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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: thames_sider who wrote (18500)	5/13/2006 3:24:38 AM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 541776

As the product of those suburbs in the 1960's and 70's, and the relative of someone living in a more far-flung development now, I will take a stab at how the local politics breaks down. The prerequisites to sprawling suburban growth are first, a private sector that wants to expand both production and retail activity with new big box factories and shopping malls that take "greenfields" land. You can't build them in Manhattan or Boston, there just isn't space. But the big southern and western cities had tons of space outside downtown, empty land as far as the eye can see. Second, you need pro-growth politicians who approve the growth of suburban sprawl with zoning and road development to support business and residential areas far from traditional downtowns. Third, you need cheap financing for all that new growth - private sector financing for the corporate and residential development and public sector financing for the roads and infrastructure. The cheap money policy since 9/11 ignited the exurb sprawl in Dallas, Phoenix, Vegas and many other places. On a relative (not absolute) basis, Republicans are more pro-growth than Democrats. Look at county by county voting in the US and you find more Democrats in big urban areas and more Republicans in the suburbs and small towns. It becomes self-reinforcing after a while. The people who want the New South suburban lifestyle are pro-growth themselves and like the setup that the pro-growth politicians created. It's no accident that the red states are in the South and Midwest and the blue states are mostly older coastal states. But the whole thing only works if gas is affordable for the long commutes to work and all the schlepping kids around and shopping. You can't function in most of Dallas without a car, period, not unless you enjoy walking a few miles to get groceries. The pro-growth politicians did not provide for public transport as the city grew. Only when that crowd had fled to the suburbs did the more urban-focused city governments plan and build a mass transport system (which is useless for getting around the suburbs). Bottom line - the suburban inhabitants feel like they were promised a certain way of life by those pro-growth pols and now they are pissed off.