Comment 33688

By Tammany (anonymous) | Posted September 16, 2009 at 15:08:46

I'm not trying to make that simple of an argument.

I'm saying that the current framework likely arose as a response to changing trends in residential development. Everyone knows that huge suburban developments, previously virtually unknown, starting going gangbusters in the middle of the 20th century. Since there was massive demand for these developments, developers lobbied government to change the laws to make it easier to build them. The framework we have now would be a result of this.

Yes, it does perpetuate an unsustainable model of development through artificial cost unloading, etc., but the framework didn't come out of thin air. People really did want to live in these sorts of developments, even before the subsidies were in place.

I'm not in any way trying to advocate for sprawl or for some people's right to live in any manner they please at the expense of people in other, more sustainable communities. I simply think that there was, and still is, a demand out there for the type of lifestyle that sprawl development makes possible, irrespective of any legal framework which makes such demand realizable.

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