.
Both political parties like this because it crushes the individual. "Regional" governments have been forming for decades. Rosa Koire knows more about this and especially Plan Bay Area than most.
7/30/13, "Regionalism: Obama’s Quiet Anti-Suburban Revolution," NRO, Stanley Kurtz
"Early but unmistakable signs indicate that Obama’s regionalist push
is well underway. Yet the president doesn’t discuss his regionalist
moves and the press does not report them.
The most obvious new
element of the president’s regionalist policy initiative is the July 19
publication of a Department of Housing and Urban Development regulation
broadening the obligation of recipients of federal aid to
“affirmatively further fair housing.” The apparent purpose of this rule
change is to force suburban neighborhoods with no record of housing
discrimination to build more public housing targeted to ethnic and
racial minorities....
Yet even critics have missed the real thrust of HUD’s revolutionary rule
change. That’s understandable, since the Obama administration is at
pains to downplay the regionalist philosophy behind its new directive.
The truth is, HUD’s new rule is about a great deal more than forcing
racial and ethnic diversity on the suburbs. (Regionalism, by the way, is
actually highly controversial among minority groups. There are many
ways in which both middle-class minorities in suburbs, and less well-off
minorities in cities, can be hurt by regionalist policies–another
reason those plans are seldom discussed.)
The new HUD rule is really about changing the way Americans live. It is
part of a broader suite of initiatives designed to block suburban
development, press Americans into hyper-dense cities, and force us out
of our cars. Government-mandated ethnic and racial diversification plays
a role in this scheme, yet the broader goal is forced “economic
integration.” The ultimate vision is to make all neighborhoods more or
less alike, turning traditional cities into ultra-dense Manhattans,
while making suburbs look more like cities do now. In this
centrally-planned utopia, steadily increasing numbers will live
cheek-by-jowl in “stack and pack” high-rises close to public
transportation, while automobiles fall into relative disuse. To
understand how HUD’s new rule will help enact this vision, we need to
turn to a less-well-known example of the Obama administration’s
regionalist interventionism.
In the face of heated public protest, on July 18, two local agencies in
metropolitan San Francisco approved “Plan Bay Area,” a region-wide
blueprint designed to control development in the nine-county, 101-town
region around San Francisco for the next 30 years. The creation of a
region-wide development plan–although it flies in the face of America’s
core democratic commitment to local control–is mandated by California’s
SB 375, the Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act of 2008.
The ostensible purpose of this law
is to combat global warming through the reduction of greenhouse gas
emissions. That is supposedly why California’s legislature empowered
regional planning commissions to override local governments and press
development away from suburbs into densely-packed urban areas. In fact,
the reduction of greenhouse gases (which Plan Bay Area does little to secure) largely serves as a pretext for undercutting the political and economic independence of California suburbs.
Essentially, Plan Bay Area attempts to block the development of any new
suburbs, forcing all population growth over the next three decades into
the existing “urban footprint” of the region. The plan presses 70-80
percent of all new housing and 66 percent of all business expansion into
150 or so “priority development areas” (PDAs), select neighborhoods
near subway stations and other public transportation facilities. This
scheme will turn up to a quarter of the region’s existing
neighborhoods–many now dotted with San Francisco’s famously picturesque,
Victorian-style single-family homes–into mini-Manhattans jammed with
high-rises and tiny apartments. The densest PDAs will be many times
denser than Manhattan. (See the powerful ten-minute audio-visual assault
on Plan Bay Area at the 45-55 minute mark of this debate.)
In effect, by preventing the development of new suburbs, and reducing
traditional single-family home development in existing suburbs, Plan
Bay Area will squeeze 30 years worth of in-migrating population into a
few small urban enclaves, and force most new businesses into the same
tight quarters. The result will be a steep increase in the Bay Area’s
already out-of-control housing prices. This will hit the poor and middle
class the hardest. While some poor and minority families will receive
tiny subsidized apartments in the high-rise PDAs, many others will find
themselves displaced by the new development, or priced out of the local
housing market altogether.
A regional plan that blocks traditional
suburban development, densifies cities, and urbanizes suburbs on this
scale is virtually unprecedented. That’s why the Obama administration
awarded the agencies behind Plan Bay Area its second-highest
“Sustainable Communities Grant” in 2012. Indeed, the terms of the administration’s grant
reinforce the pressure for density. The official rationale behind the
federal award is “encouraging connections” between jobs, housing, and
transportation.
That sounds like a directive to locate new residents–poor and
minorities included–in existing prosperous communities. In fact, HUD’s
new emphasis on “connecting” jobs housing and transportation does more.
In practice, bland bureaucratic language about blending jobs, housing,
and transportation pressures localities to create Manhattan-style
“priority development areas.” The San Francisco case reveals the
administration’s broader intentions. Soon HUD and other agencies will
begin to press localities directly, rather than through the medium of
California’s new regionalist scheme. Replicating Plan Bay Area
nationwide is the Obama administration’s goal.
The Enactment of Plan Bay Area was wildly controversial among those who managed to learn about it, yet went largely unnoticed in the region as a whole. One of the chief complaints of the plan’s opponents
was the relative lack of publicity accorded a decision with such
transformative implications. Critics called for a public vote, and
complained that the bureaucrats in charge hadn’t been elected.
Another theme of critics was that “the fix” seemed to be in from the
start. Input was largely ignored, opponents claimed, and public forums
offered only the illusion of consultation. Although it’s gone largely
unreported, that accusation is far truer than even the opponents of Plan
Bay Area realize.
Here’s where the Obama administration comes in.
Not only does acceptance of the administration’s $5 million grant make
it next-to-impossible to de-densify Plan Bay Area, but the grant itself
helps to fund “grassroots” supporters of the plan–leftist groups
dedicated to radicalizing the scheme still further.
The
administration’s “sustainable communities” grants generally require
recipients to “partner” with local leftist community organizations.
Opponents of Plan Bay Area often outnumber supporters at public
meetings. Yet such supporters as are present–groups like TransForm, the Greenbelt Alliance, Marin Grassroots, and East Bay Housing Organization–are funded (or slated to be funded) with the help of the same federal grant that backs up the bureaucrats in charge.
Press accounts of the Plan Bay Area controversy generally say nothing
about the financial interest that “non-profit” “grassroots”
organizations have in passage of the plan, or about pressures on the
bureaucrats in charge to maintain their government-mandated
“partnerships” with these community organizations. So when opponents of
Plan Bay Area complain about officials simply going through the motions
of public consultation, they’re right. The deck is stacked, the fix is
in. By way of the federal grant, many of the “grassroots” groups that
support Plan Bay Area are actually partners of the decision makers (the
Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area
Governments). The Obama administration’s role in all this, while
generally unnoticed, is substantial.
If you complain that the
regional bureaucracy behind Plan Bay Area undercuts democracy and local
control, you’ll be told that local governments retain full authority
over land-use within their jurisdictions. In reality, Plan Bay Area
subverts that control, and the Obama administration plays a role here as
well....Now that Plan Bay Area has been formally approved, MTC can withhold
billions of dollars in federal aid from suburban jurisdictions that
refuse to densify, leaving local bridges and highways in disrepair. One
of the core goals of the Obama administration’s Sustainable Communities
Initiative is to use federal transportation aid as a stick to force
regionalist planning on unwilling suburbs.
Recalcitrant suburbs
can also be brought to heel by lawsuits claiming violations of federal
fair housing law. California’s SB375 facilitates such suits by placing
the burden of proof on local jurisdictions accused of housing
discrimination. Such legal claims are often brought by leftist community
organizations of the type currently funded through the Obama
administration’s grant....
All of which returns us to HUD’s controversial new regulation
expanding the obligation of recipients of federal aid to “affirmatively
further fair housing.” When HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan announced that
rule change, he acknowledged that it wasn’t really focused on preventing
“outright discrimination and access to the housing itself.” The Obama
administration is using traditional anti-discrimination language as a
cover for a re-engineering the way we live. The real goal is to
Manhattanize America, and force us out of our cars....
With the new HUD rule in place,
municipalities will be under heavy pressure to allow multifamily
developments in areas previously zoned for single-family housing. The
new counting scheme, which measures access to housing, jobs, and
transportation, will simultaneously create pressures to push businesses
into the newly densified areas, and to locate those centers near
transportation hubs.
In effect, HUD’s new rule gives the federal government a tool to
press ultra-dense Plan Bay Area-style “priority development areas” on
regions across the country.
HUD’s new rule also allows the
creation of regional housing consortia. Although the choice to join such
regional housing partnerships would technically be voluntary, the
administration will be able to use the same combination of legal threats
and funding leverage we’ve seen in San Francisco to pressure
municipalities to join the consortia.
Over the next few years,
select Regional Planning Grants funded under the Obama administration’s
Sustainable Communities Initiative will be issuing regional development
plans guided by the same philosophy that informs Plan Bay Area. So even
in states without California-style regionalist legislation in place, a
federally-funded structure with the potential to override local control,
block suburban development, and force densification will be created. The Obama
administration’s goal is to use legal and financial carrots and sticks
to press Plan Bay Area clones on regions across the country through its
federally-funded Regional Planning Grant program. The new HUD rule will
be folded into this broader strategy. (I lay out the structure,
philosophy, and history of that strategy in Spreading the Wealth.)
When Secretary Donovan announced
the sweeping new HUD rule, he said: “Make no mistake: this is a big
deal.” He’s right. Yet the mainstream press has ignored the change, as
well as the broader story behind it. Recognizing the politically
explosive nature of its regionalist plans, the Obama administration does
little to connect the dots for the public at large. Above all, the
president himself avoids this issue, although it’s deeply embedded in
his administration’s policies.
Obama isn’t actually out of bold ideas. They’re simply too controversial
for him to discuss. The time has come for a national debate on the
Obama administration’s regionalist policies." via Atlas Shrugs
========================
Comment: I appreciate the great article, but the last sentence didn't fit. National debate? By whom and via what outlet? Good grief. It's all over. Rosa Koire is making as much difference as one person can.
.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment