A popular platform for video games is where the player will take an empty map and load it with a balance of office buildings, industries, parks and homes and somehow make it all work with a make believe economy that gets the game moving on its own. There is a real world version of this it's called liberalism and once again it's time to make fun of it. If there is a surge in people throwing pies in politicians faces, by the way, its because I am hereby inciting it with my rhetoric.
Video games is what comes to mind when I read this from Robert Orr writing for the Hartford Courant:
Gov. Dan Malloy has talked about strengthening the state's agricultural economy, though his emphasis seems to be on meat and poultry. Why not think bigger and connect agriculture with smart growth? If the economics of tight-knit walkable communities outperform suburban counterparts by more than 200 percent, as studies by the firm Public Interest Projects in North Carolina and Florida have recently shown, then smart growth should be a goal. One way to achieve more densely settled cores is to surround them with belts of agriculture, as indeed Connecticut's towns were in the Colonial era. Such a move toward so-called "urban agriculture" could be a godsend to the state's physical and economic health.
Okay governor, you have Hartford right, alright lets put a farm, say, over here and here and maybe here. There. Smart growth!
There is two kinds of economic growth, smart growth and stupid growth. The problem with Connecticut is that there is no growth smart or stupid. So Orr is proposing a government growing ever more brilliantly and planting farms around cities. It's smart because "studies" (studies studies studies) show that "tight-knit walkable communities outperform suburban counterparts by more than 200 percent", therefore farms in cities.
But what about the brownfields, as they're called. Environmental agencies are really strict about development here with all that pollution in the ground. Could we really plant corn here, Mr. Dorr? No problem, he says:
Are brownfields too contaminated to safely grow food? We have managed to make polluted waterways healthy and productive; the same can be done with industrial sites.
Oh, just push a clean button and apply it to ground. Smart clean. Done. "The same can be done" Orr says pretending to not know the difference between water and soil, or he does know but he's pretending that for an omnipotent Connecticut government this is child's play.
And best of all, since this is private land that is essentially regulated out of usefulness "....legislative action is vital to counteract the pressures of the marketplace while brownfields are still undervalued." Which means once government eases environmental restrictions and deems the land good enough to eat off of, literally, laws that say this-land-is-ours-not-yours-anymore should be passed right away. Gotta watch that marketplace, it ruins everything:
Legislated and development-rights efforts do offer legal frameworks for resisting the marketplace, but they need further enhancement to amount to true community-building. The engagement of citizens in the benefits of local food could offer this further enhancement.
Who or what has a "right" to development without considerations, or is even at odds with "the marketplace"? Apparently it is a "community-building" bunch like Orr says. They'll get laws passed to put up farms and then engage the community to eat from it. This bunch won't 1. work on the farm 2. live in the community where there is an urban farm 3. be caught dead eating anything produced on the farm. What they do know is at this spot a farm should be and these people will just love it.
Mr Orr bases his Hartfordtopian idea from the town of Pienza in Italy. A Renaissance city, or as he puts it "the first and most clearly planned Renaissance city". Pienza is "a model of ideal living and government based on the concept of a self-sufficient, peaceful and hardworking populace, the essence of the word 'civitas.'" But Hartford, New Haven, Meridan, Waterbury, thisobury and thatoford inner-cities are already "government based". It is the exact THING that is destroying those cities and the people in them and then making them un-civitas.
Comments
I don't think the "critic" understands anything he reads. Did Mr. Orr suggest that the government run the farms? No! He's talking about cleaning up water and air. Does the "critic" think the private sector is going to do that? He doesn't say. I have no idea whether Mr. Orr is Conservative or Liberal. I don't know if his proposals are practical. He simply asks that the government look at it like the town in Italy. I assume the government in Italy is not running the farms and I assume the farms are viable. The right wing radicals, somehow think that governments cannot do anything. Do they have any concept of all that government does? Do they really think it's all bad? Then they should stick to a single argument. And that is, fire the millions who work for government and watch the good times roll. You know, like in the days of yore. About 5000 BC. Even the Pharaohs had government employees.
Why doesn't the "critic" just say it? Why can't the right wing explain something positive. Oh yeah, I forgot. Cut taxes.
Mr. Orr makes two references to what he calls the "marketplace" and its in a context of getting it out of the way of the idea. He praises the Italian town because it is, and it may not even be accurate. a government plan to have farms around an urban setting. It could be because the Renaissance era had no zoning laws. We do, and for one thing brownfields are not zoned for agriculture. De-regulation of zoning laws would have to be put in place. The government can do things but it cannot put better use to land than when it is in private hands, unless of course a city is putting up a new town hall. Now Mr Orr may not be liberal but when he suggest cities box out the marketplace to put up farms around cities that doesn't sound like free-market conservatism to me. If he wasn't a liberal before, he is now.
Lets follow that logic. The brownfields are contaminated and are unproductive and are in private hands. The proposal is for someone to clean up the brownfields and make them productive. For that to happen you need government to apply initiatives to make it happen. According to the "critic" that's liberal. The "critic' somehow thinks we're all better off by allowing the contamination to go on. He throws words that produce nothing positive. How illogical!
Interesting article. I think I need to know more before I can blast away at big Go-Ment Liberalism. I always know where Joy of Taxation stands. Go big Go-Ment Go!
bobblecityLOL
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