Greenville City Planners Want "Smart" Growth

This blog post is addressed particularly to my friend's in Greenville, NC.

Has anyone else noticed the obsession with "building up downtown," "greenways," "bike paths" and a general disdain for popular businesses like Wal Mart?

Well, you're not alone because Greenville, like many cities run by liberal and closet-liberal city council members, is really hell bent on something called "Smart Growth."

What is Smart Growth?

• An urban planning scheme that places an emphasis on city officials controlling where and to what extent growth occurs throughout a city
• Ultra-Green Environmentalism
• A preference for downtown development over suburban development
• A disdain for what is considered suburban sprawl (think McMansions, all over the place)
• In larger cities, a desire for vertical development (skyscrapers; everybody living in studios)
• Driving up the value of inner city properties to attract new wealthy taxpayers, but, at the same time, burdening poorer residents with rising housing costs
  
• AKA "New Urbanism"
• A pathology of needing to stick with the city's land usage plans at all costs
• A tendency toward pedestrian downtowns as opposed to drivable downtowns (lots of inconvenient one-way roads)
• A hatred of automobiles, which are to be supplanted with public transit

Why is Smart Growth a problem?

First of all, in Greenville's case, last year's new ordinances for regulating the bars (which really provide a cartel for existing, powerful establishments) fits perfectly into the smart growth fixation. The whole idea is turning downtown (they re-named it "uptown") into a lefto-granola-eating utopia. Instead of bars, fast food, and chain businesses, there would be lots of cafes, artsy establishments, vegetarian restaurants, and other high cultural venues that appeal to upper-middle class yuppies. Gone are the plebeian waterholes, to be replaced with public transit and trendier items for pretentious pseudo-professionals. Basically, the Greenville city council would like the place to look more like Cary, NC (or worse). This all relates to our masters' desire to force upon us what they think is the correct way to live culturally.

To be honest, this has not worked for very many places at all. The trend in America, for a long time, has been to move away from larger cities and head southwest. That has not stopped utopian city planners and council members from continuing Smart Growth even amidst fiscal turbulence. Part of the problem is the environmental industrial complex. Without naming names, I can guarantee that at least one or two Greenville city council members consider bike paths and green space to be the most important issue. These folks are either ideological nuts or stand to benefit financially from building greener. This is not about making the town prettier. Suburban sprawl may appear unappealing to some, but it's not anything other than an aesthetic problem (plus, it's a result of the Fed's credit-driven housing bubble more than anything).

The urbanists hate the suburbs largely because it means people might have to use automobiles to get to work (oh no!).The other problem for Greenville residents, particularly those looking for jobs, it the fact that the council is hostile toward allowing businesses like Wal Mart or Home Depot to come to town. Since those businesses do not fit the leftist/environmentalist model for economic growth, and they offend some of the neighborhood associations who finance the campaigns of council members, they are unwelcome in Greenville.

I would advise you, as an informed individual to educate yourself more on the topic of Smart Growth and its consequences for REAL growth. A good article that talks more about it can be found here. The good news is not every elected official is on board with the social engineering of Smart Growth. There are a few who are mildly pro business in a non-corrupt way. However, it looks like the general direction for Greenville and other cities is toward the downtown worship of Smart Growth.