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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (16308)	3/23/2000 11:43:00 PM
From: Brian P.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

<<The only way to contain sprawl would be to destructively redefine the rights of private landowners. This would mean jettisoning the Constitution and that's just a start.There is unavoidable conflict between the most basic idea of civil liberty and the sort of planning and directive that would compress the middle class onto already-developed land.>> This is simply confused. There is nothing that prevents enlightened citizens of a democracy from coming together and democratically deciding they want to structure their transportation systems differently and reorganize the MASSIVE GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES that sustain the car culture. What I am describing could ONLY be done by motivated citizens VOTING for it.

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (16308)	3/24/2000 5:57:00 AM
From: nihil	Respond to of 769667

I think you are an extremist! We already have all of the planning legislation needed to build the city beautiful and contain urban sprawl. And its all constitutional. The 5th and 14th amendments protect everyone's property from seizure without just compensation, but nothing says that one can do anything he wishes with his own land. The principal problem is that there is no consensus as to what kind of future we want. I live on an island full of mountains. Our principal business is entertaining guests who come for the climate and the beauty of the place. It is illegal on Oahu to have neon signs, billboards, and large business signs. It is something of a nuisance sometimes to find a particular business in strip developments. Our shoreline management authorities are making beach front landowners at their own cost remove obstructions on the beach (which cause erosion), because the beaches belong to the people, not the adjacent landowners. I laugh at the TV ad where the woman orders her dogs to attack the man on her beach! Agricultural land is lightly taxed (especially if dedicated) because the highest and best use is agriculture. No one can develop ag land without a long and expensive legal process which nearly always loses because the people and the politicians who represent them want to keep the island green. We have limits on the number of hotel rooms in Waikiki. You can redevelop, modernize, upgrade (with planning permission) but you cannot increase the overall density. If you want a new resort you must go somewhere else where it is an appropriate land use. We are developing a new city with a university, government offices, shopping centers to relieve the pressure on Downtown Honolulu. The Estate that owns the underlying land gave chunks of land for government use as a condition of obtaining permission to build the new city. The whole process is elaborately planned with active participation by everyone interested. It has been studied for years and the government, the landowners, the unions, the business community all fundamentally agree that this is what we have to do to save our island from sprawl, congestion, pollution, and all the evils of industrialism. It is interesting to me as an economist that this kind of open democratic planning is beneficial to everyone -- and I mean everyone. Without the new city we would have continued to be choked. Without limits on Waikiki development there would be less opportunity to stimulate and develop new decentralized growth nodes. We are no smarter or more democratic than anyone else. We are as limited by the Constitution as anyone else. We suffer far more land monopoly and higher costs than anyone, but I think our politicians agree with the people that we only get one chance. If we screw up paradise we have no place to go.