www.albartlett.org , wrote a most compelling article in the Daily Camera, Boulder, Colorado, February 3, 2008, “What part of arithmetic does not hold in Boulder?” that needs to be read by every governor, senator, House rep and city council member across the United States. I consider it the most important thesis of the 21st “They fail to recognize that after maturity, continued growth is either obesity or cancer. The arithmetic is clear. Steady growth produces impossibly large numbers in modest periods of time. So, growth will stop! Referring to Boulder, we have read the innumerate statement, “so our choice is not whether we grow, but how we grow.”
“The authors of this statement would like us to believe that the battle against growth is lost, so our only role is to be the best possible losers. They write that we should give up the efforts to achieve a quiet stability for our community, and in defeat, we should embrace the principles of “Smart Growth.” We can understand this. That’s the game in which they are all the big winners.”
“”The central belief of the growth promotion community seems to be that there is an “absolute need to create greater population density and more efficient land use within the city” by focusing on the “infill development within existing urban boundaries,” said Bartlett. “When the promoters tried this tactic on the Washington School neighborhood, all of Boulder fought back, saying that we’re not going to become losers in the city’s effort to cram more people into Boulder. The whole city is watching to see if the City Council will continue policies that reflect innumeracy and unsustainability.
“The innumerate theme of the promoters is, “The Front Range is going to grow whether we like it or not.” If this is true, it is because so many Front Range leaders are active and successful in promoting growth. The legislature and all manner of public and private regional and local “civic groups” are promoting “economic development,” which is the politically correct name for “growth.” Predictably, this will produce more well-to-do people, more homeless, more employed people, more unemployed people, higher average salaries, more people living below the poverty line, more traffic congestion, higher parking fees, more school crowding, more crime, more unhappy neighborhoods, more expensive government, more tax revenue, higher taxes, more fiscal problems for state and local governments, more air and water pollution, higher utility costs, less reliable utility service, less democracy, more congestion pricing on busy city streets and crowded highways, more unmanageable costs of maintaining public infrastructure, higher food costs and more destruction of the environment.”
http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Your-Voice/Blog~753970.aspx
Denver Post Your Hub March 23, 2010 ##