Larry Stewart. RAYMOND D. REED College Station
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
One Perspective
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I can't say I understand what issues are involved and can't criticize it much since I own a home which contributes to it.
I don't much care for city living myself -noise and interfering neighbors who call the HOA if you park an old trailer outside your house when you don't have room to put it anywhere else.
In town I was forced to water my lawn and cut my grass. Now I have bluebonnets growing in my front yard.
I don't expect anyone to subsidizes my living out here. I don't understand why the city feels that it must continue to expand.
If it is a tax issue than I think maybe we need to rethink how we are collecting and redistributing tax money.
Certainly my home and the sprawl it creates is not particularly friendly to the environment but very little in todays world is.
I've never been to Boston but looking on Google Earth it looks like the same sprawl you will find all over America. So I don't think "suburban sprawl" is the difference between a good community and a bad one.
If it costs more for BTU to provide electricity to my location than they should charge me more for electricity, same for roads and everything else.
When people do not have to pay the true cost of things than they don't make cost effective decisions. That is why global warming is now a problem. Americans have not been paying the true cost of our life style. It isn't just us living in the suburbs it is everyone.
As the population of the USA continues to grow this will be an ever increasing problem.
-Chris Stewart
Where were you when Council was discussing setting a 20 acre minimum lot size in College Station's ETJ?? Crompton was alone in advocating an ordinance that would accomplish exactly what you describe. Nobody from the public spoke in favor of this growth management strategy.
Show up and speak out!!
80% of success is showing up. The developers are showing up at every meeting, forum and hearing to speak in favor of their issues. That is another of the advantages of having an economic incentive. They get paid to show up.
When you show up don't just berate the applicant or say anything that will detract from your own credibility but do state simply that this comp plan amendment, sewer extension, variance or whatever encourages sprawl.
The recent annexation was a great illustration of how we do things wrongly. If we set more policies that defined the edge of the City and discouraged sprawl the developers of these rural areas would be begging to be annexed. Right now there is no advantage to living or developing inside the city limits.
We must change that.
Great Points.
One of the issues about getting people to show up is that they need to know when to show up. This is very difficult. People will not show up every other Thursday night. I'm feeling more than a little guilty because I did not show up to speak out about the 20 acre issue. That wasn't because I didn't care - I feel that this was one of the most important issues to come before city council in a long time - it was because I wasn't asked to show up and so figured that it was in the bag.
There are a lot of issues these days that are important to the development of our community. I am thrilled at the degree to which folks are paying attention, but I also agree that we must continue to raise the level of involvement and the level of understanding in our community. the question is, what are the most effective mechanisms to accomplish difficult task.
Not invited!?!?!?
Go to the City web site and look at the agenda. Read the supporting info. The growth management issue was posted and documented in advance of the meeting. You only need to show up when it matters.
The developers were not sent an invite. They showed up anyway. You can't just sit on the sidelines and then whine 'cause your team didn't win. It isn't the developers' fault that growth management is now off the table. It is just gonna be that much harder to get it back to the forefront.
Right. I agree. That is exactly why I feel guilty. At this point it is not just enough to show up. We, or perhaps just I, need better organization. Most people will not read the city's web site weekly, much less show up to very many city council meetings. We, or at least I, need a better means of prioritizing when to show up and when to sound the alarm and when not to.
Post a Comment